MB 1,1-7,1 !HELP NEEDED! Late 2006 MacBook white screen

[x86_64]

I really need your help.

My MacBook 2,1 (Core 2 Duo, GMA950, 2GB DDR2, OS X Lion 10.7.5) was working just fine a few days ago, now when I plugged it in it gave me a white screen. Here are the specific symptoms

- Gives chime
- Cannot boot from recovery (holding alt just gives me a cursor which moves very slowly)
- Resetting SMC did not work
- Turns off immediately when power button is pressed (after the white screen happens, like it wont hesitate to turn off)
- Fans start ramping up after a minute, and it's been 5 minutes and nothing has seemed to change.

It had a Kingston SSD, which I heard are prone to failure. However, I didn't see any signs of failure prior to this

I did change the partition sizes on the drive the last time I used it, but not a lot

What should I do?

 

[x86_64]

UPDATE:

I tried resetting the NVRAM. Didn't work.
I tried booting into Verbose mode. Doesn't work.
I made a bootable USB for Lion. Doesn't show up in Boot Options.

Is it bricked?

 

[DeltaMac]

When you tried resetting the NVRAM (PRAM reset), do you get a boot chime? Keep holding the same 4 keys (Option-Command-P-R) until you hear the boot chime two more times.
Any change after that reset?
Can you boot into single-user mode? (Boot, holding Command-S, until you see black screen with text scrolling down the screen) If no text (and you still only have a white screen), try removing the RAM, so no RAM is installed. Does anything happen differently now when you try to boot? With no RAM installed, the sleep LED should blink, and (I think) you should hear beeping, maybe just blinking LED, not sure. But, something different should happen with no RAM.
Try removing the hard drive, too. You will (in normal operation) get a flashing folder/question mark on the screen after trying to boot without any hard drive.
Do you get that flashing folder, or does the screen stay blank and white ?

 

[x86_64]

When you tried resetting the NVRAM (PRAM reset), do you get a boot chime? Keep holding the same 4 keys (Option-Command-P-R) until you hear the boot chime two more times.
Any change after that reset?
Can you boot into single-user mode? (Boot, holding Command-S, until you see black screen with text scrolling down the screen) If no text (and you still only have a white screen), try removing the RAM, so no RAM is installed. Does anything happen differently now when you try to boot? With no RAM installed, the sleep LED should blink, and (I think) you should hear beeping, maybe just blinking LED, not sure. But, something different should happen with no RAM.
Try removing the hard drive, too. You will (in normal operation) get a flashing folder/question mark on the screen after trying to boot without any hard drive.
Do you get that flashing folder, or does the screen stay blank and white ?

Did all of these, and unfortunately nothing's changed

Without the RAM, the sleep light blinks and the disc drive seems to have activity for some reason

Without the hard drive (ended up being a completely different drive than what I thought), it still showed a blank white screen.

I think there's something going wrong with accessing the bios itself, startup options is the only thing with some real responsiveness but it just gives me a cursor and no options

 

[DeltaMac]

When you thought the disk drive had activity when the RAM was removed, that was likely just the fan that you heard, which would probably go to high speed.

With everything that you report, I would say the logic board has died, so almost nothing loads in the firmware, and certainly nothing about any system loading.

17 years... probably time to put that one on the shelf, and move on to something newer. You know how to remove the drive, so easy enough to transfer to an external enclosure, so you can copy your important files to another Mac, if you need to do that.

Just curious-- How was the drive different than you thought? different brand?

 

[B S Magnet]

I really need your help.

My MacBook 2,1 (Core 2 Duo, GMA950, 2GB DDR2, OS X Lion 10.7.5) was working just fine a few days ago, now when I plugged it in it gave me a white screen. Here are the specific symptoms

- Gives chime
- Cannot boot from recovery (holding alt just gives me a cursor which moves very slowly)
- Resetting SMC did not work
- Turns off immediately when power button is pressed (after the white screen happens, like it wont hesitate to turn off)
- Fans start ramping up after a minute, and it's been 5 minutes and nothing has seemed to change.

