Mac OS X freezes on startup

[mcmurphy12]

Hi everyone!

My friend came to me the other day asking me about a Mac. I personally know nothing about Macs, but what I have heard is that they do not recommend attempting repairs yourself.

She has a Macbook with either OS X 10.4 or 10.5. She doesn't know for sure so I have narrowed it down from the year the computer was made. When she turns the computer on, the Apple logo displays on the screen and a circle that indicates it is loading, but it freezes at this screen. She cannot find her recovery disc and if she did, there is a CD already in the drive and she cannot open the drive.

Is there anything she can do or is her best bet to go to a Mac repair person?

 

[SNGX1275]

If you hold down the mouse button when turning it on, it should spit out the disk.

Will it boot in 'safe' mode? Right after the chime, hold down shift.

Could try resetting the PRAM:

Shut down the computer.
Locate the following keys on the keyboard: Command, Option, P, and R. You will need to hold these keys down simultaneously in step 4.
Turn on the computer.
Press and hold the Command-Option-P-R keys. You must press this key combination before the gray screen appears.
Hold the keys down until the computer restarts and you hear the startup sound for the second time.
Release the keys.

Need to find the install disk and boot from that (by holding down C or D (I forget which one)) and then the Utilities menu and disk utility. From there you can scan the disk for problems.

If none of that works you could remove a stick of RAM and try booting. The RAM is easy to remove on older Macbooks, remove the battery and there is a metal part that runs around half of the battery, held by 2 screws I think. Remove those, and you'll see the RAM, they are removed by sliding the lever.

Also, booting in verbose mode may be pretty useful to see where its hanging. Hit command+v during boot. This can be done while doing a safe boot.