MBA Won't Boot. light comes on then "click"...

[Delane]

Hello, my 80GB first gen MBA stopped working yesterday. No display or chimes. I press the start button and the little light on the front comes on for a moment, then you can hear a "click" and the light goes off. If I hold down the start button continually, the light comes on with a rapid blink/pulse (too quick to count) and then clicks off again.

I cannot boot the machine off the superdrive. I tried all the reset options at http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1365?viewlocale=en_US

Would anyone know if this is symptomatic of harddrive vs. logic board failure? If logic board, then the cost is simply not worth it. If it is a hard drive, I can (and have) replaced these myself...even though I understand the MBA is more difficult.

Any help or pointers would be much appreciated. Thanks!

 

[wordoflife]

I'd have to say hard drive or logic board because of the clicking noise. Except if it was the hard drive, you should still be able to boot of the Superdrive then I'd have to say Logic Board. Plus, even if the hard drive was dead, the computer would still stay on (which it doesn't) so I have to go with logic board.

Do you have warranty?

 

[iBookG4user]

It doesn't sound like it is the hard drive for me, as a dead hard drive wouldn't have those symptoms. If it were a dead hard drive it would boot and get to the grey screen before showing you a folder icon with a question mark in it. That sounds like a more series problem than that, most likely the logic board. As asked above, do you have any warranty left?

 

[Delane]

No warranty. I purchased this on eBay about a year and a half ago. I suppose I will take it apart and see if unplugging the battery re-sets anything. Wish I had another drive I could plug into temporarily to see if that might fix it.

 

[wordoflife]

Keep us posted.

Take it to Apple and see what they can do to help

 

[Vikz]

The click you hear is the hard drive spinning off, that means that the MBA is not powering up, you should check the battery, logic board or even the hard drive to make sure which one is not letting then other components turn on.

BTW if you continue play with the MBA, the click noise will damaged your hardndrive and you will also lose your data... Saying it of experience while repairing macs

 

[Delane]

I opened up the MBA and disconnected the harddrive (BTW I could hear it spinning up when the power button is pushed). The machine acted the same way, except the hard drive did not spin up of course.

I then disconnected the battery...of course nothing happened.

I then connected the power source with battery disconnected and it acted the same (momentarily powered on/spun up like it always does before clicking off).

For the heck of it I disconnected the fan..which did nothing either way.

I would think if the harddrive was the issue I would at least get video display looking for a startup drive, but no dice. Seems like my problem is power at the logic board...shorting or otherwise powering itself back off?

Any other ideas on how I might be able to isolate the problem area on the logicboard? I realize I am over my head on this one...but I don't have much to lose considering the cost of a board is about the same as another 1st gen MBA.

 

[halledise]

No warranty. I purchased this on eBay about a year and a half ago. I suppose I will take it apart and see if unplugging the battery re-sets anything. Wish I had another drive I could plug into temporarily to see if that might fix it.

don't play with it - take it straight into an Apple Store for them to diagnose the problem first and to give you an estimate for repair.
hopefully you have your Home Folder backed up?

then if it proves to be something as simple as a buggered HDD, you can replace it yourself with an SSD which'll improve your RevA enormously.

if not you can get them to fix it and shell out for the experience bu at least you'll have it fixed properly.

then you can think about offloading it and updating to something that still has warranty so's you can purchase extended warranty.

here is Australia it's $419 from AppleStore but I scored on off eBay for $110 - same same thing

 

[fluffyx]

Believe it or not, parts and labor for a MacBook Air logic board replacement is usually only $280 from Apple! That's quite reasonable.