Entrepreneur Geek

Nirav Mehta on life, technology and future

MacBook won’t boot – sometimes!

with 5 comments

My MacBook has started misbehaving after 3 years of good service! Last Monday it did not boot. Came with “the folder with question mark”. Which means it did not detect the hard disk.

Removing the battery and putting it back in fixed it for the day. I was able to work happily. Took a backup later in the evening before leaving for a small vacation.

Then yesterday morning when I booted it, it did not boot again. Removing power and booting from battery started it well. Disk Util permission verification and disk verification did not report any problem. All was OK.

I was able to boot again yesterday night. And it froze while I was working.

Sometimes it starts booting, but hangs in between with a crossed circle. Keeps spinning without moving forward.

Not sure what the problem is. I suspect it’s the hard disk – but then it should not boot at all if it’s the hard disk.

Randomness makes a problem all the more difficult!

Time to take it to the service center?

Related posts:

  1. Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-05-03 What are you doing? I am Getting Things Done!...

Written by Nirav

May 5th, 2009 at 10:24 am

Posted in Apple, Technology

Tagged with ,

 

«
»

5 Responses to 'MacBook won’t boot – sometimes!'

Subscribe to comments with RSS or TrackBack to 'MacBook won’t boot – sometimes!'.

  1. Nirav – I suspect a flaky harddisk. Try booting from the DVD that came with the Macbook. Once booted from the DVD, open up Disk Utility from the Utilities menu and then use the disk repair option and see if that help.

    You may want to consider backing up the harddisk via Carbon Copy Cloner, then install a new hard disk (maybe with a bit more storage – 250GB), then do a restore.

    Good luck – I also have a MacBook. I use them for my company and all my kids have them as well. (Been using Macs since 1984).

    Guy

    Guy Cortesi

    5 May 09 at 5:07 pm

  2. Is it getting heated up ?

    Rajesh Bhadra

    5 May 09 at 6:52 pm

  3. Went to the service center this afternoon and got a new 250GB hard disk in. The original did not have any problems detected in Disk Utility, and I am going to format it and keep it as a backup. (Got a hard disk case too when I bought the 250GB Seagate disk).

    Indeed the laptop heats up a lot. Not sure how to fix that!

    Things are back up now, and I am getting back to work!

    Thanks for your suggestions!

    Nirav

    5 May 09 at 8:50 pm

  4. I’m facing the same problem now. Did you find the cause in your case?

    Vinay

    3 Dec 09 at 11:04 pm

  5. I got a new hard disk. That fixed the problem. I now use the old hard disk as a spare external hard disk.

    Nirav

    3 Dec 09 at 11:24 pm

Leave a Reply