Can anbody offer help recovering hard disk and OS on 13" macbook late 2008

Question

I am new to Mac repair but a pretty skilled PC repair guy (hobby, not job).  I have a college student friend with an A-1278 13" late 2008 Macbook that would not boot.  He could't remember what happed that made it stop but I said I would look at it for him.  When I got it I   determined the power button worked and the hard drive spun bbut it would not boot - no chiem, no video.  If I helddown the power button it would shut down. I did some research on the net and was pretty well convinced there had to have been some liquid contact.  I disaaembled it completely (thanks ifixit!) and cleaned the logic board. I dired it with a blow drier on cool but let it air dry for nearly a week afterward due in part to caution and part to my schedule.  When I reassembled and tried the power but I got nothing, period.  Dissapointed, I looked up how to start without the power button (I had read about during me research).  I tried it (shorting contacts on logic board) and to my suprise it chimed and started up.  Everything seemed to work OK except the keyboard.  I moved around a bit and realized it was running a Parrallels virtual machine (which I've heard about but know nothing about).  I assumed I had simply not connected the keyboard cable completely.  I navigated with the mouse to shut down the virtual machine and then navigated to shut down completely so I could check and reseat the keyboard connector.  While it was shutting down I left the room for about 30minutes to do a chore for my loively bride.   When I returned, I reseated the cable (which was indeed not in completely) and check all of the other ribbon connectors.  Satisfied I turned it over and pressed the power button and, again to my surprise, it chimed and started.  This time however I got the rgey "Apple"  screen and the spinning wheel but it never fully booted.  I held down the power button to shut down.  I did some research again and it indicated there might be a problem with teh hard drive.  Strange but ... I checked the hard drive connector and it was fine so I tried starting again and let it go for a while.  Eventually the screen turns blue but the whell just keeps on spinning.  I shut down with the power button and did some more research.  Unfortunately I don't have the OS disk available so I tried single user boot and ran fcsd.  It reports an "invalid key" and quits afer three tries.  I am trying to get a hold of a disk but thought I'd throw this out to the experts to chew on ( or laugh at, as the case may be).
Can anybody offer a suggestion for a path forward?
Thanks!
Mike

Answer 1

Firstly, 10.4.9 won't work - Macs won't boot from an OS version earlier than the one they shipped with (hence my caveat on the Leopard versions).
Disk Warrior may well help, at least for checking the file structure; check their website for the correct version - off the top of my head 4.6 rings a faint bell, but check.
TechTool Pro 5, likewise, and that will do hardware checks too.
Either or both of those is worth having if you intend looking at more Macs.
As for booting from the SL disc, Disk Utility is accessed from the first screen after the language choice. Ignore the installer and go to Utilities in the menu bar.
Running Repair Disk won't hurt anything that isn't already broken. Just don't touch the Apply or Erase buttons
As an aside, if it came to installing from the SL disc, SL's normal installation only replaces the system files - applications, data and preference settings aren't touched, unless you erase the disc from DU first.
I wouldn't do that without the owner's informed consent though - SL needs printer driver updates that may not be available for the equipment they have, and some applications need paid upgrades (Adobe for one).