Macbook Unibody Will not boot

[macsmakenosense]

Hello,

Any help with my first mac much appreciated.

I have a mac unibody, A1342 model I believe. It will not boot, when you try to boot you get:

a white screen, then a chime, (continued white screen &) a grey apple and circular loading icon, a grey loading bar below that that loads fully, the bar restarts, abrupt blackness and the sound of fans etc. having their power abruptly shut off

I've looked up various mac shortcuts (my favorite is the 'option key', it says 'Alt' on it but apparently the Apple hieroglyphics on it translate to option)

The R key press gives me the option for 'macintosh HD' but when select the above happens again (white apple screen)

The n key combinations flashes a globe for a few seconds

C key didn't seem to do anything

holding the option key just offered me the macintosh HD again which didn't help

cmd+D brought up a hardware test if I remember rightly, an extended hardware test found no faults

I've tried inserting an OS X disk someone loaned me and trying the key combination for booting to DVD/USB that but it didn't even seem to see the disk

Oh and I've reset NVRAM, PRAM and everything else the internet generically pointed me at.

Any help much appreciated

Thanks

 

[pigoo3]

Easy answer…the hard drive is probably dead.

I've tried inserting an OS X disk someone loaned me and trying the key combination for booting to DVD/USB that but it didn't even seem to see the disk.

Not sure what's up here. What sort of disk was it? Be descriptive:

- what color was the disk?
- what OS version?
- any photos of animals on it?

* Nick

 

[macsmakenosense]

Thanks for the lightning response!

Easy answer…the hard drive is probably dead.



Not sure what's up here. What sort of disk was it? Be descriptive:

- what color was the disk?
- what OS version?
- any photos of animals on it?

* Nick

Cheers it had crossed my mind but I was optimistic it wasn't the case as it passed the hardware test (take it the hardware test doesn't stretch to that?) and it didn't seem to detect any DVD / USB drive.



RE. the disk it was burned by them I think, they wrote 'Mac OSX Lion' on it, I'm doubting it's authenticity but would have expected the machine to show some signs of at least trying to boot or acknowledging a disk.

Can I just pop a windows HD in it and see if it runs windows/behaves differently to how it has been?

 

[pigoo3]

If you have access to an external hard drive with a compatible OS on it. You could try booting from it to see if the computer operates.

That "Lion" disk. Lion never came on disk…so since it is "homemade"…there's always the possibility it wasn't "made" properly.

- Nick

 

[harryb2448]

And helps if you provide operating system. OS X.7 and later, try booting into Recovery by booting and holding Command + R. If any joy, go into utilities in the Menu Bar and run repair Disk and see what is report, however alas I feel Nick's hard drive diagnosis is spot on.

 

[macsmakenosense]

Thanks, what do you mean by compatible OS ?

And helps if you provide operating system. OS X.7 and later, try booting into Recovery by booting and holding Command + R. If any joy, go into utilities in the Menu Bar and run repair Disk and see what is report, however alas I feel Nick's hard drive diagnosis is spot on.

It just said Lion on the disk that was supplied, the Mac has never booted and it doesn't appear to offer up the version on booting if you meant what was on the Mac

There's no menu bar visible.

 

[pigoo3]

Thanks, what do you mean by compatible OS ?

Compatible OS means any OS version that this computer is capable of running.

- Nick