My friend's macbook has died...

[jondy]

and I can barely keep a straight face. Which is awful, because she has essay deadlines for next week. I've lent her a laptop for the time being, but in terms of fixing the thing, macs are completely obtuse for me, so I thought I'd post here and see if anyone could lend a hand.

When you turn the little bastard on, and it DOES turn on, fans and all, it fails to boot. There's no visual output at all, just a lit (but completely dark) LCD. This continues until you pull the plug - it doesn't want to turn off, either. Not a lot to go on, unfortunately. Could be that it's just bricked.

It's a macbook G4 with a 12" screen, AFAIK, I'll get ahold of her to find out the OS if needed, but this seems to me to be a BIOS/hardware thing.

There's an apple store in town that would solve her problems (perhaps, assuming nothing has snapped inside the little f*cker), but diagnosing a mac is worth 40 pounds to them, not to mention the potential cost of repair, so any advice would be great.

-Jon

 

[Kadayi]

and I can barely keep a straight face. Which is awful, because she has essay deadlines for next week. I've lent her a laptop for the time being, but in terms of fixing the thing, macs are completely obtuse for me, so I thought I'd post here and see if anyone could lend a hand.

When you turn the little bastard on, and it DOES turn on, fans and all, it fails to boot. There's no visual output at all, just a lit (but completely dark) LCD. This continues until you pull the plug - it doesn't want to turn off, either. Not a lot to go on, unfortunately. Could be that it's just bricked.

It's a macbook G4 with a 12" screen, AFAIK, I'll get ahold of her to find out the OS if needed, but this seems to me to be a BIOS/hardware thing.

There's an apple store in town that would solve her problems (perhaps, assuming nothing has snapped inside the little f*cker), but diagnosing a mac is worth 40 pounds to them, not to mention the potential cost of repair, so any advice would be great.

-Jon

It might be that the laptop screen is ****ed. Has she tried firing it up attached to a monitor?

Just a thought, otherwise it's off to the chopshop. I assume she's out of warranty now.

 

[AtomicSpark]

You smile just because it happened to be a Mac? You're an asshole.

But in all seriousness, since you can't even see POST or anything, I guessing it's an issue with the video card or screen. Does it happen to have a video out port? You can always yank the hard drive and use a magical USB adapter to get the files off of it.

 

[Kadayi]

You smile just because it happened to be a Mac? You're an asshole.

I work with macs all day long, but even I'd smile a bit tbh because the Apple propaganda machine is such a crock of shit when it comes to ease of use, reliability etc etc. Apple = Dell with their own OS and a nifty line in design and bullshit, nothing more. The whole reason they've been on the 'recyclable materials' bent for the last few years is because they know that after 5 years whatever mac your using is going to be propping up a landfill.
The original Imac might of won a lot of awards for style and design, but being green isn't one of them.

 

[Sedako]

You smile just because it happened to be a Mac? You're an asshole.

I'd smile too. Apple brings it upon themselves with their horrible ad campaign.

 

[jondy]

It might be that the laptop screen is ****ed. Has she tried firing it up attached to a monitor?

Just a thought, otherwise it's off to the chopshop. I assume she's out of warranty now.

Bizarrely, it doesn't have a monitor-out. I didn't realise that was allowed, heh! It is indeed well out of warranty.

You smile just because it happened to be a Mac? You're an asshole.

Absolutely. At least, however, I'm trying to give her a hand. You must bear in mind that I've been hearing *macs never break down* *why don't you get a mac* all gorram year, generally every time my ageing PC refuses to boot to desktop/boot/turn on; my ire is therefore more personal than the generic mac-hate that fills forums like this.

NB: My sarcasm detector may/may not be operating correctly

But in all seriousness, since you can't even see POST or anything, I guessing it's an issue with the video card or screen. Does it happen to have a video out port? You can always yank the hard drive and use a magical USB adapter to get the files off of it.

Yeah, ripping the files offof her hard drive is the next thing to do, I guess. I don't think she'll want to have this done by an enthusiast with a screwdriver belt, though - she'll probably just spend the money and take it to repair.

If anyone else has anything to add, feel free, but I think now there's nothing else to be done. Thanks for the suggestions, guys.

 

[Kadayi]

1) Get someone else with a mac and a firewire to connect to her laptop.

2) Hold down the T key on her laptop keyboard and fire the machine up, this should fire it up as a remote drive

3) the other person should be able to copy anything off from her drive then.

should work according to our IT guru, it must be firewire though..USB won't see it.

Hope that helps.

 

[No Limit]

I wouldn't just take the hard drive out and try to load it in your PC. Mac's probably use a different file system and the last thing you want to do is **** up the data. Taking it to a professional might be a good idea. This actually makes me wonder why I didn't go in to the business of fixing those POS macs, it would seem like I would have very little competition.