It had a Kingston SSD, which I heard are prone to failure. However, I didn't see any signs of failure prior to this

I did change the partition sizes on the drive the last time I used it, but not a lot

What should I do?

Offhand, do you happen to have relative access to another legacy Mac — one with a FireWire port? This is getting to be a taller ask nowadays, just as it is for asking whether one has one of the FireWire-to-Thunderbolt adapters/dongles handy.

If so (or not, but willing to think through troubleshooting along these lines), two of three paths I might consider in your situation (ironically, I happen to have a working late 2006 running 10.7.5 but with an HDD and 3GB RAM I’m trying to sell) involve the FireWire bus in some capacity.

The familiar power-on chime is an indicator the Power-On Self Test, or POST, passed (namely, checking logic board core components like memory controller, RAM sticks, GPU, etc.). So if that’s heard, the problem is probably downstream of that.

Path #1: external HDD/SSD drive for booting, using FireWire. Have a bootable Snow Leopard 10.6.8 on an external FireWire drive. Connect it, and hold Option to check whether that volume comes up as bootable.

Boot from that.

If the system fails to boot or Option doesn’t turn up anything, then this is a sign there’s something afoot with the MB’s hardware itself. If it succeeds, then the culprit probably lies with the internal drive your MB is using (from the sound of it, that drive is an SSD).

If so, it could be drive hardware failure (SSDs do fail, including the Apple-supplied ones from later, retina-era Macs).

To be sure, pull out the MB’s hard drive and swap in another hard drive, such as the one you used, if so, to boot from FireWire. If it boots correctly, then the problem is probably with the pulled drive and it will probably need to be replaced. In my experience with a failing SSD, which both fortunately and unfortunately is a total of once, power-on and attempts to boot to a verbose screen or a grey Apple icon don’t go well. (I say “unfortunately” only in that I lack experience beyond the one time with that specific SSD). What I can say is when an SSD fails, it is often catastrophic, complete, and abrupt. Recovery of contents, if vital, may be incredibly difficult, if not near-impossible.


Path #2: put the MacBook into FireWire Target Disk Mode and mount that on another working Mac. Once more, FireWire may be of help. In this case, boot the MacBook into Target Disk Mode. Mount it on another Mac running at least Lion or later (FireWire-to-FireWire or FireWire-to-Thunderbolt, via that Apple FW-to-TB adapter/dongle). Check to see whether the drive in the MacBook mounts. If not, the drive has probably failed. If so, then at minimum, run Disk Utility on the mounted FireWire drive. Work from that info.


Path #3: use another external HDD/SSD with a known, working build of OS X into the MacBook current drive’s stead. This is probably simpler than fussing about with FireWire, and possibly easier. It does require an HDD or SSD which has at least Leopard or later (and if Leopard, then a Leopard build from an Intel Mac, not one from a PowerPC unit). Again, if that fails, then this points to something hardware-related on the MacBook.


I have a hunch this is a failing SSD, especially if you’re unable to reach the Recovery partition on a system which worked previously. That should work if the usual boot volume had some kind of problem after a non-clean shut-off/crash. It’s a sign the SSD controller is either kaput or no longer able to access one (or more) of the NVRAM storage modules on the SSD.


Update: unlike @DeltaMac ’s hypothesis, I find the common theme with a failed logic board — and, thus, a failed system in need of retirement or, more adventuresome, finding a working logic board to replace it — is the board won’t POST, and in several cases won’t even power on. That your MacBook did power on, with POST chime, bright screen, and fans, suggests the logic board is functioning at its most basic level.

If, however, you can’t get to the blue Option-boot screen (as in, it won’t even show up when holding down Option at powering on), then something else, such as a failing GPU might be a culprit (odd, since as crappy as the GMA950 is, isn’t really known for GPU failure like some of the Radeon and GeForce GPUs from Macs around this time).

