is my macbook dead?

was given an old macbook 10 years or so ago when my brother upgraded his, so probably 13 or so years old now.  every now and then it freezes, so i just reboot, no problem.  i did have the exact model listed in an old thread, but as we cant search our old threads on here these days…….. :-/

this time, it wont reboot.  just comes up with a flashing ‘question mark’ in the middle of the screen, and the web address ‘support.apple.com/mac/startup’.  however, nothing i press changes anything, just keeps flashing indefinitely.

googled it on my phone which suggested booting into safe mode by pressing command and ‘R’ at the same time but this just progresses on to a screen which prompts me to choose my wifi connection which i do.  then put password in but the passwords always wrong.  ive tried my account password, the wifi password, my brothers old password, but it just either rejects it or keeps spinning the wheel of doom.

not sure why it would want me to connect to wifi first anyway, id have thought a safe mode would just boot up and then i keep connecting/opening things until theres a problem?

other than take it into a shop, can anyone suggest anything else to try?

thanks

google reseting PRAM, though you might have trouble finding instructions for a vintage laptop. It sounds like it’s had a good run though!

If you have all your stuff backed up to dropbox / gdrive or something, could you flatten it with a fresh OS install and go from there?
Done the PRam and SMC reset?

The backup is most important though or you’ll lose your stuff….

Done the PRam and SMC reset?

just done those by following the video thanks.  slightly different in that i do get the ‘chimes’ that it says to wait for, but then all roads lead to that web address and flashing question mark again, it never boots into safe mode or does anything else at all.

thanks

EDIT:  just found https://support.apple.com/en-gb/102655

before i delve any further i think ill wait til i get home and try backing up to an external drive first.

Potentially a knackered HDD.

not sure why it would want me to connect to wifi first anyway, id have thought a safe mode would just boot up and then i keep connecting/opening things until theres a problem?

Command+R isn’t safe mode, it’s Recovery Mode where it tries to re-install the OS for you, possibly needs to connect to the internet to download files for this?

https://support.apple.com/en-gb/102655

The question mark means the OS can’t be found or can’t be loaded. Might be a faulty OS or knackered HD.

https://support.apple.com/en-gb/102601

https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/mac-help/mh21245/mac

https://support.apple.com/en-gb/116946

Oh and you can find the model of your Mac from the serial number which is on the underside.

https://support.apple.com/en-gb/103257

Target Mode is another option to access the HD (or check if it’s operational) but you need another Mac for that

https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/mac-help/mchlp1443/mac

I can’t remember what generation of Macs started encrypting the HDD with your Apple ID (possibly 2016 onwards so maybe later than yours) but I know on mine it won’t let you access anything without the correct password. Anyway, that’s why it wants a wifi connection.

If it boots to that wifi selection screen there’s a reasonable chance it’s fixable, though. Hopefully just a new hard drive, and if it’s 10+ years old that actually might be possible without too much difficulty. IIRC there’s an option on that screen to boot from a USB drive so you could plausibly do an OS install on an external drive to test that theory.

This is why computer fixing shops exist, though.

That’s the “off you pop and buy a new M3 Macbook Air screen”! 🙂

That’s the “off you pop and buy a new M3 Macbook Air screen”!

Yes that’s what I did this year (well M2) to replace my 2014 MacBook.

it’s going to be a disc failure if it’s a spinning disc and that age.  design life of most HD’s is only about 5 years.

That’s the “off you pop and buy a new M3 Macbook Air Chromebook screen”! 😀

FTFMe.

Thanks, yes it looks like a trip to the Apple shop (after backing up), but i wont be buying a new Apple, i only used this one cos it was free. hashtag cheapskate 😀

cheers

other than take it into a shop, can anyone suggest anything else to try?

Yes, I have a vintage MacBook Pro from 2012 or so. They have a known issue with the ribbon cable that connects the HD to the master board. It basically deteriorates with use and fails so that the Mac can no longer read the hard drive. If that’s the issue, it’s a cheap and simple fix – lots of info via google, part available on amazon and eBay.

You can always remove the hard drive, mount it in an external enclosure and see if the Mac will boot from that, which would tend to confirm that it’s the ribbon cable, but for the price of a cable, you might as well just swap it and see if that fixes it.

Fwiw – sat here in a mid-2012 MBP with lots of RAM and an SSD – they seem remarkably resilient still for most day-to-day use. Hope that’s maybe some help.

if there’s another Mac you can use to create a bootable USB drive you can try that, to determine whether it is a HDD problem or not!

https://support.apple.com/en-gb/101578

I have a much older MBP which I upgraded to SSD years ago, still works (although no longer updatable obviously!)