Macbook 13" A1181 won't start up

I searched, but can't find anything.

I have a 2008 13" A1181 2.1GHz Macbook. When I press the power button, the power light goes on and I hear it start to spin up, but about 5 seconds later it turns off, then the power light comes back on and nothing else happens.

Does anyone know what these symptoms could mean?

Thanks very much!

Rich

Do you have your recovery install DVD? You didn't give us any other information? Anyway, try booting your MacBook with the DVD and then verify the hard drive using Disk Utility from the DVD.

Ok, I'll give that a try tomorrow when I can get the disc and let you know.

Just tried inserting a disk to see if it would physically load one and it won't, so there's no way to run the utility.

ExplicitD said:

Just tried inserting a disk to see if it would physically load one and it won't, so there's no way to run the utility.

Click to expand...

You need to hold "C" while booting up the laptop.

ChrisMan287 said:

You need to hold "C" while booting up the laptop.

Click to expand...

No luck, it just keeps doing the same thing as in my original post no matter what I do. I've tried resetting SMC, PRAM, booting to safe mode, booting to disk, with and without the battery.

Could it be bad RAM? I've also tried removing and reseating them, swapping them around and trying to boot with only one, etc. But still the same thing no matter what I do.

symptoms of a bad ram stick
include no video at start up sounds like it wants to start fans spin up check dvd then no display and goes to sleep.
This could be a bad ram stick , a bad socket or one of the ram sticks in not fully inserted into the slot.
Investigate ram . Remove one and try if a no start occurs remove other and replace with the other one. Try this in both slots . If it still refuses to output video could be that the graphics card is shot.