 

[x86_64]

When you thought the disk drive had activity when the RAM was removed, that was likely just the fan that you heard, which would probably go to high speed.

With everything that you report, I would say the logic board has died, so almost nothing loads in the firmware, and certainly nothing about any system loading.

17 years... probably time to put that one on the shelf, and move on to something newer. You know how to remove the drive, so easy enough to transfer to an external enclosure, so you can copy your important files to another Mac, if you need to do that.

Just curious-- How was the drive different than you thought? different brand?

No, I'm pretty sure the disc drive was spinning, ever since I got it it's always been making some noise and I couldn't use it so yeah

I mean it is possible the logic board is dead but it did chime and there is some sort of cursor, key combos do work (like resetting the NVRAM) but even then it could be true

I just recently thrifted it so, kinda bummed out it's already dead. There it goes 😔

Also, I thought it was the regular Kingston SSD you can find for cheap on amazon but it ended up being some HyperX Kingston SSD

 

[x86_64]

Offhand, do you happen to have relative access to another legacy Mac — one with a FireWire port? This is getting to be a taller ask nowadays, just as it is for asking whether one has one of the FireWire-to-Thunderbolt adapters/dongles handy.

If so (or not, but willing to think through troubleshooting along these lines), one of two paths I might consider in your situation (ironically, I happen to have a working late 2006 running 10.7.5 but with an HDD and 3GB RAM I’m trying to sell).

The familiar power-on chime is an indicator the Power-On Self Test, or POST, passed (namely, checking logic board core components like memory controller, RAM sticks, GPU, etc.). So if that’s heard, the problem is probably downstream of that.

Path #1: external HDD/SSD drive for booting, using FireWire. Have a bootable Snow Leopard 10.6.8 on an external FireWire drive. Connect it, and hold Option to check whether that volume comes up as bootable.

Boot from that.

If the system fails to boot or Option doesn’t turn up anything, then this is a sign there’s something afoot with the MB’s hardware itself. If it succeeds, then the culprit probably lies with the internal drive your MB is using (from the sound of it, that drive is an SSD).

If so, it could be drive hardware failure (SSDs do fail, including the Apple-supplied ones from later, retina-era Macs).

To be sure, pull out the MB’s hard drive and swap in another hard drive, such as the one you used, if so, to boot from FireWire. If it boots correctly, then the problem is probably with the pulled drive and it will probably need to be replaced. In my experience with a failing SSD, which both fortunately and unfortunately is a total of once, power-on and attempts to boot to a verbose screen or a grey Apple icon don’t go well. (I say “unfortunately” only in that I lack experience beyond the one time with that specific SSD). What I can say is when an SSD fails, it is often catastrophic, complete, and abrupt. Recovery of contents, if vital, may be incredibly difficult, if not near-impossible.


Path #2: put the MacBook into FireWire Target Disk Mode and mount that on another working Mac. Once more, FireWire may be of help. In this case, boot the MacBook into Target Disk Mode. Mount it on another Mac running at least Lion or later (FireWire-to-FireWire or FireWire-to-Thunderbolt, via that Apple FW-to-TB adapter/dongle). Check to see whether the drive in the MacBook mounts. If not, the drive has probably failed. If so, then at minimum, run Disk Utility on the mounted FireWire drive. Work from that info.


Path #3: use another external HDD/SSD in the MacBook current drive’s stead. This is probably simpler than fussing about with FireWire, and possibly easier. It does require an HDD or SSD which has at least Leopard or later (and if Leopard, then a Leopard build from an Intel Mac, not one from a PowerPC unit). Again, if that fails, then this points to something hardware-related on the MacBook.


I have a hunch this is a failing SSD, especially if you’re unable to reach the Recovery partition on a system which worked previously. That should work if the usual boot volume had some kind of problem after a non-clean shut-off/crash. It’s a sign the SSD controller is either kaput or no longer able to access one (or more) of the NVRAM storage modules on the SSD.

