Great...another MacBook death!

[Legacy]

Well...last night it kept shutting off randomly a few times and then continued working. I used it this morning fine, then put it to sleep. Just now I switched it on. The drive makes a 'whiirrryyyy' noise then it came on as normal...

A few seconds later the screen went black and all I could hear was a loop of the 'whiirrryyy whirrry' noise it makes after resuming from sleep or cold boot.

I held the power key for 5 seconds, turned it off..and tried to reboot...nothing!

Just the whirrryy noise. No bong nothing. Tried to reset the PRAM and SMC, same crap!

Any advice? Laptop is the original MB Core Duo, about 19 months old and is under Higher Education Warranty.

Past repairs include:

Battery replacement (twice)
Hard Drive and Topcase replacement (once)

 

[RonJ83]

try getting new RAM. is the stand-by light solild? if so it might be a RAM issue.

 

[Legacy]

try getting new RAM. is the stand-by light solild? if so it might be a RAM issue.

Really? How do I find this out? Shall I take out one stick and see if it boots?

I changed the standard RAM for 2x1GB Crucial 667 sticks and all was working a treat!

 

[SheriffParker]

Either bad RAM or a logic board failure. I hope for your sake its just the RAM.

 

[Legacy]

Either bad RAM or a logic board failure. I hope for your sake its just the RAM.

I hope its the logic board because I really don't want to fork out another £40 to replace the RAM myself when the logic board is going to be free. Do they upgrade the board when replacing it or use refurbished CoreDuo boards?

 

[daneoni]

Sounds like the Logic Board is losing the ability to control other components such as HDD (hence whirring noise) and graphics (dark screen).

Either that or the HDD is dying, which would be a better problem since you can easily swap that out. Im more inclined to go with HDD failure

 

[aristobrat]

Laptop is the original MB Core Duo, about 19 months old and is under Higher Education Warranty.

I don't remember which weeks of manufacturing were affected, but some of the original Core Duos had that Random Shutdown Syndrome that sounds a lot like what's happening to yours.