Macbook won't boot past gray/light blue screen- Help!

Hello J.Owl,

Welcome to the Apple Discussions!

Is the other computer that you used a Mac?

If so then attach the external enclosure again to the other Mac and use the Disk Utility to "Repair Permissions" and "Repair Disk".

If you do not have another Mac, you will need to boot from the instal DVD. Here is how to boot from the install DVD.

1. Put DVD into drive, then power-off

2. Power-on and immediately press and hold the "c-key" until you get the language screen.

3. Select your lanquage and then continue.

4. Once in the Welcome screen go to the tool bar top left. Select utilities/Disk Utility. Then run the utilities from there.

Is the install DVD the one that came with that Mac?

Try resetting both SMC and PRAM:

SMC:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1411

PRAM:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1379

Then try booting if no luck try booting from DVD again.

Sounds like possibly a firmware issue? or maybe a corrupted boot sector on the hdd?

not very knowledgeable of macs but if your not getting past the boot screen the issue almost has to be one of those places. I have a similar issue only my problem is a blank HDD.. I get the same screen your describing only I am able to boot to certain disks.. I've been able to boot to my windows discs... Other wise the firmware yells at me and tells me that there is no bootable disc.

I couldn't begin to tell you how to solve the issue.. specially since you've tried the install DVD already. Maybe try to remote install the os on the hdd?

Upgrade firmware possibly?? not sure. Hope that maybe puts in you in the right direction tho.

The boot sector of the drive is fine or you'd never get to the gray/blue screen.

fligex is correct in the fact that a sector or two may be corrupted. Most of the time you can run "repair permissions" and "Repair Disk" with disk utility and it will fix the problem. Unless the drive is just dieing then the problem will come back or it just will not boot again.

This is why you need to boot from install DVD, another Mac or and external drive with OSX installed.

You cannot seem to get the install DVD to boot. Unless you take it to an Authorized Apple repair you are just going to be in limbo until you can get one of the above listed to work.

Did you ever get the DVD out of the drive?

I can only offer the same suggestions from before, I'll give them again just for grins.

1. The install DVD (a gray dvd) has to be the same DVD that was shipped with that Mac. Unless you have a retail DVD (a black DVD) in which can see OSX on that disk cannot be older than the OSX that shipped with the Mac. If these are not followed then the Mac may not boot from the DVD.

2.Sometime you PRAM and or SMC can get into a state that needs to be reset. They can cause many sporadic problems and the Mac not booting is one of them, and the Mac not ejecting the DVD is another. This is why it is important to make sure that they get reset, and properly.

Pram:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1379

SMC:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1411

3. You can boot from an external drive that has OSX install, by the following.

Plug the external drive into the Mac, then power on the Mac and immediately press and hold the "option" key until the Startup Manager appears. Select the external drive from the GUI interface and press the right arrow button on the lower right bottom of the screen. This will force the Mac to boot from that drive. At this point you can run disk utilities from the external firewire drive against the internal Mac drive.

4. You can also put your Mac (with the disk install) into Target Disk Mode. Then plug the TDM Mac into another Mac with a firewire cable. Then TDM will populate on the desktop of the other Mac as an external firewire drive at which point you can run the disk utilities against the external (TDM Mac).

5. Since you had the drive out you could easily put it into an external enclosure and plug it into another Mac to run the disk utilities against it.

Good luck...

did you hold down the "C" key when booting from the disk? I had a similar issue like yours. I was able to get the mac to boot off the restore dvd then used time machine to restore a backup.