Screen of death 2010 White Macbook new logicboard

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A few months ago my 2010 White Macbook (A1342) would no longer boot up but would give me the spinning circle and then give me the grey screen of death. I replaced the logic board with another one. When I tested it it actually booted up into the OS but I had no keyboard or trackpad control. The hard drive was one from a different Macbook so the I thought maybe it was just freaking out from loading into an OS that had been transplanted from a different computer. So, I took the hard drive out, formatted it, put in back in and tried to install Snow Leopard from a flash drive.

When I pressed the alt key I did get the option to load the flash drive which I did but then the grey screen of death came up again. I tried again, same thing. I tried without the flash drive thinking I would get the folder with the question mark on the screen but the grey screen of death.

The hard drive is different, the logic board is different, the ram is upgraded (2x4), new battery, even the new hard drive connect cable.

Would could be causing this constant screen of death? How come I could boot into the OS the first time, after replacing the logic board, but after that I just keep getting he screen of death again just like before changing the logic board?Is it possible that the 2nd logicboard was fried by whatever the try source of the issue is?

The folks at the genuis bar refuse to look at it, I am perplexed as to how to figure out what the issue is?. Please note that none of the keyboard commands seems to work apart from the alt key.

Does anyone have any advice on how to go about diagnosing what the issue is? I have a 2012 Macbook pro which is what I am using now, but I want to give the 2010 White Macbook to my niece.

Thanks for the help.

MacBook, Mac OS X (10.6.3)
 

chscag

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Welcome to the Mac Forums.

The first question I have for you is: Why did you change out the logic board? What made you think it was defective? The symptom you described your MacBook was doing sounds very much like a defective hard drive. And since your model MacBook is not known for having problems with graphics or otherwise, I wonder again why you changed out the logic board? It seems that all the troubles you're having right now are self generated. And you're correct about the genius bar refusing to look at it. You might be able to find an independent Mac repair service who will look at it for you, but it's very likely they'll charge you a service fee.
 
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I changed the logic board because so much of what I read indicated that the issue might be the logic board especially in light of my Macbook running hotter and hotter over the preceding months.

My problem is the same as before I changed the logic board. It's not as it I've added to my woes. Nothing has changed. The hard drive isn't faulty because it came from another Macbook, and was running fine. Tried two different hard drives in total with no change to the screen of death, these hard drives are healthy.
 

chscag

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Well, I'm still not understanding then why you changed out the logic board in the first place? As I stated in my other reply, the symptoms you described were that of a failing hard drive. Did you test the original hard drive to see if it was failing? It sounds like all you did was a lot of swapping of components.

Don't get me wrong here... not trying to belittle you or anything of the sort. I've been doing electronic repairs for 30 years and I know that sometimes doing a bunch of component swapping may fix the problem, but I also know from experience that it can lead to disaster.
 
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It's not I suddenly decided to swap everything. Over time (over 5 years), I decided to upgraded my ram, so I did. Later, I decided to put in a larger hard drive, so I did. Then, my battery was getting old, so I bought a new battery. Finally, my laptop was running hotter and hotter until one day, it would no longer boot up, so after reading many articles on this and other forums, it seemed to be the logic board, so I changed it.

I don't see how it can be a faulty hard drive when these hard drives work beautifully in other Macbook/Macbook Pros. If you could explain further, that would be great.
 

chscag

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I said the symptoms sounded like it may have been the hard drive. If the original hard drive checked out OK in another machine, then it's probably OK. This is the first time you mentioned about overheating. We have had several folks re-do the heat sinks around the CPU with Arctic Silver and clean or install a new fan. It's very unusual for a logic board needing to be changed out in a MacBook. If you had a MacBook Pro, I would expect logic board problems just based on our other members experiences.

Some advice: Your 2010 MacBook is not worth very much even if it was in very good condition. You certainly don't want to spend a whole lot of dollars trying to repair it.
 
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Thanks for your advice. I'd still like to figure out what's wrong. Something tells me it's something simple, just have to find it. No one has any advice as to what it might be?
 

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