macbook logic board bad

PLEASE READ: i am 17 years old, and my macbook logic board is bad. i bought it refurbished without a warranty, and the guy who sold it to me is a real jerk. i do a lot of music (recording and editing) and i do a ton of video. i am the video guy at my church, i do video at my school, i do video at my job, and i am also looking into the fsu film school. as you can tell, i really use my macbook a lot, which is why i really need a new one! right now, i can not turn it on, and when i can turn it on, it only stays on for about a minute, then tries to start up again but cant. i want to pull all my files off of it, and to an external hardrive, but it wont stay on long enough for me to do that, so i dont know what to do there. ?? so, with that said, i need help! i only have a few hundred dollars saved up for a new one. everyone on this site seems pretty helpful and trustworthy, and i hope thats true! can anyone help me, maybe someone who will buy my macbook parts, sell me a used macbook, etc.? PLEASE?!

PLEASE READ: i am 17 years old, and my macbook logic board is bad. i bought it refurbished without a warranty, and the guy who sold it to me is a real jerk. i do a lot of music (recording and editing) and i do a ton of video. i am the video guy at my church, i do video at my school, i do video at my job, and i am also looking into the fsu film school. plus, i am going to be working for a camp doing video soon. as you can tell, i really use my macbook a lot, which is why i really need a new one! right now, i can not turn it on, and when i can turn it on, it only stays on for about a minute, then tries to start up again but cant. i want to pull all my files off of it, and to an external hardrive, but it wont stay on long enough for me to do that, so i dont know what to do there. ?? so, with that said, i need help! i only have a few hundred dollars saved up for a new one. everyone on this site seems pretty helpful and trustworthy, and i hope thats true! can anyone help me, maybe someone who will buy my macbook parts, sell me a used macbook, etc.? PLEASE?!

Well if the logic board is shot, then there is still hope for you yet. Just pull the HDD and put in an external enclosure and hook it up to another Mac.

I would recommend selling it for parts. Take the proceeds, save up some money and buy a used or refurbished one. Buying things from forums is an easy way to get scammed as there is absolutely no authentication for the seller (and for buyer, for that matter - particularly if you haven't been a member of a forum for very long).

If your logic board is dead, not much you can do with the machine itself. And since you said you bought it used from a guy with no warranty, it's going to cost you a pretty penny to get Apple to fix it.

All your files are still safe on your hard drive however, so if you have another Mac, or access to another Mac, you can pull your hard drive out, put it in an enclosure, and connect it the other Mac.

Then just navigate to your files and copy to an external drive, USB drive, burn to disc, etc., and when your done just unmount/eject your drive.

That's the only way I see of getting to your files since the machine doesn't stay on long enough for you to do so any other way.

I agree with empty_noise. You should remove your HD from your MB and put it in an external enclosure so you can remove the files. If you only have access to Windows machines, you can download something like HFSExplorer which will let you read HFS drives.

How do you know it's your logic board? It could be the HD. Have you tried booting from the OS X disk?

NOTE: Merged crossposts

chrismac said:

How do you know it's your logic board? It could be the HD. Have you tried booting from the OS X disk?

Click to expand...

Quite right, who diagnosed the logic board as defective? I have seen many times a corrupted or defective hard drive causing a mac to switch off just after powering on, had another on Friday.

I am having same problem on a G3 (700mhz) shutting down after startup hit the link from vansmith and am moving all that is on my hd to my winXP computer to save until I get it fixed.