Intel Macbook no longer recognizes Tiger Startup Disk

[ovelky]

A few months ago, while performing routine maintenance, my Diskwarrior 4.3 (Rev. 1102 March 2011) began stalling halfway through the Directory Rebuild cycle. The DVD drive on my 13" Macbook (May 2006) would just sit and spin with no response. Thinking the DVD drive was going bad, I had a new DVD drive professionally installed. Diskwarrior began working properly again. But while performing maintenance yesterday Diskwarrior began acting up again (sitting and spinning as before.)

I put in my OSX 10.5.8 Tiger install disk, to attempt a Repair, but it would not startup the computer. The install disk does appear on the desktop when inserted, but restarting with the "C" key at startup does not work. Neither does holding down the Option key to select the install disk. Option only shows the Macintosh HD disk but does not show the install disk as an option.

I put the Macbook in target disk mode and was able to run the original Tiger install disk (Utilities/Verify/Repair) however, OSX Disk Repair reported "No Repair Necessary". I was also able to run Diskwarrior complete with the Macbook in target disk mode.

Drive Genius 3 will start up from the "C" key and run okay. I used the "Verify/Repair/Rebuild" function with this disk and it reported that the Macintosh HD is okay with no problems. (F.Y.I., this Macbook also had a newer, larger hard-drive installed last year.)

I'm stuck. Can someone help me please?

 

[chscag]

Welcome to the Mac Forums.

Your optical drive has quit again. Spending money on replacing the optical drive in an older machine is futile. Purchase an inexpensive tray loading external drive and use it instead. It'll easily outlast several slot loading internal drives.

 

[ovelky]

Are you saying you think the new optical drive is faulty? Then, why would the install disk show up on the desktop, but not be recognized as a valid option on startup (holding the option key to select a startup drive)? And the optical drive DOES work on Drive Genius, too. That's what's confusing me.

 

[chscag]

It does appear your optical drive is having problems if both the Disk Warrior and the OS X Tiger disks refuse to work. Target disk mode just proves that the optical drive in the host machine is working and the disks themselves are OK.

Why the Drive Genius disk works in the MacBook while the others won't is unknown. The only conclusion I can come to is that the optical drive in the MacBook is either faulty or intermittent. It's always possible it can be something else, however.

 

[harryb2448]

Can even be dodgy IDE/power cables. Suggest taking it up with the repairer pronto.

 

[ovelky]

Thanks for the replies, chscag and harryb2448. I know I need new computers, but the economy being what it is, I was hoping I could at least get the Macbook to last a little longer, because the immediate need is to replace my G5 Tower PPC which is no longer supported. I am going to get back in touch with my repairer about the optical disk issue and I'm going to upgrade the Macbook to Snow Leopard (I have a lot of expensive graphic design apps that are Rosetta based.) Again, thanks for your input.