[geeks] Macbook probably KIA, now what?

[John Francini]

Macs will boot from disks plugged into either the USB or FireWire  
ports.  So if you happen to have a disk in an external enclosure, you  
can connect that up, pop in the install DVD, and see if you can  
install/restore to the external drive. That will verify that (a) the  
DVD/CD drive is OK, and (b) most all of the electronics are OK.

If you hold down the Option key then press Power (and wait while  
holding Option down for several seconds), you'll boot to a set of  
icons that represent bootable devices.  If the DVD drive shows up as a  
bootable icon, you should be OK.

john



On 18 May 2009, at 15:02, William Barnett-Lewis wrote:

> Thank you for all the ideas folks, that's what I had hoped/expected to
> get from here.
>
> The Macbook will boot to the ? folder so it would appear that the HD
> didn't survive but perhaps  the computer did. THAT would be consistant
> with my ill luck with disks in the machine. I'm going to visit our
> local vendor later and see how much a used smaller SATA drive can be
> gotten for to test further.
>
> Slightly further out, I'll probably sell some things to fund one of
> the netbooks that will have to do until we can afford another macbook.
>
> William
> -- 
> Live like you will never die, love like you've never been hurt, dance
> like no-one is watching.
> 				Alex White
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