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Macbook refuses to start up

When i press the power button, my Macbook makes the start up noise but it stops when it gets to the apple symbol.It freezes like that for a long time before it either changes into a crossed circle (similar to the no-smoking sign) or it turns itself off completely. I've read that it is a "hard drive failure" (i like to pretend i know what that means...ahh).
I've tried numerous things suggested in these forums and in the Macbook user guide but nothing seems to be working. Also, my memory on my Macbook is almost completely used up.
Does anyone have any other ways to fix the problem?
Can anyone tell me the actual problem?
🙂 thanks in advance to anyone that can help, its greatly appreciated.

Posted on Jan 24, 2010 3:51 AM

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6 replies

Mar 3, 2010 11:21 AM in response to apxskier

I have a similar problem that is causing some distress as it is my wife's Macbook and I am in another country on business. These days we rely on computers to keep in touch so I too would like some assistance.

The problem is similar to the first post. The chime is heard after the power button is pressed but then nothing. I have tried to talk my wife through the troubleshooting described in Apple support but no success. The Macbook was working 1 hour ago, all she has done is switched it off then tried to switch on and found this problem.

Could really appreciate some help with this.

Thanks

Mar 5, 2010 4:41 AM in response to *hakunamatata*

Hi. That happened to me as well. My Macbook was relatively new (about a week old) when it happened. I tried the usual steps in the apple guide but nothing worked. A few users in this forum tried to help me but al else failed. I'd suggest you go to an apple center and have a technician look into it. The tech from the apple center where I took my macbook said the cause was an OS failure. He said that that is usually caused by directly updating and installing online, like when you update your iTunes or your OS X online. He suggested that if I want to update i'd better go directly to the apple website and download the update first then install the downloaded update file afterwards. According to the tech, when you install (install, not download) directly from the website and your internet connection fluctuates then you mess up your OS. hope that helps. Good Luck.

Mar 6, 2010 1:55 AM in response to *hakunamatata*

Are you able to get to the login screen? (even if it takes a long time)

If you have an external hard drive with OSX on it does it work normally? If so can you access the files on the other hard drive?

can you hear the hard drive spinning when you put your ear up to where it is?

you could put the install cd and do some disk utility checks and check console if there where any errors showing up to the drive.

Mar 6, 2010 7:07 AM in response to f1stevef

Eventhough it has been said that posters in this thread have tried all suggested troubleshooting, well there is no way for all other world readers to know what those suggestions were. So here is my suggestions:

1. Reset the Macs PRAM:

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

2. After the reset if it still refuses to boot, try a safeboot into safemode.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1455

Keep in mind that safebooting does take awhile so be patient. If after say 20 minutes safeboot does not work then you need to go to the next step.

If the safeboot is successful then reboot normal and see if it will boot.

3. If all the above has failed then you will need to boot into the original OSX install DVD that came with the Mac or the Full retail version of OSX if you had purchased and installed a new version of OSX. Then run "Repair Disk" and "Repair Permissions" from disk utilities on the DVD.

If you need steps on booting from DVD and running DU, post back and we can give you step by step.

One other thing for some of the other posters here on this thread...

You should always try to keep at least 10-15% free HDD space on your internal disk that has OSX installed. Although I have had drives with only about 2% free space and had no problems, I have also had drives with about 10% free space give me these same symptoms. Once more data was cleared from the drive, OSX was happy and the Mac ran like a champ.

Macbook refuses to start up

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