I've suddenly got a blank blue screen on a first gen Macbook Air (the Mac equivalent of the blue screen of death I'm afraid). It will run the start-up without a sad mac to the point of the blank screen and then nothing.
I suspect the hard drive, but would appreciate any additional information.
Is there any way to access the disk to see if I can get any of the data? (in truth it's my mother's computer and no, she did not keep a current back up)
M
MacBook Air
Try starting up while holding the Option key down. That should prompt the Startup Manager window where you can select the startup disk.
If that doesn't help, try Resetting the PRAM
If that doesn't help, startup in Safe Mode
A Safe Mode boot takes longer than a normal boot so be patient.
If you can access Safe Mode, you may be able to retrieve files, but no guarantees.
To restart normally, click Restart from the Apple menu.
Tip... when posting for help, please tell us which OS X is installed. Some troubleshooting can depend on that.
If you aren't sure, when you are Safe Mode, click About This Mac from the Apple menu.
The version is noted there.
If you couldn't boot in Safe Mode, try repairing the startup disk.
For v10.7 or later, restart the Mac while holding down the Command + R keys so you can access OS X Recoveryto repair the disk.
If the Mac has v10.6 installed, insert the install disc that came with the Mac.
Try starting up while holding the Option key down. That should prompt the Startup Manager window where you can select the startup disk.
If that doesn't help, try Resetting the PRAM
If that doesn't help, startup in Safe Mode
A Safe Mode boot takes longer than a normal boot so be patient.
If you can access Safe Mode, you may be able to retrieve files, but no guarantees.
To restart normally, click Restart from the Apple menu.
Tip... when posting for help, please tell us which OS X is installed. Some troubleshooting can depend on that.
If you aren't sure, when you are Safe Mode, click About This Mac from the Apple menu.
The version is noted there.
If you couldn't boot in Safe Mode, try repairing the startup disk.
For v10.7 or later, restart the Mac while holding down the Command + R keys so you can access OS X Recoveryto repair the disk.
If the Mac has v10.6 installed, insert the install disc that came with the Mac.
Thank you for your response. It would have been very helpful if I hadn't kept working at it last evening!
In fact I had already tried zapping the PRAM before I posted on the board and that did not work.
However, soon after I posted, I was able to get booted in safe mode and made two separate backups.
diskutil did not find any problems with the startup disk, which could possibly be due to the fact that safe mode does a directory scan as part of the startup process.
I was then able to get it to do a full reboot, but VERY slowly, so something is still not working properly, even though I can now get past the blue screen.
There was another thread that suggested that this is a video card problem and that it has been successfully solved by deleting the extensions related to the video card, but I haven't tried that as yet.
Oh, and as for the OS version - since it is not actually my own computer, and since at the time I posted I wasn't able to get it booted, I had no way to know what OS X version it was running. I thought it was 10.6 but in fact when I did get it booted, it turned out to be 10.5.8
The last thing that you mention is to "insert the install disk" which would normally have been my first step, but this is a Macbook Air... No disk drive. And no way to boot in target disk mode to access the data.
blank blue screen on macbook air
