Boot issue in OSX

J

jcmtex

Registered
Hi,
I recently purchased a used Macbook and as I've come to really love Apple again, I've recently experienced some distress in that it won't boot anymore. When I purchased it, it did not have the restore disks with it and I recently bought a copy of the OSX disk (10.6.?) from a local Apple Store. So here is what happens: Turn machine on and it goes to the blinking folder with the question mark. I put the disk in (btw, the internal optical drive doesn't seem to work so I'm using an external one plugged into the USB bus) reboot holding the option key down and...

The first time I did this, it came up to an icon to boot from the osX install disk which I did and the system sat there for three hours with the spinner on the screen. I decided that this was just a little too long to boot especially since it didn't access the DVD drive after about the first thirty minutes so I shut down and tried again. Now it won't even come up to the icon to boot from the DVD. Any suggestions? Did I lock up some setting that I can easily reset?

I should add that most of my experience is with various flavors of linux and my mac days were many moons ago in the days of PowerMacs (I loved my old 7100). Any help anyone can offer would be greatly appreciated. If I could just get to the disk utility, I think I could have my new favorite machine back up and running. Thanks in advance.
 
Remember installation of 10.6 requires 10.5 to on the computer. I am surprised that you were not alerted to this by your computer. Also remember you need an Intel Mac for 10.6.
 
Incorrect! - 10.6 does not require 10.5 to be previously installed. 10.6 will install to a completely blank hard drive.
 
It is an Intel Mac (only a couple of years old). I'm pretty sure it's a disk problem and if I could get it to boot from the CD, I could just run either the disk utility or fsck and probably fix it (seen similar problems on linux machines before). I'm trying to avoid a full wipe of the disk as well since I hadn't quite got Time Machine to see my home NAS box yet. By the way, the CD I'm using is a copy of OS X that I bought a couple of weeks ago from an Apple Store in order to go in and change passwords, etc on the machine and personalize it to me from the previous owner, so it is the latest and greatest. That worked perfectly. I've had the machine for about three months and it has been a flawless performer with the exception of the internal DVD drive being spotty (I'm doing this off of an external USB DVD drive).

Could my hard shutdown (when it locked up on me) have fried a setting? I would think that it wouldn't matter so much when booting from the CD? Like I said, it came up once with the option to boot from there, but now it just hangs. Any suggestions would be helpful, I miss my favorite computer.

Thanks in advance.
 
Try a PRAM reset, and try again to boot to the 10.6 installer.

Shut down.
Unplug the power cord (and all other cords) for about 10 seconds. That should reset the power manager. Plug the power cord back in, and your keyboard/mouse, and your external optical drive. Be sure your installer disk is in that drive.
Press and release the power button, while holding Opt-Command-P and R. You should hear the boot chime sound. Keep holding those same 4 keys, until you hear the boot chime two more times, then release all keys, except to hold the C key. That should force your Mac to boot from the optical drive (your 10.6 installer DVD). You can release the C when you see the rotating gear underneath the grey Apple. Give it a few minutes to work.
If you get to the 'Select a language' screen, continue past that, and choose Disk Utility from the Utilities menu. If your hard drive is visible in Disk Utility, select your hard drive, and click the Repair Disk button, not Repair Disk Permissions.

If that completes, quit Disk Utility, which will return to the OS X Installer. I think that it's a good plan to continue with the OS X install.

I suspect that you will still have problems, as you have (maybe) a failing hard drive, and an internal burner that doesn't seem to work too well (or not at all?) Hopefully, the PRAM reset will help you get booted to the installer. If not, and it still seems to just stop booting, then you may need to pursue other ideas, such as replacing either the internal burner, or the hard drive, or both. If you get hardware access for one, the other is simple.
 
Thanks very much, I will give that a shot when I get home tonight. The disk is brand new (I bought it and the previous owner migrated everything to it before he handed it off to me), so I'm hoping that isn't the problem. The squirlly internal optical drive hasn't been much of a headache (I rarely use it anyway) and replacement costs on it aren't terrible, but I had just been putting it off.

I'm hoping that it may have had something to do with it spending a day in my car in the Texas sun (shutdown and in my backpack, but still) and it will come back from this in reasonable health. Thanks again, I'll let you know what happens.
 
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