Apple Macbook A1181 - Stuck on Grey screen

davester

Well they could be like Marty batting for both teams, having a Mac and a PC.

Leopard

Marty_J wrote: »

If you don't have another Mac, you'll need to a PC with a Firewire port and a copy of MacDrive (to enable Windows to read the Mac disk). There's a free trial available which should give you ample time to copy your data.

(Please forgive a brief digression. )

Marty J,

If my companion put MacDrive on to her work Dell laptop, would the thing then be able to read (hopefully wirelessly, as well?) our networked hard drives, which are formatted in HFS+ (Journaled) ?

And are you sure it could read, by Firewire, a Mac in Target Mode?

(Can't experiment myself; she's in Helsinki with it for a few days. :rudolf: )

Marty_J

Leopard wrote: »

(Please forgive a brief digression. )

Marty J,

If my companion put MacDrive on to her work Dell laptop, would the thing then be able to read (hopefully wirelessly, as well?) our networked hard drives, which are formatted in HFS+ (Journaled) ?

It's basically an HFS+ driver and disk manager for Windows, so I would assume so. As I said above, there's a free trial available, so why not try it when she gets back and see?

And are you sure it could read, by Firewire, a Mac in Target Mode?

I've never tried using it to access a Mac in target disk mode, but target disk mode just turns your Mac into a very expensive external HDD, so I don't see why it wouldn't work. In the latest version, you can even use it to access your Time Machine backups from Windows.

almillar

OP, as has been said, your data is safe, unless the hard drive is stuffed. We haven't ruled that out yet, but usually when the rest of the mac works and the hard drive is broken you would get, I think, a question mark come up on the screen to say that the computer can't find anything to boot from. If you had a Mac OSX DVD of some sort and could put that in, we could diagnose further.
You still have the option of taking the drive out and recovering your data, and if you want to you need to know whether the drive is SATA or IDE ( I think all the intel Macs have SATA hard drives), then you need to buy a 2.5" SATA enclosure to USB plug, or a little converter. They're all over eBay.
Marty has mentioned the DVD solution already, and with the information available, especially on a laptop, I'd agree that the most likely fault is the logic board (or for davester's crowd, the motherboard).
This would be very expensive to repair (replace) as you can imagine, but i think that as long as you haven't poured a cup of coffee into it or something, on a 2006 machine, you have a pretty strong case for Apple to replace it FOC or at a big discount. At this point I'd definately want to have that data backed up anyway, after this scare, what price do you put on that data?!

Leopard

The :question:Mac is its way of saying it can't find an operating system - not that the hard drive is faulty.

It usually won't get up on its feet at all if the internal hard drive is kaput and it can't find another one: that's part of the checks it carries out when it gets switched on.

I wouldn't hold out enthusiastic hope that Apple would replace its motherboard free of charge if it's three years old but if it's just run out of Extended Applecare recently they might be more inclined to be kind.

As chorlton points out, seeing if Target mode works might be a quick and simple way of discovering if the hard drive is functional. That might depend, however, upon whether the Mac is well enough to let it.



Marty J,

Many thanks for your info with regard to MacDrive - and for providing, as you always do, so kindly and thoughtfully, a link to it.

I'll definitely give it a try: but that will have to wait a little while. When said lady climbs off 'plane from northern lands, tonight, we're off to Italy for a few days to see an old friend finally achieve his life's ambition in something red with wheels!

Have been going stir-crazy here for the last couple of months, effectively house-bound by lack of distance vision while Vision Express progressively wrecked seven sets of extremely expensive spectacle lenses :rolleyes: . It had seemed like a useful way of spending a summer break in England but it turned into a nightmare. Anyway, finally sorted a couple of days ago; ProBooks (including companion's, while she was away) now Snowed, bags packed and raring to go!

Will duly let you know how MacDrive on a Dell reacts to a networked HFS+ drive when we get back and I find a chance to try it.

Thanks again.