Two MacBook Pros from around 2010.Neither will boot up.

LC4Him wrote:

Thanks Grant. Black screen and nothing else visible. Sounds like one of the drives is spinning but nothing with the other.

I live two hours from the nearest Mac store so there’s no one local who could check them out in more detail.

For context, I too like to keep older computers running -- I have a 2010 Macbook Air, a 2013 Macbook Air, and a 2015 iMac. I use newer Macs for anything significant, but the 2015 iMac has a nice large screen and works well for web browsing and light tasks. We use the 2013 Macbook Air as a "beater" computer to take on trips. The 2010 Macbook Air is sort of a museum piece, it has just 4 GB memory (the most we could get with it back then), 256 GB storage, but it still lively and runs well. All these older Macs have internal SSDs.

You mentioned one of your laptops drive is "spinning." If you have a spinning hard drive, that's one reason to no longer keep or use the computer. The HDD computers are extremely slow compared to ones with SSDs. The second problem is that both have black screens. That's almost always hardware failure. Repairing 15-year old computers is a challenge (and expensive) because parts are no longer readily available. If I were in your shoes (and I have been there with a 2008 iMac that had to be retired when it stopped powering on), I would retire those 2010 laptops and get a new Mac; if that's too costly for your situation, I would peruse the used/refurbished Mac offerings at OWC, which is a reputable company with warranties on what it sells. There are some great bargains available at OWC. Apple also sells refurbished Macs, albeit maybe slightly higher end (pricier). I would only buy used Macs from Apple or OWC, however.

If you really want to see if one or both your 2010 laptops can be repaired, you will need to find an independent shop that is an Apple Authorized Repair Center because Apple won't work on computers that old.

You're welcome, my friend.

I'm all for keeping old tech running and I can. Ten years is a good productive run for any Mac before outside forces dictate change. I have a few old Macs myself. All of them reached a point where they had little to offer moving forward so they got replaced. They all still ran when that time came, so that was a plus. Some got set aside to be used occasionally to access legacy apps and data. Others just became hobby Macs for a while.

But I wouldn't spend money on any of them at their age. I would have replaced a battery, or upgraded the RAM or drive after five or six years to get to the ten year mark. But after that it just isn't worth it. And the way that tech advances in ten years is amazing.

If need be, you might pull the drives and keep those if they have data that you haven't otherwise preserved.

Hobby Macs for the kids or grands.

A depleted battery can prevent an Apple laptop from powering on or even booting. Remove the battery & see if the laptop powers on.

As for the one with the hard drive you can hear spinning.....that hard drive may be the problem as it may have failed.

You can try running the Apple Diagnostics if the system powers on. If the laptop had macOS 10.12.4+ installed at some point, then you should have access to the online diagnostics. You can also try booting into Internet Recover Mode using Command + Option + R if macOS 10.12.4+ was installed at some point in the past.

Readers who are considering trying to revive an older Mac should know some details about the boot-up sequence of older Macs.

The initial "chime" sound is generated in software when your Mac passes the Power-On Self Test. If the chime occurs and/or startup continues, your Mac is working. The screen should light up and draw a blank gray screen. Then on to the Disk Drive.

Accessing the Boot drive:

The solid Apple is not in the Mac's ROM at Cold start. The Apple logo can only appear when it is fetched in the first "blob" of software loaded from a 'magic' place on the boot drive, or re-run after a Restart. Then a whole lot of stuff is initialized, and the progress Bar moves part way across. After a cold start, seeing the solid Apple appear says your drive was able to produce the software that contains the Apple logo.

If a prohibitory sign appears at this point, it indicates some fundamental part of MacOS is damaged or wrong version.

Mounting the Boot drive:

The next step requires a lot of files by name, so the File System is initialized, and the Boot Drive is Mounted. If the drive directory is damaged, the drive can not be Mounted, so your Mac begins one pass of Disk Utility Repair. This will take an additional about five minutes. During this process, the progress bar may be extended, and will grow by an additional amount not seen on a routine startup.

at the end of that process (which should not take more than about five minutes), it will attempt to Mount the drive again:

-- if the drive Mounts, boot-up continues.

-- if the drive cannot be Mounted, your Mac can do nothing more, so it powers off.

-- if the process stalls, this may indicate you have Bad Blocks on your Rotating Magnetic Boot drive (if so equipped). The re-reading of Bad blocks can take a very long time (on the order of a quarter minute for each Bad Block).

Those two obsolete MacBook Pros want to retire and you should let them.

IMHO, they are not worth spending money on.

there are a whole lot of ways to "not Boot up"

how far doe each get into the process?

what noises? what lights? what shows up on the screen?