I don't exactly have access to another Mac at all, let alone one with Firewire, but if I do I'll keep this in mind

I doubt this is an SSD problem as it persisted after pulling the SSD and didn't show the folder with question mark icon

 

[x86_64]

The SSD might work fine, in which case I'll probably salvage it for use in something else 🤷‍♂️

 

[B S Magnet]

I don't exactly have access to another Mac at all, let alone one with Firewire, but if I do I'll keep this in mind

I doubt this is an SSD problem as it persisted after pulling the SSD and didn't show the folder with question mark icon

Do you have an older HDD (it doesn’t even need to have a Mac partition on it) handy you could throw in? If so, can you reach the flashing folder icon?

 

[Neon’s Dad]

When these models were current, there was a repair extension program to replace the hard drive (SATA) and sleep sensor bracket. A broken one matches your exact symptoms. To test this you should disconnect the flex cable connector from the logic board and power it back on. If it’s successful you should get a chime and shortly see a flashing folder with a question mark.

I’m sure you can find the part through ifixit.

Separately, if you have an external drive dock or hard drive enclosure, you can place you ssd externally and boot it that way.

In either case you’ll need to disconnect the sata cable with sleep sensor from the logic board.

 

[motorazr]

For kicks, do you have access to another display for output? Ie the dvi adapter and an external monitor?

I wonder if the video cable is the issue, since it gives other signs of life — maybe just this panel has gone bad (specifically the cable connecting the display, since it runs into the barrel and is rotated back and forth when opening and closing over the years).

If no access, cloud be worth unplugging the display and plugging it in again. And blowing out the dust, while inside

 

[noodledog]

I'm so impressed at the level of help offered here. And the absence of snark (or even well meaning incredulity) that you aren't just upgrading to something 10 years newer for under $100.

 

[B S Magnet]

I'm so impressed at the level of help offered here. And the absence of snark (or even well meaning incredulity) that you aren't just upgrading to something 10 years newer for under $100.

I can only speak for me here, but thank you. I suspect you’ll find others will chime in here with much the same.

Short history on that:

The Early Intel Macs forum was struck into being as a spin-off of the PowerPC Macs forum a few years ago, as more posts there began to ask about the first several years of the Cure Solo, Core Duo, and Core 2 Duo Macs. This included many of the PowerPC Macs forum regulars whose setups featured both PPC-Intel Macs, but couldn’t find similar level of support on the other MR forums (for the reasons which makes many forums off-putting).

A thing which brought us together over there is, I think, not only our shared enjoyment of working with vintage Macs, but several around here (whether on MR or years of life on l’internet in general) were also disinterested in the snark, unhelpful remarks, and impatient, terse remarks frequent elsewhere on the forums — the one-upping, the subtext of hostility, the urinating duels (between, ofc, those who can aim), and whatever other banal tedium one can imagine.

The PowerPC Macs forum evolved into what it (and this forum) is today from collective participation toward that welcoming, patient place sometime around the mid-2010s. (I joined MR in late 2018, and the forum’s welcoming community was already established.) There are sometimes arguments which surface, but they have, for the most part, remained mostly civil. It does take work and paying attention on all of our behalves, but I do think it has been (and continues to be) well worth it.

Whatever comes of @x86_64 ’s late ’06 MB troubleshooting, why not stick around for a while?

 

[TheShortTimer]

I'm so impressed at the level of help offered here. And the absence of snark (or even well meaning incredulity) that you aren't just upgrading to something 10 years newer for under $100.

In addition to the lovely statement from @B S Magnet, there will never be any snark from me on that front because I use and maintain computers that are over 40 years old, let alone a Core 2 Duo Mac - which is a baby in comparison!

Also, I take the view that every computer which is saved from collecting dust or a landfill is a triumph in our disposable, throw-away society.

