My macbook a1181 won't load past white screen.

I have just bought a macbook a1181 a few days ago, but yesterday it decided not to load past a white-ish screen with an apple emblem and a loading gear. I have tried safe boot, booting from install cd. But I don't want to open it up because I don't know what is what inside. Nothing has worked. Booting with cd had almost worked but at a certain point it froze every time. Is there anything I can do or someone can walk me through opening it up?

First things I would try are an SMC and PRAM reset:

- Intel-based Macs: Resetting the System Management Controller (SMC)
- About NVRAM and PRAM

* Nick