[mvval]

Hi, I am having horrible problems. I have an older Macbook Pro, 2.33 ghz intel core 2 duo, running os 10.4.11 and I cannot shut it down. When I either click on shut down under the apple icon or push the shut down button and click on shut down all that happens is the icons all disappear, I am left with the blue screen and the cursor which I can move about. I have left it this way for an hour or more and nothing happens. I also cannot restart from a cd. When I try to do that I get the spinning grey and white ball that never goes away. When I run disk utility it says the hard drive is okay but of course I couldn't do anything about it anyway as I cannot start from a cd. I also cannot restart the computer using the menu items. I can restart by holding ctrl command and power button.

I have another computer. Is there anyway I can access the hard drive on my laptop to run disk repair. I cannot get target disk mode to work either. I have zapped the pram and reset the smc but that did nothing.
Does anyone have any help????
thanks,
Val

[macwob]

To shut your powerbook down, did you try removing the battery and make sure the power cord is unplugged?
You can also reboot by holding the command/control and power button. Of course if your mac is locked up, the only way to shut it down is to remove the battery. Make sure you have an OS disk in so you can try to boot back up from it by holding the C key down until it boots from the disk. Hopefully your DVD drive is still ok and can read the disk.

If you get that far, I would run the disk utility program and try to repair the drive. If all else fails, then you are looking at an erase and reinstall of the OS. I recently had that problem with my old Powerbook Titanium running 10.4.11 and had to wipe and reload.

Hope this helps.
Robin

[dcpics]

If you can get it to boot from the CD I would try an Archive and Install first. This will save your user data and reinstall the OS only.

If that doesnt' work, then back up all your data and do an erase and install to start completely fresh.

[mvval]

I don't understand. If I remove the battery and unplug the computer of course it will turn off with no power. This doesn't make sense to me. I did zap the pram and reset the SMC but that did not help. I cannot boot from a cd.
I am missing something in what you said?
thanks, Val

[smax013]

macwob said:

To shut your powerbook down, did you try removing the battery and make sure the power cord is unplugged?
Of course if your mac is locked up, the only way to shut it down is to remove the battery.

You should be able to power it down by pushing and holding down the power button for a few seconds...even when it is locked up. Removing the battery and power cord should be a last resort.

[smax013]

mvval said:

Hi, I am having horrible problems. I have an older Macbook Pro, 2.33 ghz intel core 2 duo, running os 10.4.11 and I cannot shut it down. When I either click on shut down under the apple icon or push the shut down button and click on shut down all that happens is the icons all disappear, I am left with the blue screen and the cursor which I can move about. I have left it this way for an hour or more and nothing happens. I also cannot restart from a cd. When I try to do that I get the spinning grey and white ball that never goes away. When I run disk utility it says the hard drive is okay but of course I couldn't do anything about it anyway as I cannot start from a cd. I also cannot restart the computer using the menu items. I can restart by holding ctrl command and power button.

I have another computer. Is there anyway I can access the hard drive on my laptop to run disk repair. I cannot get target disk mode to work either. I have zapped the pram and reset the smc but that did nothing.
Does anyone have any help????
thanks,
Val

What kind of other computer? Another Mac with a Firewire port?

If so, you might try attaching the MacBook Pro to the other Mac using Firewire Target Disk mode (http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1661). This will mount the MacBook Pro's disk on the other Mac as if it were an external Firewire hard drive. You should be able to use the Disk Utility to run disk checks or even go as far as backing up files and then wiping the drive and reinstalling the OS if you need to.

[mvval]

Unfortunately, I cannot connect by firewire target disc mode. My laptop will not show up on my desktop machine. I have been shutting down by pushing and holding power key but continually doing this is not good for it. I was hoping to find some other solution. Any other ideas?
Thanks, Val

[smax013]

Options that I can think of at this point...

1) take the computer to an Apple Store and see if they can help.

2) Pull the hard drive and put it in an external drive enclosure or use a "univeral" adapter to allow you to hook to another computer and see if you can "fix" the drive that way.

3) Try wiping the drive (backup your data first) and then see if you can reinstall and hope that resolves things.

That is all I can think of at the moment off the top of my head.