 

[B S Magnet]

In addition to the lovely statement from @B S Magnet, there will never be any snark from me on that front because I use and maintain computers that are over 40 years old, let alone a Core 2 Duo Mac - which is a baby in comparison!

Also, I take the view that every computer which is saved from collecting dust or a landfill is a triumph in our disposable, throw-away society.

Yes, because we don’t need another Mac erroneously tossed in a local landfill; container ship-sent to a landfill or burn site far from our wealthier-world environs; in some liminal space (like where people dump trash illegally, at the edge of spaces people use*); or, indeed, at the bottom of the Mariana Trench or your nearest riverbed.

Here’s to upcycling. 🥂

* Topical to this, I walked last weekend along a freight rail corridor to go butterfly spotting (a lot of people along there also like to, clandestinely, walk their dogs along there, even though it’s sort of, uh, not permitted). I came across a new dumping spot full of someone’s personal detritus. The pile was partially burnt from an attempted fire which didn’t stay lit (it’s rained a lot here this summer). I bring up this anecdote because in the pile, there was a half burnt, Space Gray iPad mini keyboard add-on, not unlike this. One-half of the keys had melted. Me, exasperated, said aloud to no one: “People are the frackin’ worst.” [note: that YTP — YouTube Poop — link is NSFW and, frankly, crass, but that time index jingle is what I hear in my head each time I run across dumping spots like that; I swap the country in that doctored jingle with “people”.] Anyhow, that’s enough out of me for at least a month.

 

[rampancy]

When these models were current, there was a repair extension program to replace the hard drive (SATA) and sleep sensor bracket. A broken one matches your exact symptoms. To test this you should disconnect the flex cable connector from the logic board and power it back on. If it’s successful you should get a chime and shortly see a flashing folder with a question mark.

I’m sure you can find the part through ifixit.

Separately, if you have an external drive dock or hard drive enclosure, you can place you ssd externally and boot it that way.

In either case you’ll need to disconnect the sata cable with sleep sensor from the logic board.

Not intending to argue with you, but this is honestly the first I've ever heard of this - do you have any links or documentation where I can learn more?

I've come across a few A1181s – back when I was obsessed with repairing and restoring them – that booted to white screens, and even some that spontaneously only booted to a white screen after seemingly working perfectly...I'd always chalked it up to some kind of short circuit from grounding issues related to booting with a dead battery.

If it's something as simple as a sleep sensor flex cable issue, that means I have a couple of seemingly dead A1181s in my parts pile that I can potentially ressurect, for relatively cheap.

 

[rampancy]

In addition to the lovely statement from @B S Magnet, there will never be any snark from me on that front because I use and maintain computers that are over 40 years old, let alone a Core 2 Duo Mac - which is a baby in comparison!

Also, I take the view that every computer which is saved from collecting dust or a landfill is a triumph in our disposable, throw-away society.

This was exactly the reason why I ended up amassing a small army of A1181s - because I couldn't bear to see these go to e-waste. In a lot of cases, they were all perfectly working machines...they just needed RAM/SSD upgrades, or an install of Linux supporting more current web browsers. Even now, I'm amazed at what I can still do with a lowly 2010 MacBook Air.

 

[Neon’s Dad]

Not intending to argue with you, but this is honestly the first I've ever heard of this - do you have any links or documentation where I can learn more?

I've come across a few A1181s – back when I was obsessed with repairing and restoring them – that booted to white screens, and even some that spontaneously only booted to a white screen after seemingly working perfectly...I'd always chalked it up to some kind of short circuit from grounding issues related to booting with a dead battery.

If it's something as simple as a sleep sensor flex cable issue, that means I have a couple of seemingly dead A1181s in my parts pile that I can potentially ressurect, for relatively cheap.

Don’t worry about asking clarifying questions. Thank you for doing that. I guess i was wrong about the model that had that issue. The model with the issue was the unibody 2008 MacBook and 2009 MacBook Pro. Apologies for adding bad information.