MacBook may be dead??

Hi,

I have a black Macbook 80/1GB/2.0 and it about 10 months old, it's pretty much worked fine since I bought it. I had one issue where a system file corrupted, and I had to reset the power management, but nothing major... I love in California, but I'm holidaying in the Philippines at the moment, and the last night I had left it on, just closing it, therefore putting it to sleep, saw the small sleep light on, and put it in it's case. Not more than a few hours later I went to open it, the light was now off, checked the battery, had three out of five lights on, and then proceeded to do everything I could to get it going and could not get any response out of it. It would charge, got it fully charged (at least the green adapter light was now on and all five battery status lights are on), but I get not get any type of life out of it. I have tried resetting the power management, starting it withour the battery and pretty much everything else I can think of, and there's no apple dealer where I am, and won't be close to one until I'm in Hong Kong in a week...

Does any body have any idea's as to what I can do to get it going again...?? Please, any help would be amazing. Unfortunatley I do not haver the system disks with me, but I don;t knwo how cgood they would be anyhow, because it's not even getting into a grey screen... Which lead me to believe it's maybe hardware... Ahhh!...

Thanks in advance...

 

Could be a motherboard issue. At least your macbook is still under warranty, you should probably get it serviced/exchanged as soon as possible.

 

If you didn't get the extended Apple Care you better send it ASAP to Apple and have them fix the problem and avoid some DIY tweeking that will void the warranty.

 

sounds like you'll have to wait until hong kong... probably the mainboard...

what does it do when u turn it on? hold down the power button 10 seconds to really shut it down first, then push it once to turn on. so you get the startup sound? any hard disk activity to be heard? any humming?

 

Hi,

Yeah, no matter what I do, I get no signs of life from it... Except for charging and the abttery meter, it doesn't hum, no sounds of the HD powering up or anything else that could be seen as any signs of life... I don't knwo if there's any other command that might kick it into action... Eg. something other than restting the power management unit. Maybe pressing Command, cntrl + something that might recussitate it? My other question is are there Genius bars in the UK, because I think that's the next place I'll be with a full Apple Store? Also is it likely that my hard drive is also dead? I really hope not (obviously). If the mainboard was dead, wouyld they just replace the whole unit? Or would it be possibel to save the hard drive? Or mount it into a 2.5" enclosure or soemthing, so I could at least get the data I need off it?

Any other idea's?

Thanks again...

 

Well, there are ways of extracting data from a failed hard drive but they're done by professionals and cost quite a lot.

Most (maybe All) Apple Stores have a Genius Bar. If there's a lot of things to fix the Geniuses may just replace your MacBook with another one. Make sure you copy your important files (music, photos, video, documents, whatever) to an external hard drive, a flash drive or a CD/DVD if you can.

 

I would use a live cd to examine the hard drive. From there, I'd either FTP/email my data out, or attach a USB device (thumbdrive, hard drive, iPod) and copy it out that way.

 

I'm not sure what if I know what you mean by a 'live cd'? If it's connected to another computer (via USB, firewaire, etc) I'm presuming that nothingwill be able to be read from hard drive without it spinning up, which it isn't doing and would require some form of working... Otherwise it would have to be removed from the computer, which I'm guessing they would be able to do at an Apple Store if they had to replace it or something... (cross my fingers, knock on wood)...

So other than that, I'm just going to leave it for the experts I guess...

Thanks...

 

A live cd isn't going to help, it doesn't start up into firmware even from the descriptions.

It looks like a hardware issue, find an authorized service provider (might exist in the Philippines, no idea) and turn it in. Though if nothing else I'd suggest you call the issue in so Apple has a record of it if there is any doubt that you can get it to a service provider before the warranty ends. As long as you reported the error within warranty exceptions will usually be made even if you cannot get it serviced within the warranty.