MacBook won't boot from hard drive or CD

My MacBook will not turn on. When the power button is pressed the chime sounds as normal and the grey screen appears but it will not go any further. It also refuses to boot from a CD when c is held down. The CD spins up but it does not load. The computer was water damaged in December and this killed the hard drive but I replaced it and it worked fine again for about a month. Does anyone have any suggestions?

Thanks for the advice, doesn't seem to have worked though.

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Macbook won't boot from Hard Drive of Disc Drive!

So I bought a Macbook (Mid-2010) from a friend recently and I can't seem to get it to boot from the hard drive or optical drive. At first I tried booting from the HD it already had and when I didn't have any luck, I went out and bought a new one. It still won't boot. I'll turn it on, it'll chime and will try to load, and then I'll get the "You need to restart your." message. I've tried booting from disc (Leopard & Snow Leopard) and will still get the same message. I have also tried all possible startup key combinations and haven't had any luck. I don't have the original DVD it came with. So was wondering if any of you guys out there have experienced this. I would like to hear your tips before I go to an Apple Store and see if they can get it fixed for me.

"You need to restart your." message
That is referred to as a "kernel panic"...
Try here > Tutorial: Avoiding and eliminating Kernel panics | MacFixIt - CNETReviews
I don't have the original DVD it came with
You will need those discs. Replacement disc(s) from Apple: You can get replacement System Install & Restore CD/DVDs from Apple's Customer Support - in the US, (800) 767-2775 - for a nominal S&H fee. You'll need to have the model and/or serial number of your Mac available.
You can check the startup disk using the Disk Utility application located in /Applications/Utilities if you can boot in Safe Mode, but you cannot make repairs without the install disc.

S10-2 Won't boot from hard drive

I have an S10-2 2957 that won't boot from the internal hard drive. The one key function doesn’t work either. After the splash comes up and the BIOS runs all that is displayed is a flashing cursor. If I boot from an external source (USB CD) I can see the hard drive and all files are intact. I have tried removing the battery and power supply, holding the power key for 30 seconds before powering the unit back up to no avail. I’m thinking that either the boot sector is corrupt or the first partition is not active. Any ideas?
Solved!
Go to Solution.

press f8 to load when you see lenovo logo at start-up, and select safe mode. post back the results.

Powerbook won't boot from hard drive or restore disk

I've looked through some of the older posts here and none of them exactly matches my problem, and I've tried just about any possible solution I can think of.
I recently noticed that my PowerBook was acting a bit strange. It was making more fan noises than usual, and sometimes the computer would make the very last noise it makes as it shuts down (which is the hard drive coming to rest, I suppose?), though the computer would still be running. Then, yesterday the computer froze and I hit command-control-power, and when the computer restarted it gave me a folder icon blinking between a question mark and the Mac logo.
I tried restarting again, but I had no luck. Now when I try to start up I get the start-up chime, then I get one of three things:
1) If I restart it without a CD in the drive, I get the blinking folder.
2) If I restart it with the Software Restore and Install DVD in (but without holding down the C key), it gets to the Apple logo and shows the spinning pinwheel or whatever you want to call it, then freezes and some nasty horizontal bars pop across the screen.
3) If I restart it with the Restore & Install DVD in and I hold down the C key, it gives me the Apple logo, then the "Your computer has encountered a problem and needs to be restarted" box pops up.
I tried zapping the PRAM--no luck. I tried Open Firmware; the screen pops up, then I type in "mac-boot" and I get the same thing as in #2 above.
I used the Hardware Test CD; it told me that there was a Mass Storage error with the error code 2STF/1/4. That doesn't sound too pleasant.
I'm not sure what caused it; perhaps it was a heat thing, but I moved it too a different surface. All the hardware is original except for the Airport card, which has worked fine since Christmas. The only recent software changes I've made were updating to the newest versions of iTunes and Firefox. It doesn't seem like a hard drive problem, since the boot CD won't work.
Am I doomed to sending Apple a couple hundred bucks to fix this? The laptop is right at three years old, so even if I'd had AppleCare it would be expiring right about now. Or is it time to buy one of those MacBooks? Or just buy a couple PC's and use each one till it breaks, then throw it out?
Thanks,
Kevin

