I have a late 2006 MacBook that had randomly been shutting down and restarting, but now won't boot at all. When holding the power button to start up, I hear what I think would be it starting up, but it dies right there. The battery is fully charged, and stays plugged in most of the time anyways. How can I tell if it's my hard drive that is dead, or if it is something else?
MacBook, Mac OS X (10.7)
It had been working perfect before issues started, and now that I think about it I had had it in my backpack immediately previous to the issues starting. However I had completely shut it down before putting it in my bag.
Try starting it from another drive or from a recent installer DVD such as Snow Leopard. Then you can run Disk Utility to repair the drive.
Repair the Hard Drive
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, 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.
Can I do this with the installer disk from a USB thumb drive? My disk drive is broken. Also, it's running lion. Can I do the same thing with the lion installer?
Yes, if you have a bootable installer flash drive. If your 10.7 installation is a full one then start from the Recovery HD:
Boot to the Recovery HD:
Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the COMMAND and R keys until the menu screen appears. Alternatively, restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the OPTION key until the boot manager screen appears. Select the Recovery HD and click on the downward pointing arrow button.
My macbook doesnt even chime. Could I be having a problem with my logic board?
I'd say you have a major hardware problem, yes.
Hard drive failure symptoms?
