Macbook boots to white screen

I am a small computer store and work on PCs, have never worked on Macs as there's always been a mac dealer in town. Well he closed up and moved away, so now I'm starting to have people bring their macs to me and I have now clue about them, all that i can relate to is pcs, so I guess I'd better start learning. I had a customer bring a macbook that when you turn it on, You get the startup sound, but just a white screen. I tried option-p-r, ( Ithink that was it) to no avail. Nothing changes whatsoever. I pulled the hard drive and hooked it up to 2 different windows machines, and the device manager won't even recognize it, so I'm assuming her hard drive went bad. But booting it without a hard drive still gives me the same white screen and the startup sound. Is that right? I figured that without a hard drive it would give me some other error. What do I try next? Or whats going on with this thing?
Thanks in Advance!
Terry

G'day and welcome to the forums.

Yes what you are seeing is a failed hard drive. Try any 2.5" hard drive but suggest replacing the SATA cable when you pop another drive in. You will then need an operating system to format the drive Mac OS Extended (Journaled) prior to running Installer.

Ask the customer for the DVD if it is Snow Leopard OS X.6, or if later you will have to do an Internet Recovery.

Thank you Harry! So I pulled out my old macbook and I'll use it format the new hard drive. (I'm assuming I can do that if I hook it up to a usb adapter). How do I tell for sure what version of os x was on the laptop originally? And won't the snow leopard format the hard drive to a mac partition when i go to install it? Is there a model number somewhere that I can reference as far as the op system for this particular macbook? I do have snow leopard on a flash drive here when i updated my laptop. I don't have a clue how the licensing works with os x, I know with windows its the bs product key thing.

Licensing for Apple computers is simple: OS X on disk - One install on one computer. That means Tiger, Leopard, and Snow Leopard can only be installed on one machine.

OS X purchased from the Mac App Store (download only) can be installed on those computers you own. So if you have 3 Macs at home, you can install Lion or Mountain Lion on all three but only purchase it one time direct from Apple. There is no activation or product ID verification as there is with Microsoft operating systems and Office suites.

Apple trusts you will do the right thing. As a repair shop, it's important you maintain that trust for yourself and your customers.

"Apple trusts you will do the right thing. As a repair shop, it's important you maintain that trust for yourself and your customers.": 15 years in business now, have seen about half dozen of them come and go, I do have the trust of my customers and have never had any issues with any software company. So we're good there. How do I tell what vestion of OS X came on the Macbook I'm working on?

OK, great.

To find out about which version of OS X a machine is running and also system information do this:

Click on the Apple icon in the upper left corner of the screen. Select "About This Mac". Then select more info.

But in the case of the OP, the machine won't boot, so I don't think he can't do that. At this point, the OP is better off asking the owner what version was installed and to bring in the install CDs, or come in to the shop to download the recovery for him, if the system was purchased through the Mac App Store.

I think this machine was bought 2nd hand from another party when they upgraded. They don't have any disks for the machine. So whats my next option?

Do you know what model it is? If it can support Snow Leopard, you could get a new installation CD. I don't know if Apple is still selling them or not, but you may find one on eBay. Make sure it's a generic version, not the CDs that come with any specific machine. Here is a link that shows the hardware requirements for SL: Mac OS X v10.6 Snow Leopard - Technical Specifications

I have snow leopard on a flash drive, that will work won't it? And how do i get the system to boot to the flash drive instead of looking for the hard drive? In addition, will the installation format the drive to a mac partition or do i have to format it first with another mac?

as chacag said

chscag said:

Licensing for Apple computers is simple: OS X on disk - One install on one computer. That means Tiger, Leopard, and Snow Leopard can only be installed on one machine.

OS X purchased from the Mac App Store (download only) can be installed on those computers you own. So if you have 3 Macs at home, you can install Lion or Mountain Lion on all three but only purchase it one time direct from Apple. There is no activation or product ID verification as there is with Microsoft operating systems and Office suites.

Apple trusts you will do the right thing. As a repair shop, it's important you maintain that trust for yourself and your customers.

Click to expand...

That means that the SL you have on a usb drive should NOT be installed on the customer's machine because it violates the licensing agreement with Apple. What you could try is that if the USB drive is bootable, to boot from the USB drive, then go to the Mac App Store and buy ML, if the Macbook supports it, and install that system to the new drive. But installing from the USB stick is a no-no because of the licensing.

Alternatively, Search the net to see what OS the Macbook will take and ask the customer to buy the discs from Apple and get you to install the OS.

Ok, I Understand, so basically, since the customer doesn't have the disks, the customer will have to purchase an op system from the App store. I was looking at this: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/os-...WWW-NAUS-ITUHOME-NEWAPPLICATIONS&ign-mpt=uo=2 , but it says: Requirements: OS X 10.6.8 or later, so I'm assuming this is an upgrade. but can it be installed as full version, and not an upgrade?

The challenge is that Apple changed the way it distributes the OS with Mountain Lion. ML is a full install, but you have to be able to get to the Mac App Store online to purchase and download it. And to do that requires at least Snow Leopard. So it's a two step process for you or the customer...buy SL, then upgrade to ML online. But if all the customer wants is SL, or if that's all that the machine supports, you stop at SL.

We're all "assuming" this is an Intel Mac (from '06 forward) and not a PPC machine.

If the machine originally came with 10.7 or 10.8, once you have a new drive in place try booting with the command and R keys held down. This will boot the machine to an Internet Recovery option which will allow it to download and install the original OS. There are plenty of tutorials online.

If that option does not boot the machine to Internet Recovery, then it shipped with an earlier version of OS X and purchasing 10.6 - Snow Leopard - direct from Apple online for $20 is the way to go and update it to 10.6.8 via the combo update (google will find that also).

From there, I'd hand the machine back to the customer. Once they have their Apple ID added to the machine, they'll be able to re-download and install any later version of OS X they may have already purchased.

As usual, Tom offers the definitive word on this topic.

ok, the customer did have the disk and has brought it to me, Still couldn't get it to boot from the disk till i did Option-Command-P-R. After struggling with figuring out how to partition the drive (remember, I'm new, I mean really new to mac), I got it thru the install process. when it rebooted, the screen was black, playing some sort of music in the background. So i rebooted and did the option-command-P-R again, and it rebooted again, and i had the screen that says welcome in different languages. It will go like that for about 30 seconds, then the screen goes black. and if i hit the keyboard, I can hear the music again for a few seconds then it stops, screen still doesn't come up. is there some kind of diagnostic startup i should be doing?