I finally got to another Mac. I installed Mac OS X onto my Firewire drive, then hooked up the drive to my Powerbook and used the Startup Manager. The drive showed up on Startup Manager and I chose to boot from it. When I did, the startup process continued briefly, then froze just like it does when I try to boot from the CD.
I know my Powerbook's hard drive is shot, and to be honest, I'm fine with that--there isn't any critical, essential data on there. I tried starting the Powerbook up in Target Disk mode, but that doesn't work either--I hear the chime, press T, but the screen stays black.
Now my question is: can I rip the hard drive out? Or do I have not only a bad hard drive, but also something else gone wrong? I'm not opposed to buying a new internal hard drive and installing it myself if that will fix the problem; what I don't want to do is spend a few hundred bucks to take it to someone who's only going to tell me that my omputer is now a paperweight.
Also, my Powerbook isn't one of the ones with a recalled battery. The computer can get pretty hot, even when sitting on a desk, but I just figured that was normal.
Thanks,
Kevin

G3 won't boot from hard drives or startup (original) CDs

I recently installed OS X 10.4 on my Mac G3 (6GB HD, 256MB Ram, blue & white). It ran fine for one week. After one week, when it would boot up, I would have 800 MB of free space. Within a few minutes I would get an out of memory error and my HD would have zero space left...effectively locking up the machine. I was told to increase my memory to 1GB (I did) and to install a new HD (I did, a Seagate 80GB). I partitioned the Seagate into two equal partitions. About the time that the OS finished this task, I received a security upate installation dialogue asking me in install a new security update. I said "OK". About the time the security update was installed, the system ran out of memory...then asked me to restart the machine. I have not been able to get it to restart since. Can't startup with the OS9 CD, the OSX CD OR Diskwarrior. I keep getting the same message..."panic(cpu 0 caller 0x002DE020): Unable to find driver for this platform: "powerMac1,1". Then there is a whole lot of other stuff with a final comment "We are hanging here..." I can't seem to find anyone to help me with this. I brought the machine back to its orginal configuration...didn't work. I disconnected the old 6GB HD and was able to install OSX on the new drive...but, after installing on the new hard drive, I rebooted and I am back to the same errors. I keep getting the OS9 flashing folder with "?"/face. HELP!
Thanks,
Pat
G3 Blue & Whote Mac OS X (10.4.4)

You are having kernel panics as shown in this Apple doc.#106227.
Do everything, in order, in Dr.Smokes Resolving Kernel Panics and don't leave out any steps.
Quote from Dr.Smoke "My FAQ is a roadmap: start at the beginning and work through to the end, following the instruction in the order specified, including the "If all else fails..." section if a cause or resolution is not found in an earlier troubleshooting step therein"
Here's more at a brody's KP site.
Cheers!
DALE

IMac turned off suddenly, won't boot from hard drive/CD drive

Hi guys.
Here is what I have:
27" iMac with:
Core i5 2.7
4GB RAM
Mountain Lion
Win7 on Bootcamp
Lion is installed, but I have the Snow Leopard install disc.
The system had just been recently reformatted so there wasn't really much on the computer itself other than an update to Mountain Lion and a Win7 install via Bootcamp. Other than that, nothing was recentlly installed.
What happenes is I was browsing and all of a sudden it completely shut down. No warning, nothing. Completely shuts down.
Okay.. weird... but when I try to load Mac back up, the Apple logo appears and then after a while of supposedly loading, the screen goes to a plain white screen until I force the computer off. Something similar happens when tryin gto boot into Windows: I get to the "Starting Windows" screen but after that everything goes black and I have to shut down manually.
Great. Now I'll just go into recovery and fix all of this right? Wrong. Can't boot into recovery either. Similar end result: white screen.
Last thing I tried is reinstall OS X Snow Leopard. After loading for about 1-2 minutes, the usual white screen appears after trying to boot from the disc.
I am at a loss. I don't think its the hard drive, because the problem occurs even when trying to boot from the disc. My suspicion is the RAM has gone bad. But, before I go the hardware route, is there any suggestions or recommendations anyone could make first?
In advance, I really appreciate anyone who replies and tries to help.
Thanks.

