[kentuckyfried]

I'm not sure what I might've done to my macbook, but here goes nothing:

Lately, this macbook has been making rapid rattling noises, especially when the temperatures are hot in the surrounding envrionment (80+ degrees F).

Anyhow, my friend advised me that it's probably an accumulation of dirt on some part of the internal fan blades. Whatever. I wasn't sure how I was going to deal with it, in terms of trying to disassemble the macbook (not something I feel qualified to do) or trying to blow compressed air and getting the dirt pushed far into the laptop (not a very good idea either).

Long story short, the laptop was rattling horribly shortly before I went to bed on Thursday night, so I closed it to put it to sleep.

I opened it up to try and login...and instead of taking me to the desktop, it starting going through the setup assistant one sees upon starting up new mac. So I figured, I'd go through all the steps and then get to my desktop, through whatever weirdness that was happening at that moment.

Instead of being able to login, the macbook just repreatedly kept looping me through the setup assistant.

I tried to address the problem today by booting up from the retail copy of Leopard and then fixing permissions and disk first aid. This had no effect.

Any idea what the problem might be at this point? I want to try the Apple Diagnostic Test tool, presumable it's on the retail copy of Leopard as well as Disk Utility (I've never used the Diag. Test before)? Any ideas what might be wrong?

Next step if that doesn't work is to back it up, take it to the Apple Retail Store, and either pickup Disk Warrior or leave the laptop there for whatever repair. The only bad part about that is that this laptop is way out of warranty and I'm guessing the repair cost is going to be enormous (This is a first rev. macbook released in May 2006, I didn't get Apple Care for it). :

[Simon]

As I already pointed out here you have to have the install DVD for AHT. It's not on the retail Leopard DVD.

[seanc]

I'd back it up NOW if I were you. That rattling, may well be your hard drive.

[kentuckyfried]

Hmm...my reply didn't post.

Anyhow, it shouldn't be the hard drive, I just replaced that about 6-8 months ago. It's not one of the notebook hard drives on the "bad notebook hard drives to get from Hitachi or whatever the company was". I was a little paranoid, I decided to change it out anyhow to a 120 gb, 7200 rpm one from newegg.

I was hoping that wasn't going to fix the problem but I still had the rattling problem ever since and never got around to fixing it (procrastination).

I've posted a movie of the rattling sound on my idisk (please grab it and tell me what you think if you have time):

public.me.com/jasch1n

Another thing I noticed is that in conjunction with the fan problem, I've been having alot of waking from sleep problems, so I'm wondering if this's what's causing the fan to go nuts. In the same archive as the movie, there's a photo of the bottom surface of the macbook. the upper right hand corner where my hand is located is really, really hot...

Prior to taking that picture, the fan started winding up like mad. I tried closing the laptop, hoping that putting it to sleep would give it a chance to cool down and stop the fan. Instead, the rattling continued, and upon opening it up again, I coudln't get the laptop to awake from sleep. then I adjusted the angle of the open screen of the macbook, *then* the rattling finally stopped.

I eventually had to force-shutodown the macbook by holding the power button down and restarting later this afternoon.



.

[@pplejaxkz]

This is a sticky situation because you don't have Applecare. I myself might be in the need of a new logic board for my Macbook, and I too didn't get Applecare. A very stupid/naive decision on my part. I really think you should take it to your local Apple store and have a Genius look at it. I wouldn't recommend a Quickdrop because you should be there to explain everything with the Genius. From what it sounds, it may need to be left over night a couple days but atleast be there for the initial appointment. That way you can fully explain everything before they go ahead and crack er' open. Plus you can't do a Quickdrop on an out of warrantied machine without an appointment. They want to make sure that you know you'll be charged before they go ahead and work on it.

Sorry this probably isn't what you wanted to hear, but please believe I am in a similar boat. I hope everything goes well, and like SeanC said, Back it up now! Best of luck.

[kentuckyfried]

Yeah, I regret not getting Applecare for this machine. Usually if there's any issues, they crop up within the year, not outside of the first year of the machine (at least that's been my personal experience).

The curse of the rev. A machines strike again!