MacBook Stalling On Startup

Hi folks. I've been trying to troubleshoot my wife's laptop and I came across this site and was hoping to use your knowledge to assist me.

My wife's got a macbook and the other day I started it up, as usual. Only this time something different happened. I get to the blue "Mac OS X" load screen like normal. You know, where you see the blue progress bar and it states that it is "Starting Mac OS X..."?

Well, the bar fills all the way and then... nothing. I can move the cursor on the page, but it just kinda "hangs" in the "starting..." section. I've let this bad boy sit there and load for almost 30 minutes at the longest sitting.

I'm not entirely sure what to do and I hope that you guys might have an idea or two to remedy this. Thanks in advance!

Give these a try first.
Resolve startup issues and perform disk maintenance with Disk Utility and fsck

Thanks for the link. I was unable to boot into safe mode so I went for the single-user mode. I performed the fsck as indicated and I received the "volume XXX appears to be ok". I then typed "reboot" and waited.

... and waited some more. Now it's back to the previous "Mac OS X" screen I stated before. I'll sit on it for a bit in hopes that something different happens, but I'm not holding my breath.


Edit: I've been staring at the "Mac OS X" screen for about a half an hour now. I don't think that my previous troubleshooting had any impact. Any further suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

I decided to go ahead and attempt a re-install of the OS. I loaded the OS X Install Disc 1 into the drive and rebooted the computer. I then held down the "C" key as the Macbook booted, attempting to read from disc first.

It goes through the process of reading the disc, then spits the disc out and gives me the "question mark folder" icon about 3 times before returning to the "normal" loading screen. From there I'm back to the now-familiar Mac OS X loading screen.

Suggestions?

GabeBrahe said:

I decided to go ahead and attempt a re-install of the OS. I loaded the OS X Install Disc 1 into the drive and rebooted the computer. I then held down the "C" key as the Macbook booted, attempting to read from disc first.

It goes through the process of reading the disc, then spits the disc out and gives me the "question mark folder" icon about 3 times before returning to the "normal" loading screen. From there I'm back to the now-familiar Mac OS X loading screen.

Suggestions?

Click to expand...

Did you try an Archive and install or Erase and install? It sounds as if something may be wrong with the HDD.

Some info for the flashing ?
A flashing question mark appears when you start your Mac

Try checking the SMART status of the HDD. If it says Verified, it should be OK. I would try the Erase and install, with the "zero" option. It could have some bad sectors on the HDD.

You can also try the Apple Hardware test.