So I recently bought a brand new Macbook and it works great and I love it. This post/question is for my boyfriend, who has a 4-5 year old Macbook Pro that has been pretty abused being hauled across the country. The keyboard no longer works (he plugs in a normal keyboard to work off of) and recently he tore the battery clean out as it stopped working and only uses it when plugged into a power source. Anyway... despite all that it was still usable up until a few days ago. Now when you turn it on, it gets stuck starting up (it never makes it past the grey screen with the apple logo and a loading wheel). Is there no hope for getting it to turn on completely?
If it is completely broken, is there a way to turn it's hard drive into an external hard drive? Or is there a way to get what he needs off of the hard drive?
Help!
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Most likely - the hard drive is dead. Hard drives rarely last more than 3-4 years, and often less in laptops. Find the original OSX install/recovery disk that came with it, then do the following as a quick test. Don't try to use the OSX from a newer machine - they are specific to the newer models.
ReplyDeleteTurn the machine on
Insert the disc
Hold power until it turns back off
Hold the "c" key
Turn it on
Keep holding C until you see a menu bar or the Mac OS X install screen
If you can get that far - most likely the hard drive is dead and the rest of the laptop is ok. That's a $50 part and about an hour or two of labor to fix. iFixIt.com will have links to parts and videos on how to do the repair.
If that fails - then more could be wrong. It could be that both the CD & hard drive are bad, but it could be that the mainboard is bad ($500+)
For more detailed testing, you'll need to do one of the following:
- Go to an Apple store. If you're lucky, their tech can run their tools to see if the HD is bad, but they won't do more extensive testing without a fee.
- Send it to iResq.com - they're a reputable repair facility with good prices. They will figure out what's wrong for free, then send you a quote. If you don't want it repaired, they will offer to buy the broken laptop from you and use it for parts.
- Go to a non-Apple repair facility recommended locally
- Buy Tech Tool Pro (http://micromat.com/) for a more detailed test on your own. I don't recommend buying it unless you're doing your own repairs regularly
Awesome! Thanks Patrick!
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