Hi all,

Recent convert from PCPro forum

My fiance has a Macbook it's white and spec around 2.0GHz (Core 2 Duo) I think. I'm not a mac person i'm afraid but very PC technical,

basically the hard drive died so i bought a new one SATA 120gb (replacing SATA 60gb).

Put the new hard drive in along with an OSX 10.4 DVD i had and held down c to boot from CD but just get the folder with a ? on it.

tried resetting PRAM and holding option and holding the alt key on boot but it shows no bootbale devices , is this because the hard drive isn't formatted and the DVD is wrong/knackered?

what is the next thing to try, i had a retail OSX 10.0 CD but this wouldn't boot either, do i just need to buy a new version of MAC OSX?

please let me know if you need more info etc.

thanks in advance for any advice

Are you sure the drive in the Mac is a DVD drive and that it's working correctly and spinning the disc?
You should only need to hole down the Option (alt) key to get a list of bootable devices, but you have to hold it down for a few seconds after the startup chime.

Mark

thanks for the quick reply mark,

Yes definitely a DVD drive and was definitely working a couple of weeks ago (watched a DVD on it in fact).

I held down Option for ages and eventually a mouse cursor came up but nothing else at all.

someone said it might be because I didn't have the intel version of OSX is this true or do I need a different OS DVD?

If it's not the original install disc that came with the machine and it's not a retail version of OS X then you will need to make sure you at least have a disk for your model of Mac - Intel C2D MacBook.
Not every install disc will work with every machine.
If it is one of those versions I know that I've had to wait a minute or two sometimes for the bootable device to be found and recognised before it pops up on screen after holding down the Option key.

Mark

thanks mark,

ill try the option key again tonight and see if i can borrow someone's mac cd for testing.

thanks again

If you know someone with another Mac then you can always boot your MacBook in FireWire Target Disk mode (connect your Mac to the other Mac using a FireWire cable and restart your MacBook holding down the T key) and use their optical drive to install the OS.

Mark

HI,
Mac OS X 10.4 (AKA Tiger) predates the White MacBooks by over a year. Note that the first Intel capable build of Tiger was 10.4.4
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_OS_X_v10.4). So if your DVD of 10.4 is a version prior to this, the machine will not boot from the disc as it’s only got PPC (the previous chip family) code on it.

You will have similar problems if you try to boot your MacBook from a PPC based Mac - it just won’t work. If you can hook up to an Intel Mac, you will be fine. However, as previously mentioned, the installer on the DVD you have may not work.

It may be simpler to punt for a copy of Leopard, or try to source a 10.4.4 or later DVD of Tiger.

thanks a million, that makes perfect sense.

I hope I was helpful, and that isn’t sarcasm. I’m not quite sure what tone of voice should be implied. Hard to tell in forums.

I think he is genuinely pleased, Paul.

That’s OK then.

apologies if that sounded sarcastic, your comment genuinely made things "fall into place".

I managed to borrow a 10.5.7 CD (Designed for the macbook pro) it failed as I thought it would but did boot from the DVD and let me get to disk utility and format the Hard Drive so I now know the hard drive and DVD drive are working.

I just need to go out and buy a new retail copy of leopard.

thanks to all (sincerely)

Let us know how you get on, BTW. It’s always good to hear of a Mac being raised from the dead. I’ve don it in the past, and that’s quite a satisfying thing to do.