Serious Issues with MacBook

YoshiFtJ

Registered
I am not sure if this is hardware or software related, but it is driving me up a wall.

I started with a MacBook (February 08 model) with no hard drive.

I added a hard drive in, and since I didn't have a OSX install disc on hand I installed Windows 7 on boot. It installed fine, but I couldn't install bootcamp drivers due to not having OSX handle my install.

I then acquired both a Snow Leopard and Lion install disc. I booted with the Lion disc, and it gave me the Apple logo with the gear loading animation, but eventually the Apple logo changed into a 'no' symbol (the circle with a line going diagonally through it).

I then tried the Snow Leopard disc. It booted and showed the Apple logo with the loading gear, but would then load into a black screen.

I tried doing research (spraying the optical drive with compressed air, tried booting from a USB drive), but nothing helped. I then installed Lion from another OSX machine to the hard drive via USB enclosure. When I put the hard drive back in, it loaded the Apple logo and went to a black screen again. When I powered off the unit and restarted it, it acted like it was restoring a session and I could see the set up screen. It froze like this. I then powered down again, and it gave me three beeps and refused to boot anything. I pulled out the hard drive and reseated it (along with the RAM), and it does the boot into black screen thing.

I have no idea what to do. I tried putting in the Windows 7 disc again, and I am put into a blank screen with a flashing underscore.

Any help would be much appreciated.
 
Well for one thing for OS X it MUST be OS Extended (sometimes known as HFS+). So on that drive, from the install disk and when the install screen starts move your mouse to the top of the window. In the limited Finder menu find Disk Utility and format that disk using the 'Partition' tab, creating an GUID partition on ONE partition.

Then proceed with the OS X Snow Leopard install. If it install update it to the latest Snow Leopard updates so you can get the Mac App Store. Then when snow Leopard is updated all the way, buy from the Mac App Store Lion. Before you start the Mac App Store for Lion, right click on the 'Install Lion' icon, following the procedure to How to make a bootable Lion install disc or drive, using at least an 8 Gig Thumb drive (Make sure you format the Thumb drive first for OS x Extended).

I used the Thumb drive method to load my other two Macs after I initially got Lion. This way I will save bandwidth Not downloading Lion again and again. It works out great this way.
 
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3 beeps almost always mean a problem with RAM memory.
Snow Leopard requires 1GB of RAM, and Lion requires 2GB of RAM, just to install.

Your MacBook didn't have a hard drive when you got it - maybe some of the RAM memory was removed, too! If you pull out both RAM chips, usually you can see what you have by looking at the label on each stick.
Windows 7 also needs 1GB, so I expect you might be OK for that. You may find out that removing then reinstalling the RAM chips gets everything working OK, and a simple reseat sometimes will help...
And, Satcomer is certainly correct about the hard drive format. Installing Windows by itself means that the hard drive is now an NTFS partition, and you can't install OS X to that partition. If you have 2 GB (or more) of RAM installed, then Lion should be OK.
You will need to erase the hard drive with Disk Utility, and change to a MacOS Extended (journaled) format.

More relevant for you, I think: Lion is not available on an installer DVD - unless you have downloaded a torrent somewhere, then burned a DVD from that .ISO. I have seen a few that just won't boot, unless you can burn that .ISO from a working OS X system.
I suspect that you also torrented a Snow Leopard .ISO.
In that case, it's likely that both don't work because they are either corrupted downloads, or improperly burned (from a Windows system, eh?) and are no good to you.
The support that you get here for using illegal, torrented copies is this: Snow Leopard and Lion can be purchased for only about $30 each, direct from Apple. The Lion purchase is for a download only, through the App Store.
That's your best method to proceed from this point.
 
I actually solved the issue.

I already had the hard drive formatted to HFS+ (I used another Mac OSX machine to run Disk Utility and got that out of the way) but it didn't solve anything.

What I did was after I had finished the OS install from that other OSX machine, I held down Shift to boot into safe mode. I am not sure what this did to make the machine stop loading into the black screen, but once I did that it gave me the OSX initial setup screen.

After a pretty beefy update (1.5 GB), it is now working perfectly.

Does Snow Leopard also require 2 GB of RAM? That could explain why it wouldn't boot to install. My machine does indeed have 1 GB, but I am currently running Lion fine. I am looking to buy a nice RAM upgrade, though.

Thanks for the input. I appreciate the effort and thought of help.
 
Snow Leopard requires 1GB to install.
Lion requires 2GB to install.
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4949
If Lion is already installed (pre-installed on internal, or form external hard drive) then 1GB will work, but system will be quite slow.
Your MacBook can upgrade to as much as 6GB of RAM.
2 x 2GB (total 4GB) will make a very noticeable increase in performance with either Snow or Lion.
 
Yes, 4 GB was my goal. It is rather sluggish and that would add a great boost.

My battery is also junk (now confirmed thanks to being able to boot into OSX) and needs to be replaced, but that is another matter altogether. :D
 
3 beeps almost always mean a problem with RAM memory.

Not trying to change the subject but merely clarifying, but I've seen 3 beeps (with video) when trying to boot incorrect/incompatible OSX builds on some machines. But otherwise 3 beeps (without video) is almost always either memory or memory slot on logic board problem.
 
Okay, it is doing it again.

I think I figured out why. When the screen swaps from the Apple logo loading screen and launches the desktop, it instead just turns off the screen.

I am pretty sure it is launching into sleep mode automatically. When I had the OS running a few days ago, the lid being closed didn't put it to sleep. I think something is stuck.

More evidence of this can be found with my Windows 7 install. When I had it installed, I had no issues with the monitor turning off due to not having any BootCamp drivers installed. It didn't know how to sleep mode, so thus I had no issues. Also, when I try to boot OSX and the monitor turns off, the white power light fades off and on.

I am unsure on how to fix this. From what I understand, sleep mode is controlled by a magnet behind the screen, and when the lid is closed it signals something under the keyboard to do this. I assume someone botched a monitor install.
 
I am pretty sure it is launching into sleep mode automatically. When I had the OS running a few days ago, the lid being closed didn't put it to sleep. I think something is stuck.

It's unlikely something is "stuck". A really low battery will automatically put the machine to sleep. Is this machine connected to a known good AC adapter? What about when you remove the battery and power it by AC adapter alone?

Other than that I'd suspect a failing backlight in the LCD.
 
It can't be a failing backlight, the screen works fine in it's command line, boot screens and in Windows 7.

My battery is junk. I have it disconnected and I have the unit powered by it's original power adapter.
 
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