[H-GEN] MacBook booting problems

[Gavin Duley]

Hello,

I currently have a dead MacBook. When I turn it on, I just get the
initial grey boot screen, and then nothing more happens. If I press
down the option key (e.g. to attempt booting from a CD), I get a mouse
pointer eventually, but nothing else. I can hear something (probably
the hard disc) making a rather unhealthy sounding click-clunk.

Possibly it died overnight -- it was okay yesterday, and was left in
sleep mode overnight. This morning, it seemed to have frozen so I
turned it off using the power button, and then attempted to turn it
back on again. This just gave me the grey screen as described above.

I had been debating installing Ubuntu on it (it currently has OS X
10.6), this might be a good opportunity if I can get it to boot again,
and if I can recover the data from my TimeMachine backup.

The main problem here is that the computer's inbuilt DVD drive is no
longer working. Booting from a USB drive with Ubuntu on it does not
seem to work. Booting from a firewire external CD drive does not seem
to work either. It seems I can't boot from my TimeMachine disk, though
I can use it to restore my system if I can boot from the OS X DVD.

Any suggestions for other methods to persuade it to boot off an
external CD drive or a USB stick would be appreciated.

thanks,

gavin,

-- 
Honestly, if you're given the choice between Armageddon or tea, you
don't say 'What kind of tea?'
               -- Neil Gaiman

Gavin Duley
<gavin at microcomaustralia.com.au> <gpd at sdf-eu.org>
WWW: http://www.gavinduley.org/