Another Macbook Problem - No Spinning Wheel of Death

[whoatherechunk]

Alrighty...first off i'm not an anti-mac person. If anything I love them. Here's the history behind my computer. I've had a Macbook since summer of 07'ish or 08'ish (i forgot). It had OSX. Worked marvelously until a year later and it got the spinning wheel of death. I returned it under warranty to Apple and received my laptop with the upgraded Snow Leopard. Apparently the hard drive went out. Alright well fast forward to today. I was using my macbook and all of a sudden I couldn't select anything. All I could do is watch the mouse move across the screen as I attempted to click on items. So I reset it and now I'm at the gray screen phase. Thing is...that I don't even have a spinning wheel of death. I just have the gray screen and get pinball noises from under the laptop. In addition, normally you would have to hold down the power button but if I just press it once it safely powers down. Am I royally screwed? Has anyone had troubles with this before? I'm not financially able to purchase a new mac at this time, but would it even be worth repairing this one? totally bummed. Thanks guys.

[iamlowsound]

Sounds like another harddrive failure. I had that happen and I just put a new harddrive in and I was good to go. Shouldn't cost more that $120 for the drive.

lowsound

[DwaynieAD]

working as intended

[MIJ-VI]

PC hardware fails on occasion too.
- A former PPC Mac and now PC user.

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OP, if your Macbook has a FireWire port then (IIRC) it supports Target Disk Mode and thus can be connected to another FW-equipped MAC which also supports Target Disk Mode (this connection must be made while both machines are off) in order to allow your Macbook's hard drive to be mounted on the other Mac's desktop (if the hard drive still functions). If it can be mounted then perhaps you can rescue your files and run a disk repair program.

How to use Target Disk Mode
http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&so...=Google+Search

[fdeck]

For rescuing data off a Windows hard drive, I've used a bootable flash drive with Linux on it. Would that work with a Mac too?

[whoatherechunk]

hitting on what fdeck says....well his question is pc related. but is any of the data retrievable? i dont have any million $ data on there but i do have a few things i would like back hahaha

[MIJ-VI]

Originally Posted by whoatherechunk

hitting on what fdeck says....well his question is pc related. but is any of the data retrievable? i dont have any million $ data on there but i do have a few things i would like back hahaha

Let's identify exactly which model you have before we proceed further:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacBook

[whoatherechunk]

mij-VI

my macbook does have a fireport! just getting another mac that has one may be a [roblem :? thanks for the help. do you guys recommend taking this to a apple service center. i don't have an apple shop but i have one of those affiliated apple shops that deal with such repairs. i'm not very technologically advanced when it comes to fixing computers.....i just dont want to get wallet raped.

[MIJ-VI]

Originally Posted by whoatherechunk

mij-VI

my macbook does have a fireport! just getting another mac that has one may be a [roblem :? thanks for the help. do you guys recommend taking this to a apple service center. i don't have an apple shop but i have one of those affiliated apple shops that deal with such repairs. i'm not very technologically advanced when it comes to fixing computers.....i just dont want to get wallet raped.

Have you compared the model # on your Macbook with those listed in the Wikipedia link? Apple has made many variations of this machine. It would be helpful to know exactly which one you have.