MacBook spinning gear on startup

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Hello,

I know there are a million threads similar to this one, but none I have read that answers my problem.

I have a Macbook 4,1 (early 2008), which stopped booting at the spinning gear. It would get into Safemode okay and I tried all the usual stuff (PRAM reset, SMC reset, etc, etc). I took it to an apple store who said I needed a new hard drive and to reinstall the OS.

So, I bought a new hard drive and a copy of Snow Leopard (had been using Leopard before). To begin with I kept getting to the spinning gear, but after a few attempts I got to the installation and it installed okay.

However, it still stuck at the spinning gear and Apple logo and could only be booted in safe mode. The next part of installation went nearly through to the end, but then it froze up and I had to shut down by holding the power key.

I got back into safemode and did a system update, but this froze when restarting the computer.

Now the laptop will not boot normally, in safemode of even to the installation DVD.

Can anyone help or suggest anything?


Thanks in advance.
 
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Boot the laptop into verbose mode,

As soon as you press the power button press and hold command and v at the same time. Release when you see txt on the screen.

This screen will run lines of txt until it gets to the spot it is freezing up on. Once it stops doing anything get a camera and try to take a good clear picture of the screen and post it up on here for others to take a look at.

The last few lines of the txt where it freezes is gonna tell a lot about what the computer is loading at the time it gets stuck .
 
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Thanks for your reply.

Image is below.

IMAG0200.jpg
 
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Im leaning toward a ram problem . Try to remove your ram and reseat it back in the machine and see if this solves your issue.
 
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I took the RAM out and cleaned the dust off. Then one boot it was a black screen and no start up tone.

I've removed one of the modules and it boots up as far as the spinning gear and gets stuck again :(

Definitely one bad module, as it doesn't boot up at all with just this plugged in.

Verbose mode shows it still stops where it did before.


Any more ideas?
 
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When you did the install of the OSx onto the new drive did you create a partition on the drive and format it . Also do you have any other things pluged into the unit ie usb drives , eithernet cables ?
Did you do any kind of back up after the install?

Try to run hardware test from the snowleapard disk.
 
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It was a new disk so I had to format it (extended journaled).

Nothing else is plugged in.

No backup was made. No time. It went wrong instantly.

I can't get into the AHT. I've tried pressing D, D + cmd and D + option and it just loads normally.
 
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While doing the pram nvram reset are you letting it do a complete 3 chimes?
Also if one of the ram modules were bad and you removed it try to do the reset again .
 
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I've put the old (original) HDD back in and started it up in verbose mode.

It gets a couple of lines after my previous picture.

fRegisters at 0x232cc000
[HCIController][configurePM] power parent ready after 1 tries
GFX0: match category IOFramebuffer exists


Any other ideas?
 
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Your Mac's Specs
Silver M1 iMac 512/16/8/8 macOS 11.6
Boot from the Leopard disc that came with the computer and run Apple Hardware Test. Not good and your diagnosis could well be right. No spills in the last month or two?
 
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I can't find the disc that came with it.

I've got it in safe mode now. It presented me with the original installation thingy. I'm doing a software update now.

Is there anything else I should do? Disk permissions or summit?

oh. And no spills!
 
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Hi again!

I managed to get everything going again, but now I'm back to where I started. I reupgraded it to Snow Leopard and everything was fine.

Watching a DVD on Friday night and it all went downhill from there. The spinning gear gets stuck when booting from the HDD, the DVD and when trying to boot into Safe Mode.

I repaired the HDD with MacDrive on my PC, but no luck.
 

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