Q: White MacBook: Why aren't my ports working?
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Apr 14, 2014 3:20 PMby Trane Francks,There is a slim chance that there is a permissions and/or disk issue that is causing the USB ports to not work at the OS level (rather than the hardware level). Try booting to the recovery partition (hold Cmd-R at the startup tone) and then go into Disk Utility. Repair the boot volume and repair the permissions. After you reboot, things will hopefully work correctly again.
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Apr 14, 2014 4:58 PMby Trane Francks,SaarahObaid wrote:
Hi there, I tried booting to the recovery partition. However, the Recovery HD drive is missing. Only MacBook HD pops up.
Okay. Missing recovery partitions are a known issue on certain systems. You should be able to boot to single-user mode and repair the disk that way:
- Press and hold Cmd-S at the startup tone;
- When the system has finished booting to the console, enter the command 'fsck -fy' and press the enter key;
- After the file system repair has completed (hopefully successfully), type 'reboot' and press the enter key.
Once the system has booted back to its usual login screen, login normally and then repair permissions for the volume from within Disk Utility.
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Apr 14, 2014 8:08 PMby SaarahObaid,The system repair did complete. it said it appeared to be ok. I repaired the permissions, waited for it to complete. Once it finished I restarted the laptop. The same thing happened. It would work for a tiny bit then just stop. After it rebooted I unplugged it and plugged it back in and it still doesn't recognize it. The cord for my external battery case is charging fine like before. Also, the iPhone cord still works when plugged into the wall.
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Apr 14, 2014 8:33 PMby Trane Francks,Well, dang. Things are getting a bit more complicated. If you have an expendable external drive of any type that is 16GB or larger, you can create an external recovery HDD. See: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5911. It's possible from Recovery Mode to select which startup drive to boot. If you boot to your normal startup drive from Recovery Mode and your USB ports are working correctly, it's likely indicative that key parts of OS X on your boot drive are somehow unwell and that a reinstallation is necessary.
If you have Time Machine backups of your system, I'd probably be inclined to do a full refresh of the system:
- From the App Store / Purchases, download Lion again, but do not run the installer;
- Download DiskMaker X from http://liondiskmaker.com/ and use it to create bootable USB install drive (requires an 8 GB USB drive) or a DVD;
- Make sure the Time Machine backup is up-to-date and accessible;
- Shutdown your MacBook, turn on via the power button and press/hold the Option key at the startup tone;
- Choose the USB or DVD drive to boot and install Lion;
- Once Lion's base install has completed, it will prompt you to continue to login or migrate a user profile from a Time Machine backup - migrate your user account(s).
That's the worst case scenario. Before you go jumping through all those hoops, however, you'd probably want to boot the system to your original install DVD to run the hardware diagnostics. If you run the short diags and nothing is found, letting the full diags run overnight might turn up a hardware problem. If so, you've got the unfortunate problem that Apple no longer supports these systems outside of California.
If full diags indicate no detectable problems and the aforementioned booting from Recovery Mode into your usual boot disk gets your USB working again, the reinstall seems to be the best bet.
Best of luck with it!
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Apr 14, 2014 11:03 PMby SaarahObaid,Hi there,
Turns out I don't have the discs. I got this laptop from eBay and it did not come with the discs. If you say that I'll have a better chance getting them working again with the discs. I'll have to negotiate with my mother haha. But I appreciate the time you took to help. Thanks in advance!
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Apr 14, 2014 11:53 PMby Trane Francks,Hi.
If you don't have the original install discs, you'll need to purchase them from Apple. The diagnostic routines for each MacBook are very specific and the install discs need to exactly match the model of Mac. If Apple can't sell them to you (2006 models are no longer supported), you'll need to buy them from some online shop, such as ifixit.com. If you do need to go that route, you'll need to know the Model Identifier of your MacBook, which we can deal with should you need it later.
One other alternative is that if there is an authorized Apple repair centre in your area, they may be able to do diagnostics testing for you (probably for a fee).
Cheers,
trane