Xmotox,
I had the EXACT problem today. EXACT. Discs wouldn't boot, I did get the application disc to run the AHT but it said all was fine.
I called my buddy who said something about unplugging for a minute then holding power button while plugging the power supply back in. I thought it would be futile since we already did all the SMC reset procedures to no avail, PRAM reset didn't do anything, etc, etc... But what do you know, up pops the disc utility and my iMac is now restoring from time machine. It's not done yet, so I can't say it worked... BUT it's the farthest we got tonight. Could not get disc utility up via CMD-R or OPTION keys... but powering down, unplugging for a minute or so, then holding power button while plugging the power supply back in did the trick. Hope this helps!

Kernal panic/ won't boot from hard drive or installation disc/ error type 1

Friends PowerBook seems to be dying or is possibly dead.
PowerBook G4 model A1138 or M9969LL/A:
15 inch/ 1.67 ... http://support.apple.com/specs/powerbook/PowerBookG4_15-inch_Double-LayerSD.html
K, so my friend's powerbook is in my possession... and not booting.
A week ago, upon booting the laptop, he'd get the old OS9 looking folder flashing with THE happy face and then a question mark. Then, usually, it'd boot. It started taking longer and longer to boot, so he backed up all his stuff. It eventually stopped booting OSx (10.4.10) and came to me asking about how to reinstall Tiger.
As of right now his machine will NOT boot from the hard drive, regularly or in safe mode.
When we try the install CD, we get a kernal panic. It hangs, then tells us to restart. Every time.
Holding down "alt" I tried the hardware diagnostic/ repair thingy from the install disc. It mentions a quick issue with finding Gineva fonts or something and then gives the following errors:
type 1346978644 error 1
type 1346978644 error 1
Invalid memory access at %SRR0:00000000 %SRR1:00083030
Thats about all we got. We are looking for a screw driver to try and remove a stick of ram and see if thats the problem. Any ideas? Hoping for a bad stick of ram or hard drive. Anyone know if for sure the logic board is dead or if there is a way to fix it? Appreciate any feedback. Happy to give more information if you need it!
~joel

When you did the boot off the original system disk was anything non-Apple externally connected? If not, then you clearly have a hardware problem, and your idea of examining the RAM is not half a bad idea. The only thing you might want to do before that is zapping the PRAM. Sometimes that clears issues such as you describe:
1. First determine if your machine is under 4 years old. If it is, then go ahead
and do step 2. Otherwise do step 3.
2. http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=2238
3. Take it to an authorized service center to have the clock battery replaced. That may cause the very issues you described.

My Macbook Won't boot from USB drives

Alright. Seems that ever since I've upgraded to Mountain Lion, I keep having one problem after the next. It's probably my fault, but I've been doing nothing I would think to be wrong...
Anyway. Here's a breif history. I have a Macbook pro. Before I installed Mountain Lion, I had Snow Leopard installed with Windows 7 on BootCamp. I installed Mountain Lion and made a startup USB for it as well. I used that USB as a startup drive so I could shrink my OS X installation partition on my HD so I could make a third partition since I am running out of room on my Windows Partition for games. It suceeded, I partitioned the remaining space on the drive as an ExFAT, and restarted. I tried to load up Windows, nothing would boot. I then loaded up my OS X partition just fine. No issues there. Figured something with the partition messedup the Windows install. So I decided to reinstall Windows. Nope, the Windows install USB won't boot. Okay... Maybe if I delete that extra partition I made, things will work. Nope, won't boot the Mountain Lion start up USB now. And for some stupid reason I cannot resize the partitions using the Mountain Lion startup partition on the HD.
So, what did I break that made it so only OS X will start up and no other bootable drives?

Week 2, this problem still occuring. Would be nice if this support forum actually offered support...

