Macbook Air Won't boot

[LoveUrMac]

A customer brought me a macbook Air with a corrupted hard drive. It would boot, but not "do" anything. Disk Utility said it could not be repaired. I took the drive out of the computer, put it in a Zif connector, connected it to an iMac running Snow Leopard and with Drive Genius, repaired the drive. Then using Super Duper, I cloned the Snow Leopard system onto the Air hard drive (original Air with 80G drive). This created a bootable hard drive and I actually booted the iMac from the zif connected drive to prove to myself it worked.

Anyway, when I put the drive back into the Air, it does not boot. There is a folder with a ? mark blinking.... Thus, my dilemma. Why won't the drive work inside the Air? Did the drive connector cable get damaged? I hesitate to put the clients money into a new drive since I'm not sure what the problem is.

Any ideas? Do I buy a new connector cable? What if that doesn't work? I know the drive connector is good because the zif connector works. This is the first macbook Air I've worked on. It is the original macBook air.

 

[LoveUrMac]

Another thing I tried

I hooked the drive up to the Macbook Air using the Zif connector.... why not try that, right?

And, it boots. So, any thoughts? Should I assume its the drive connector cable?

There are no beeps on start up, so I don't think it's the logic board or the RAM. Also, one interesting note, the keyboard seems to not function correctly. Maybe this Air has just lived it's life and it's done? For example, none of the keys or mouse responded when it booted with the zif. So, I couldn't sign in or select shut down, or anything.

 

[anonymous Mac Tech]

I hooked the drive up to the Macbook Air using the Zif connector.... why not try that, right?

And, it boots. So, any thoughts? Should I assume its the drive connector cable?

There are no beeps on start up, so I don't think it's the logic board or the RAM. Also, one interesting note, the keyboard seems to not function correctly. Maybe this Air has just lived it's life and it's done? For example, none of the keys or mouse responded when it booted with the zif. So, I couldn't sign in or select shut down, or anything.

I'd suspect a liquid spill. Just because disk utility can't repair it doesn't mean the drive or cable are bad. The directory structure could just be hosed due to hard shutdowns and not boot because of stuck keys. It needs a thorough disassembly and logic board inspection for liquid damage. More than likely a top case will fix it if the board is fine.

 

[jay007]

I have a macbook pro with similar problems. I am actually typing on it now. I bought it off a customer as it went thru 3 hard drives and needed a charger. i bought it to fix it for myself but never fully got around to it. Here is symptoms.

It wont boot off cd. Wont boot off hard drive like yours flashing ?. Brand new 500gb hard drive. Same thing it would boot off of usb sometimes so i hooked it up to an Imac and installed Lion on it. Put hard drive back into macbook and it booted to Recovery mode. I could not reinstall from here as it just looped contacting apple. That problem was solved by changing date via terminal as i had removed the battery and it lost the date. So after the reinstall if i shutdown the laptop i am back to square one. This macbook is working now after two weeks but i have not shut it down I just put it to sleep. When i get time i will power it off and try solve the problem. In the system report of this macbook the Serial Ata is a Nvidia MCP79. So next time I shut it down and get the flashing ? I am going to heat this MCP79 chip and see if it comes back. I bought an optibay to replace the superdrive and its the same so in my case its not a faulty cable. Find out what MCP is controlling the serial ATA on that macbook air and give it a belt of a hot air gun. I have not done this yet its only a hunch and when I do it will be my own not a customers. I am not saying a hotair gun will fix it but if it comes back after heating its time for a new MCP. If you can hold customer off till one day next week I will try this and let you know how I got on. It does sound like a very similar problem.

 

[anonymous Mac Tech]

I have a macbook pro with similar problems. I am actually typing on it now. I bought it off a customer as it went thru 3 hard drives and needed a charger. i bought it to fix it for myself but never fully got around to it. Here is symptoms.

It wont boot off cd. Wont boot off hard drive like yours flashing ?. Brand new 500gb hard drive. Same thing it would boot off of usb sometimes so i hooked it up to an Imac and installed Lion on it. Put hard drive back into macbook and it booted to Recovery mode. I could not reinstall from here as it just looped contacting apple. That problem was solved by changing date via terminal as i had removed the battery and it lost the date. So after the reinstall if i shutdown the laptop i am back to square one. This macbook is working now after two weeks but i have not shut it down I just put it to sleep. When i get time i will power it off and try solve the problem. In the system report of this macbook the Serial Ata is a Nvidia MCP79. So next time I shut it down and get the flashing ? I am going to heat this MCP79 chip and see if it comes back. I bought an optibay to replace the superdrive and its the same so in my case its not a faulty cable. Find out what MCP is controlling the serial ATA on that macbook air and give it a belt of a hot air gun. I have not done this yet its only a hunch and when I do it will be my own not a customers. I am not saying a hotair gun will fix it but if it comes back after heating its time for a new MCP. If you can hold customer off till one day next week I will try this and let you know how I got on. It does sound like a very similar problem.

I'm trying to make sense of what you are symptoms, but it would be nice to know which Macbook Pro you are referring to? But anyway, the Macbook Pro system architecture and the Macbook Air system architecture are so vastly different, I doubt your situation is similar (as in highly doubtful both machines could be suffering the same unique type of issue and being related to the same hardware failure).

I'm sure you are just trying to help, but if you are going to continue posting about your machines problem, a new thread should be started to keep this thread from inadvertently being hijacked.

 

[LoveUrMac]

Thanks

Find out what MCP is controlling the serial ATA on that macbook air and give it a belt of a hot air gun

This is beyond my expertise ..... Thx for the suggestion.