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MacBook won't boot past blue screen

I was working on my MacBook tonight I've had it since it was newly bought in 2007 and haven't had a single problem till today all a sudden I noticed under my iTunes all music it said I had 200+ songs, I immediately was concerned because I have well over 3,000 songs, the computer is plugged into the wall charger though it says not charging. I take the charge cord away the whole machine dies instantly, now I tried to turn it on and all I get is the blue screen of death. It will be bright blue and I can move my cursor but then the screen will dull the cursor will go away and then a little progress wheel will appear then it goes away and the screen brightens again the cursor appears... Etc it has been going through this cycle for the past hour, I've tried restarting with install disk and holding c I go through the hoops restart same scene. I tried holding d down to see if magically something torched my computer while I blinked and after an hour of the extensive analysis nothing is wrong! I don't know what else to do! Please help! I have snow leopard running on the machine!

Macbook, iOS 4

Posted on May 15, 2011 10:19 PM

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Posted on May 15, 2011 10:22 PM

Reinstall OS X without erasing the drive


Do the following:


1. Repair the Hard Drive and Permissions


Boot from your Snow Leopard Installer disc. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Utilities menu. After DU loads select your hard drive entry (mfgr.'s ID and drive size) from the the left side list. In the DU status area you will see an entry for the S.M.A.R.T. status of the hard drive. If it does not say "Verified" then the hard drive is failing or failed. (SMART status is not reported on external Firewire or USB drives.) If the drive is "Verified" then select your OS X volume from the list on the left (sub-entry below the drive entry,) click on the First Aid tab, then click on the Repair Disk button. If DU reports any errors that have been fixed, then re-run Repair Disk until no errors are reported. If no errors are reported click on the Repair Permissions button. Wait until the operation completes, then quit DU and return to the installer.


If DU reports errors it cannot fix, then you will need Disk Warrior and/or Tech Tool Pro to repair the drive. If you don't have either of them or if neither of them can fix the drive, then you will need to reformat the drive and reinstall OS X.


2. If the drive is OK then quit DU and return to the installer. Proceed with reinstalling OS X. Note that the Snow Leopard installer will not erase your drive or disturb your files. After installing a fresh copy of OS X the installer will move your Home folder, third-party applications, support items, and network preferences into the newly installed system.

8 replies
Question marked as Best reply

May 15, 2011 10:22 PM in response to Persephone4

Reinstall OS X without erasing the drive


Do the following:


1. Repair the Hard Drive and Permissions


Boot from your Snow Leopard Installer disc. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Utilities menu. After DU loads select your hard drive entry (mfgr.'s ID and drive size) from the the left side list. In the DU status area you will see an entry for the S.M.A.R.T. status of the hard drive. If it does not say "Verified" then the hard drive is failing or failed. (SMART status is not reported on external Firewire or USB drives.) If the drive is "Verified" then select your OS X volume from the list on the left (sub-entry below the drive entry,) click on the First Aid tab, then click on the Repair Disk button. If DU reports any errors that have been fixed, then re-run Repair Disk until no errors are reported. If no errors are reported click on the Repair Permissions button. Wait until the operation completes, then quit DU and return to the installer.


If DU reports errors it cannot fix, then you will need Disk Warrior and/or Tech Tool Pro to repair the drive. If you don't have either of them or if neither of them can fix the drive, then you will need to reformat the drive and reinstall OS X.


2. If the drive is OK then quit DU and return to the installer. Proceed with reinstalling OS X. Note that the Snow Leopard installer will not erase your drive or disturb your files. After installing a fresh copy of OS X the installer will move your Home folder, third-party applications, support items, and network preferences into the newly installed system.

May 16, 2011 12:23 PM in response to Persephone4

Well I let it sit off over night and still the same story this morning except this added bonus! Now it won't read any disks! It takes them in tried to work act like it is then I hear it stop it does this 3 times then spits the disk out so I can't run any installer disk on it now whether it's snow leopard or the original disk!


Kappy are you saying for some unknown reason my OS just up and deleted itself? Awesome...

Any helpful decisions now except for the apple store which is located 200+ miles away?

May 16, 2011 1:16 PM in response to Persephone4

No, I don't believe I said anything about an OS deleting itself. However, from whatever happened when you shut down the computer abnormally, system files have been damaged such that OS X cannot startup. Reinstalling per my instructions should fix the problem.


Of course from the added information one might assume the computer has suffered some other failure. Nothing much you can do unless you have a bootable backup somewhere. If not then take it in for service.

May 16, 2011 2:35 PM in response to Kappy

Okay after pulling out my hair and shoving the snow leopard disk in and it popping back out a million times I tried my original installer disk and it worked! I'm running the disk repair and it says invalid directory item count should be at 37 not 36 now it's repairing the volume. Do you have any idea what that means? And if I reinstall with the original disk will I lose all my info I don't know if I'll be able to get snow leopard disk to work.

May 17, 2011 11:49 AM in response to Kappy

Okay so basically my computer would not and still will not accept my snow leopard disk I had to reboot from my tiger OSX a fresh install and when it asked if I wanted transfer other files from a past OS I said yes but it wouldn't let me for some reason. I can't find my files under previous system, I'm talking about all my music and documents movies etc. I know they are still there because all the memory is still used up on my computer. How can I get my files up to transfer them to my external?

MacBook won't boot past blue screen

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