K8M Neo-V won't boot from hard drive after BIOS flash

But it boots just fine from CD or floppy.
I bought the combo (MB, AMD64 processor, 1G memory) to replace a
motherboard which had died in a previously working system. At the
same time I replaced the power supply and the video card. When I first
fired it up, it brought up the boot manager from the previous incarnation
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I never actually let it reboot, since I wanted to redo the OS optimized
for the AMD64 (and the new video card.) I flashed the motherboard to the
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installed the OS. Once I got to the point of being able to boot from the
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It displayed all the possible boot devices (note that the floppy and CD
were empty):
Searching for Boot Record from floppy..not found
Searching for Boot Record from CD/DVD..not found
Searching for Boot Record from IDE-0..not found
No matter what I did, I couldn't get the system to boot from the hard
drive. I reflashed the BIOS back to 3.2, still didn't work. Since then I
have installed four different operating systems: Win2k, WinXP, Gentoo
Linux and Debian Linux. All boot from CD, install perfectly until you get
to the part where the system has to boot on its own, and then nothing.
Has anyone seen this? Is it possible that there is a problem with how
I've set the BIOS up? Or a hardware conflict with something else? Or
just a bad MB?
Thanks for any advice.
Steve

Notihng special in the BIOS drive setup. Everything is auto-detected and I've pretty much left those settings alone. At the time of the first flash I probably *did* have SMART enabled. Once I started having trouble I turned that off, and have never turned it back on.
Boot order has been changed multiple times. Right now it is floppy -> cd -> ide-0. I've turned the network boot option off and on again (not that there's a boot server handy...) I've tried hitting F11 to choose my boot device and specifically selected the HD. Hasn't made any difference.
I generally turn virus protection off the moment I get a new motherboard. I'm pretty sure it came disbaled by default, if not I'm sure I disabled it. Even had it been on, though, any boot block corruption would have to be permanent damage to act like it has, since four subsequent OS installs should have overwritten the boot block four times over.
It might be worth my time to drop a different HD in the primary master slot and see if it can boot from that. I'll be real unhappy if I've toasted a perfectly good drive.

Bondi iMac 233 won't boot from hard drive,

I have a Bondi iMac 233, 192MB running OSX 10.3 which was being throw out at work, the hard drive (40GB IBM Deathstar) was failing but it would still boot up. I installed an original 6GB iMac Hard Drive, low level formated the drive and installed OS9.2. Now the iMac refuses to boot from this hard drive or even another 4GB Hard Drive.
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I have zapped the PRAM,
Reset the NVRAM
Reset the CUDA chip.
Reset the Logic Board
Reseated Cables
Reseated Processor and memory modules
All to no avail.
Does anyone have any other ideas?
thanks
Bondi iMac Mac OS 9.2.x

I've been doing this with about 14 iMacs slot/tray that I'm prepping for inner city kindergartens in Chicago. I have had that problem where in moving from 10.3.9 to 9.2.2 the iMacs wouldn't recognize the HDs. Booting from an original iMac OS 9 install disc and selecting the HD as start up has always solved the problem for me.
However, and maybe this is related,
I've had the problem with a couple of tray loaders where in moving from 10 to 9 it wouldn't recognize the CD-ROM drive. I went through a bunch of drives before I figured out that booting from an iMac OS 8.6 CD made the iMac rerecognize the drive. I was able to reset?? all the drives that wouldn't previously work using this method. Weird but maybe there's a chip in the drive board that needed to be reset. Dunnno about the HDs tho' but it could be related.
Richard

IMac won't boot from hard drive

HI all,
i have a 2011 iMac and it suddenly stopped booting up. I was able to boot to disc and get to disk utility. It tells me that the drive can't be repaired and that I should save as much as possible and erase. So I'm pretty sure the hard drive is fried My question is, have I exhausted all options and if so how can I get any data off this drive prior to swapping or do I try to retrieve after swapping? I do have an external drive that I believe has a lot of my stuff backed up on but I'm sure not everything. I'm so mad, all I do is tout how good this computer has been and this is the first time I've ever had a hard drive fail on any computer.
Thanks

RichM111,
If you have used Time Machine or a bootable clone to backup then you are likely OK. However if you ignored both then you can either try Disk Warrior (about $100) to attempt to recover some data or you will need to take the HD to a data recovery service.

DV7-6185us wont boot from hard drive.

