Macbook 2007 cannot boot

I have install disc for Snow Leopard handy. Put it in DVD slot, shut down power up, hold down "C" key . Nothing but grey screen. Repeat restart and hold down OPTION key. Nothing but grey. Swapped HD into another laptop, same issues. Placed working HD into the orig laptop and it works. This leads me to believe HD is issue . Hoping to boot from Intsall Disc --> Utilities --> Disk Repair. But, will not boot from install disc .What to do ?

Probably because the Snow Leopard install DVD you're using is not for your 2007 MacBook which likely came pre-installed with Tiger. Unless the Snow Leopard DVD is a retail version (White Snow Leopard on the disk cover) it will not work.

Yes, the Install Disc is a 5 installation family pack of which 3 were used. One of the 3 was the upgrade from Tiger to Snow Leopard . The laptop has been running 10.6.8 for several years .

Internet says simply power up with C key or if that does not work , power up with OPTION key. Neither works. Just grey screen.

Box reads : Mac OSX Snow Leopard Family Pack.
There is a white background with the head of a snow leopard peering at you.
Is that a " retail version " or something less.

In the past , it was used to do a full install of snow leopard on another laptop that had crashed . That laptop came with Tiger also .
I hope/ believe that the disc is appropriate.
it shows up in a 2nd laptop as an option when I inserted it in another Macbook.

Any chance it is an actual upgrade disc and not a full retail version Snow Leopard DVD? Also silver/grey system discs are extremely model specific.

Box reads : Mac OSX Snow Leopard Family Pack.
There is a white background with the head of a snow leopard peering at you.
Is that a " retail version " or something less.

Click to expand...

Yes, that's the boxed retail version. The only difference is that it includes 5 licenses for Snow Leopard. It should have worked to boot your 2007 MacBook.

You mentioned you placed a working hard drive into the 2007 MacBook. What version of OS X was on the working hard drive? And have you tried to boot the 2007 MacBook with the Snow Leopard disk and with no hard drive installed? It should be able to boot from the DVD even without a hard drive installed.

I let the 2007 Macbook run all night after rebooting and holding down C key.
This morning,7 hours later, the Macbook screen showed the " INSTALL MAC OSX " screen.

I went up to " Utilities" to attempt to run Repair Disc.
" Disk Utility" window appeared.
The HD did not appear in the left side pane of DISK UTILITY .
It does list the : Mac OSX Install DVD .

I repeated several times , still no hard drive appears in left pane.

Note: The laptop made several clicking noises from the area of the HD each time it tried to reboot .
The sound would repeat after several minutes waiting.
It seemed as if the laptop wanted to read the HD but a failure ( mechanical or software folks?) prevented this from happening. That is my speculation.

Because I could swap another Macbook HD 10.6.8 into the 2007 Macbook and it works, I feel that the 2007 laptop hardware is OK and that the issue is either corrupted files on the messed- up HD or the HD has failed and is not fixable.
Is it unrealistic to believe that DISK REPAIR would fix the messed-up HD ?
Would a reinstall of Snow Leopard override the problems that I am seeing on the HD; that is, corrupt files would be erased and clean files installed.
I have a Time Machine backup from 5 days ago .
I don't know whether to buy new HD or to try to reinstall on this HD .
Your guidance is much appreciated.

My plan was to run REPAIR DISK and hope all would be OK.

Any feedback?
What does the clicking noise indicate?

While exploring the next step, I stumbled upon a menu called CONTENTS which appeared to list the hardware .
I reached this step by :
Utilities->System Profiler-->Contents--> Hardware-->Serial-ATA.

When I clicked on each hardware item listed, it displayed the manufacturer and more details.

The menu listed in HARDWARE contents included 16 items , one of which was Serial-ATA. I clicked on Serial-ATA and the result was :

" There was an error while scanning for Serial- ATA devices".

I don't know the full implications of that message.
Perhaps the experts can comment.

As Bones used to say to Jim, "She's dead, Jim." The key to that diagnosis is the clicking. That comes, generally, from the actuator for the swing arm that moves the heads across the disk. The clicking is the pounding of the heads against the stops, which is a fatal sign. 99.9% of the time it is hardware, not software related. No cheap fix. The fault could be on the control board mounted on the disk drive, but as each drive is "tuned" to that board, even replacing the board is a doubtful thing. (Part of that "tuning" is the assurance that the heads accurately track the magnetic tracks on the disk. Every assembly is slightly different, so even if you changed the board, there is no guarantee that it would find the same track in the same physical location. If you know vinyl records, think about how hard it would be to put the stylus down in ONE particular groove on that record...the arm would have to fantastically calibrated to do that!) And obviously repairing the heads inside the sealed disc environment is not something you can do, as it requires a "clean room" and specialized tools to use, plus the right gases to put back in the environment, etc, etc, etc.

Bottom line: Get a new drive and restore from your backup. You DO have a backup, right?