[Drew]

I have a white 13" macbook core2duo 2.16ghz, and everything was running fine up until today. I restarted my macbook, and OS X or windows xp won't boot. If i just let it sit, it displays a white screen continuously. If i press alt while booting, i get a cursor with a blank screen for a long time. It is under a futureshop warranty, but the applecare has expired.

What would be my best course of action?

[Big Mac]

Here's a start up troubleshooting guide from Apple.

After trying some of those steps, like resetting the SMC, I would see if I could successfully boot it using an external start up drive. Actually, since you indicate your suspicion about the drive, attempting to boot from an external would be one of my first troubleshooting steps. If you've made any recent hardware changes, like installing new RAM, revert those changes. And if you can't get anywhere after doing those things, it's probably time for warranty service.

[Simon]

Can you boot from the install DVD?

Run Apple Hardware Test (boot from the install DVD, hold d). Does it report any errors?

[seanc]

How big is the hard drive?

[Drew]

Big Mac, the Apple troubleshooting thing proved worthless, and I've already used my warranty and sent it off to apple.

Simon, I probably could have, but i never got around to it.

seanc, it's a 120gig hard drive.