[hatim]

since my warranty expired I've started to have numerous problems. My optitcal drive died. So I took apart the macbook and checked the connections ( The Macbook was already out of warranty. They would've charged $20 just to check) and they were fine. I removed the optical drive completely. The computer ran five for a few days without ANY problem whatsoever until yesterday it just hanged. I say the ball of death and nothign happened. I forced it to shutdown and when I tried restarting, I would get a grey screen and the hard disk start to click. I presumed the hard disk had died. Then I pluuged in a firewire hard drive (without any boot options at the time) and tried to boot from it. I got a mouse arrow on the grey screen but nothing else. Then I turned it back of and back on and now I get no display or chime. The hard disk stil clicks and I can hear the logic board fan. I tried restarting the PRAM and all of what it says on apple's support site.

edit: The display problem is because of the RAM. One of stick's connectors are rusted. Anyway around that? Thats a lot of deaths in one computer in 1 day

edit2: Is it possible to install OS X on my new hard disk without the DVD drive? I have an external firewire hard drive if that will help.
Also, my hard disk was once replaced under warranty about 5-6 months ago. Will that still be covered under warranty?

[chipchen]

Could be the whole logic board causing issues. Did you drop the computer or bump it around? It's pretty rare for multiple things to be failing at once... like multiple organ failure in a human is rare... but it can happen. (but usually there's a bigger issue, like being hit by a truck or the brain is screwed up)

You can install OS X from another hard drive if it's imaged with the OS X Install... but the short and simple answer is no. The Apple stores have this and can probably do the install for you from one of their images. Or if you have another Mac you can boot the MacBook into target disk mode and install onto it from another Mac (Intel only).

And no, the hard drive is not in warranty. Apple's warranties on repairs are 90 days.

Here's what I recommend. Take it to Apple or send it in. They have a FLAT RATE repair... it's about $284. It covers anything that's not accidental damage (no cracked screens, spills, dents, etc). But if the computer is in good condition, then you're good to go. They'll probably end up replacing optical drive, hard drive, logic board, ram.... good deal for under $300.

BTW. You should buy a lottery ticket. Your luck has to even out somewhere else.

[hatim]

Originally Posted by chipchen 

Could be the whole logic board causing issues. Did you drop the computer or bump it around? It's pretty rare for multiple things to be failing at once... like multiple organ failure in a human is rare... but it can happen. (but usually there's a bigger issue, like being hit by a truck or the brain is screwed up)

You can install OS X from another hard drive if it's imaged with the OS X Install... but the short and simple answer is no. The Apple stores have this and can probably do the install for you from one of their images. Or if you have another Mac you can boot the MacBook into target disk mode and install onto it from another Mac (Intel only).

And no, the hard drive is not in warranty. Apple's warranties on repairs are 90 days.

Here's what I recommend. Take it to Apple or send it in. They have a FLAT RATE repair... it's about $284. It covers anything that's not accidental damage (no cracked screens, spills, dents, etc). But if the computer is in good condition, then you're good to go. They'll probably end up replacing optical drive, hard drive, logic board, ram.... good deal for under $300.

BTW. You should buy a lottery ticket. Your luck has to even out somewhere else.

I still haven't got the optical drive checked but the hard disk is dead. I tried on another computer. I replaced the hard disk and used transmac to restore the disk image to a firewire hard disk. Installed well from there.

The ram is working fine too. So I ended up spending 90$ on a 120GB hard disk and some time and everything is well now (except no optical drive which I don't need anyhow)

I'm guessing the optical drive might have died when I decided to pack my macbook with my luggage on an overseas trip. Worked fine before and I tried 2 weeks after my return and it was dead. The hard disk might just have been bad luck. The Ram has rusted connectors on one sides and takes several attempts to get it to work but once it's in it works fine .

But now I'm so used to the macbook that I can never like the feel of other notebooks. Mac OS x is simply awesome and the macbook trackpad is great too. The only thing that can be improved is the heat and I the keys of the keyboard sometimes fail to register. But I think I would replace a dead macbook with another macbook or macbook pro