I recently installed a new hard drive after the one it came with completely crashed. After installation of new hard drives, I inserted and installed all of the recovery disks needed for the new hard drive. Upon completetion it said it needed a restart and after restart I get a message saying I need a OS for the hard drive for boot up.
I went into my bios to make sure the hard drive was first in boot order which it is but when trying to pick where to put from on the bios screen it only give me the cd option. I ran a full diagnostic of the hard drive and everything checks out. I made sure to unplus the hard drive and tried a different slot and still get the same thing. Installation when fine but still won't boot from hard drive.
Is there something that i'm missing? The hard drive is fine. So what could it be?

Hi,
Assuming this is just a problem with the recovery media, here's an alternative option you could try.
Before trying the following, make sure you can still read the 25 Character Product Activation key on your Windows COA label ( 5 blocks of 5 alpha/numeric sets ).
An example of a COA Label can be seen Here.
You can create a Windows 7 installation disc yourself using another PC - just download the correct Disc Image ( this must be the same version that originally came with your notebook - this is listed as Windows 7 Home Premium ) from the link below and use an application such as ImgBurn to burn the ISO correctly to a blank DVD - a guide on using ImgBurn to write an ISO to a disc is Here. These Images are clean and from a well-respected source - Digital River.
Windows 7 Images.
Use the disc to perform the installation, enter the Windows activation key found on the COA Label when requested and when the installation has completed, use the 'Phone Method' detailed in the link below to activate the OS - this method supported by Microsoft and is popular with people who just want a clean installation of Windows 7 without the additional software load normally bundled with OEM installations.
http://www.kodyaz.com/articles/how-to-activate-windows-7-by-phone.aspx
Any additional drivers and software you may need can be found Here.
Regards,
DP-K
****Click the White thumb to say thanks****
****Please mark Accept As Solution if it solves your problem****
****I don't work for HP****
Microsoft MVP - Windows Experience

Powerbook G4 10.4.11 won't start from hard drive . Tried repair, " The underlying task reported failure on exit (-9972).Invalid sibling link,invalid B tree header, invalid map node,invalid record type,the volume needs to be repaired.

Powerbook G4 10.4.11 won't start from hard drive . Tried repair, " Invalid sibling link,invalid B tree header, invalid map node,invalid record type,the volume needs to be repaired.Powerbook G4 10.4.11 won't start from hard drive . Tried repair, " The underlying task reported failure on exit (-9972).Invalid sibling link,invalid B tree header, invalid map node,invalid record type,the volume needs to be repaired.
The underlying task reported failure on exit (-9972).

kauribill wrote:
" The underlying task reported failure on exit (-9972).Invalid sibling link,invalid B tree header, invalid map node,invalid record type,the volume needs to be repaired.
The underlying task reported failure on exit (-9972).
This is a directory issue that Disk Utility cannot fix. Although it manifests itself as a software issue sometimes it may be hardware based. See DiskUtility reports "Underlying task reported failure" when repairing avolume http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1901?viewlocale=en_US". You can try using a utility like TechTool Pro, Drive Genius or Disk Warrior to repair and replace the directory. Another option would be to use the Archive and Install feature to reinstall. If the problem returns after correction you may have a failing or failed HDD.
cornelius

V120 server boot from hard drive freezes

Hi
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Well, LOL, I did that prior to buying the software. It does meet the specifications. I found the solution on the support site. When I googled before I hadn't googled the error message verbatim. Doing so led me to this page: http://support.apple.com/kb/TS3926 where I was instructed to create a tiny partition (128MB) and then run the installer again. No explanation was given as to why, but this did work and I am typing this via the new OS. Thanks for trying to help me baltwo! Best regards.

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I'm trying to upgrade my hard drive, but my macbook will not boot to the new hard drive. I have erased and cloned the hard drive about three times now, using both Carbon Copy Cloner and SuperDuper. It won't boot while it is in the macbook and it won't boot from an external hard drive case. All I get to is the screen with the mac logo and the spinning wheel. I have made sure the drive is GUID formatted, but it still doesn't work. When I put the new drive in an external case and plug it into the USB port of my macbook I can see and access everything on the drive. Can somebody please tell what I am doing wrong?
By the way the new hard drive is a 500gb western digital Scorpio blue drive.

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MacBook won't boot from hard drive or CD

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