Problems with an old Macbook

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So I was given an old Macbook today by a friend who thought it was broken and if I could fix it then good for me and I keep it.

At first I plugged the charger in and no lights were present on the charger on the battery and it wouldn't turn on. After 10-15minutes the light was present on both the charger and the battery but the Mac would still not turn on.

After a further 10minutes the Mac would turn on, however it toke a very long time to load and crashed when it booted into the operating system, after booting it a second time all was working fine, apart from the fact if the Mac wasn't kept active it would turn off instead of sleep.

So I wanted to clean up the Mac and put a fresh operating system on it, originally I tried using a install cd from a few year old Macbook Pro, which I had to use an external dvd drive and it would not install saying it can't be installed on the computer, after which I got a regular Macbook install cd and tried that with no luck still.

I tried booting up the Mac with the installation cd and it said it can't install, at which point I went into the Disk utility and earsed the drive and began to zero it as well, unfortunately during the process of zeroing the computer appearingly just turned itself off (I'm suspecting when it goes into sleep or on the screensaver something is going wrong).

So now after turning the computer off and trying to start it again the computer will never get past the Apple icon when it's trying to load. When I turn it on it goes to a flashing folder icon and when I connect the external dvd drive it switches to the Apple icon. Unfortunately the computer just keeps turning off.
The computer however doesn't behave like it's been turned off because when you press the power button again nothing happens (if you close the Macbook you see the light in the right corner), you have to hold it breifly and then press it again for it to start up again. Sometimes when you turn it on nothing happens (but again I have to hold the power to completely turn it off), sometimes it makes it to the flashing folder icon and sometimes to the Apple icon.

I've read about people having similar issues with the sleep but not found a solution.

I'm at no loss if I can't fix it as it was free, however I don't have a computer of my own and it would be nice if someone can help me.
 

pigoo3

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So I wanted to clean up the Mac and put a fresh operating system on it, originally I tried using a install cd from a few year old Macbook Pro, which I had to use an external dvd drive and it would not install saying it can't be installed on the computer, after which I got a regular Macbook install cd and tried that with no luck still.

If these install disks were/are the "gray-colored" type...they will not work...they are model specific.

For starters...you need a retail install DVD..like this:

Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard - Apple Store (U.S.)

Once you have a proper OS install DVD...then you can start to troubleshoot this computers problems with hopefully a bit more success.:)

- Nick
 
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It's possible I can get the original cds that came with the computer but doubtful. Right now the problems more then just the cd.

One thing I should add is that when you try to start the computer sometimes the hard drive doesn't make any noise and this is the times when it's unsuccessful in starting but somtimes it makes a noise and that is when it at least makes it to the flashing folder icon screen.
 

pigoo3

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It's possible I can get the original cds that came with the computer but doubtful. Right now the problems more then just the cd.

One thing I should add is that when you try to start the computer sometimes the hard drive doesn't make any noise and this is the times when it's unsuccessful in starting but somtimes it makes a noise and that is when it at least makes it to the flashing folder icon screen.

Yes...it does sound like this computer could possibly have bigger problems...but you can't troubleshoot further without a proper OS install disk.

Why?...the flashing "?" means that the hard drive doesn't have a bootable OS on it. Or the flashing "?" could mean that the HD is "dead" and needs to be replaced.

In either case you need a proper OS install disk to:

- troubleshoot further
- to install the OS on a new HD if it needs one
- to try to boot the computer "as is" from the optical drive

- Nick
 
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Power Mac G4, 1GHz Dual Processor, running on 768 mb of Ram. Using Power PC friendly OS 10.5.8
Are your discs for Intel specific machines? The MacBook you're attempting to repair may be an older generation model, or a newer machine that's non Intel.

I have a first gen MacBook Pro 17 inch, that's in desprite need of repair. It to has a possible Hard Drive issue. When I got it in 2006 for my High School graduation, the box stated it came with a 120GB hard drive, yet when I started it, the computer recongnized the unformatted source as having a 80 GB cap. So I don't know what happened in the installation process.

Do you happen to know what version the MacBook is?
 
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It's a 13inch Macbook that is treated by Apple as a vintage model, between 2005-2007.

When I last booted it up I'm pretty sure it had a 1.83GHz duo core intel processor, not 100% sure but I'm confident it was that and it had 2Gb RAM.

I'm also quite strongly inclined to believe it's a hard drive issue so I will today when I have time physical take a look at it to see if there is any ovbious damage. I don't know if the issues go beyond the hard drive and I wouldn't be surprised if they did.

It's just really sad that I actually managed to boot into the computer yesterday little problems and now after trying to wipe the hard drive I can hardly get it to turn on.
 

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