Apple Macbook A1181 - Stuck on Grey screen

cem

Hello all, trying to fix my wife's apple laptop. its model A1181, bought in late 2006. When powered on, it makes the apple start up sound and shows a grey screen which it gets stuck at.

Would appreciate if you can advise on the best way forward as there are a lot of pictures and music we'll need to recover if I can't get it to work, I am not a apple person so really quite unsure. Are there are any things you can recommend I try?

Thanks in advance

davester

Marty J will help hes a Mac Head.

To Marty HAHAHAHAHAHAAA a mac has broke. in your face..... lol

isofa

^
What's a Mac Head? Can't remember Marty or anyone else saying Macs don't break from time to time... Presumably someone with the skill of using grammar correctly...

Do you have the boot / system CD/DVD? Try and boot to that, hold down the C key on the keyboard when starting up with the CD in to force it to start.

asininity

This should be a sticky!

Wheres Marty?

davester

A Mac Head is someone who has a Mac ,possibly never owned a PC, more than likely owns an iPod of some sort probable a 1st gen and a 4-5 gen and knows how a Mac actually works to help out the people that got are not so good with Tech and probably had a second hand Mac from a Mac Head friend/co-worker who just bought the lastest Mac with bells on.

isofa

davester wrote: »

A Mac Head is someone who has a Mac ,possibly never owned a PC, more than likely owns an iPod of some sort probable a 1st gen and a 4-5 gen and knows how a Mac actually works to help out the people that got are not so good with Tech and probably had a second hand Mac from a Mac Head friend/co-worker who just bought the lastest Mac with bells on.

I think you missed the irony in my post. Pleased your grammar and spelling are consistent :rotfl:

Goodness, it seems I may be allowed to be classed with that nomenclature too, although I've owned Macs and PCs for the past 20 years, run companies with them both so know a bit about them... and own them both as home systems too... PC Head and Mac Head?!

Just delighted I can up my score with 2 iPods!

cem

Thanks guys. Unfortunately have lost all restore cds and manuals with my house move so i am hoping for other solutions.

What would be nice to know is that if I took out the hard drive for the MAC, how can I connect it up to a USB to my PC so I can atleast browse what is in the drive and restrore.

Cheers

almillar

OK - is it a grey screen only? No Apple logo appears, no 'spinning wheel thing'?
These will let us know how far along your Mac is getting in the boot process. Unless the hard drive has failed, your data may still be safe.
Look at the support pages at https://www.apple.com to find out how to reset your PRAM and do that to see if it helps.

davester

Please can you check my spelling and grammar. Other than Caps when not needed, thats because I stopped then started typing again without back editing.

Leopard

davester wrote: »

A Mac Head is someone who has a Mac ,possibly never owned a PC, more than likely owns an iPod of some sort probable a 1st gen and a 4-5 gen and knows how a Mac actually works to help out the people that got are not so good with Tech and probably had a second hand Mac from a Mac Head friend/co-worker who just bought the lastest Mac with bells on.

A !!!!!!-head is someone who spends their time filing postings that are so incoherent that nobody can make out what point they are trying to make.



cem,

Since you no longer have the restore DVD that came with it anyway, your best move would be to buy Snow Leopard for £25 and install that - if the MacBook is undamaged.

If nothing else, this will give you some tools to work with.

Switch it off.

Open it up and check that the RAM is fully and properly seated.

Then hold down, simultaneously, the four keys COMMAND (the one with the Apple logo on it), ALT (the one with "alt" written on it), P and R while pressing the ON button. Hold them down until you hear it "bong"; keep holding them down until it has "bonged" a couple more times.

Then run the Snow Leopard install DVD and follow the instructions it gives you.

cem

almillar wrote: »

OK - is it a grey screen only? No Apple logo appears, no 'spinning wheel thing'?
.....how to reset your PRAM and do that to see if it helps.

No Apple or spnning wheel thing..Just grey screen
Resetting PRAM didn't do anything either

Any idea on the next steps .. Could I not remove harddrive and connect to another machine via usb to see if I can browse the hard drive? if so, what kind of cables do I need for this? Thank you