Power Surge Criples Mac Book

Question

I'm in Central America, a friend was using his MacBook when the power surged, the computer was plugged in at the time. The next time he went to turn it on, only the apple icon was present on the screen. Nothing else will come up. He has tried to take the battery off and put it back in, but it didn't help anything. Any suggestions will be helpful on this one. Is there another way to reset the computer while it is off? Thanks for your answers.

Answer 1

It sounds like your system may have been corrupted by not being shut down properly. You can try repairing it with Disk Utility, though if that doesn't work you may need to try a stronger tool such as Diskwarrior unless you elect to just do an archive and install (keeping users and preferences - make sure you select that).
Boot from the installer disk, select language if applicable, choose utilities, run Disk Utility and verify (and repair if necessary) the drive. You can verify a drive from DU on your main drive while booted but I have found this can result in incorrect reporting of errors. To repair your drive you have to run it from a drive other than the boot drive anyway.
[Resolve startup issues and perform disk maintenance with Disk Utility and fsck|http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106214]
[Using Disk Utility in Mac OS X 10.4.3 or later|http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=302672]
[Disk Utility's Repair Disk Permissions|http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=25751]
From BDaqua (couldn't have said it better):
"Try Disk Utility
1. Insert the Mac OS X Install disc that came with your computer (Edit: Do not use this disc if it is not the same general version as what you have currently on your computer, e.g. use a Tiger disc for a Tiger drive, not a Panther disc), then restart the computer while holding the C key.
2. When your computer finishes starting up from the disc, choose Disk Utility from the Installer menu. (In Mac OS X 10.4 or later, you must select your language first.)
Important: Do not click Continue in the first screen of the Installer. If you do, you must restart from the disc again to access Disk Utility.
3. Click the First Aid tab.
4. Click the disclosure triangle to the left of the hard drive icon to display the names of your hard disk volumes and partitions.
5. Select your Mac OS X volume.
6. Click Repair. Disk Utility checks and repairs the disk."
If you don't have an installer disc available you can try effecting repairs using [fsk in Single User Mode|http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106214].
[Post by japamac about using fsk|http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1649143&tstart=0]