will not boot from external DVD drive

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Level 1

5 points

will not boot from external DVD drive

I bought an original Macbook Air. It ran great! Problem is, the battery is shot. So, one night I was moving it around, and it lost the power input and shut down.

Now it wont start. I get to the apple logo, and the wheel just spins. I have tried using the recovery drive to now avail. When I try to restore with an image on the recovery drive it says I cant because it can't dismount the HD because it also contains the recovery image. I bought an external DVD, just to see if I could boot to my Mac disks I have from my imac, and it wont even do that. I have followed the instructions in the manual, just hold down the left shift, control, option, and power button at the same time and it is supposed to go back to factory defaul, but no luck there either. If I could just get it to boot from the external drive. It saw it in the disk utility, but now it doesn't. Any ideas?

Thanks,

Dennis

MacBook Air, Mac OS X (10.7.5)

Posted on Apr 21, 2013 6:40 PM

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Answer 1

Best reply

Bimmer 7 Series

Level 6

10,337 points

Apr 21, 2013 7:13 PM in response to spkrck

connect the external drive to your Macbook Air, turn on your Macbook Air and make sure you press down on the options key at the same time - once you see the boot menu - select which drive you want to boot from.

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Answer 2

spkrck Author

Level 1

5 points

Apr 22, 2013 6:57 PM in response to Bimmer 7 Series

Thanks for the help, but I have done that. Having such a time here. I even got a copy of Mountain Lion ( Lion is on the macbook now), and tried to install it useing remote OS X install. The Macbook wouldn't see the DVD, it only saw the Apple test suite.

This is getting frustrating. The iMac I was using has 10.6 on it. I am wondering if that is why the macbook doesn't see the Mountain Lion DVD.

Any idea's?

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Answer 3

Apr 22, 2013 7:09 PM in response to spkrck

I own one of those original Macbook Air - i created a Snow Leopard USB installer and did the install from there.

Mountain Lion will not work in the Original Macbook Air because the Intel X3100 video is not supported.

In any event - try doing the following : SMC RESET - yes, again. then do a NVRAM/PRAM RESET - after you've done those - try restarting again and this time have either your install disc or usb installer ready just in case it works.

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