Apple laptop MacBook question

December 04, 2020, 09:37 AM

Good morning, my wife crashed her macbook by slamming it shut (she was pissed at me LOL) ,now it will not boot up, it powers up, begins the boot sequence but wont boot up..
two questions..
1) is there a way to take it to a repair place and have all her pics/docs extracted off the hard rive ??
2) she now wants a windows based laptop to do photo editing and some small business work on,any suggestions??

thanks for your input, I have no clue about laptops today

Shawn

December 04, 2020, 09:45 AM

braillediver

I'd remove the back and check the connectors- especially the drive. Reseat them and try again.

December 04, 2020, 10:13 AM

golddot

does it need to go back to auth fact apple repairs??

December 04, 2020, 10:22 AM

911Boss

1. Hard to say, how old is the MacBook? Likely able to retrieve, the bigger question is what would be necessary to do so. Do you have an Apple Store nearby? I’d take it in there first. Even if out of warranty they may be able to diagnose and get it going.

2. Given how she treats sensitive electronic devices and lack of appreciation for Mac superiority

I would say get her the absolute cheapest you can find. Shouldn’t be hard, lot of cheap and crappy Windows computers to choose from.

December 04, 2020, 10:31 AM

architect

Macs can be booted in multiple modes, Google will tell you the details better than I can.

One of these is "target disk mode" This turns the entire machine into an external disk drive that can be connected to another machine as a supplemental drive. The Apple Store will likely try this as a way to extract user data, although it is possible to do it yourself. A certain amount of care is required, if you are not a naturally careful person, I'd not try it.

Another is verbose mode, this might provide illumination on exactly where the boot is failing/hanging.

If a boot is hung on loading a daemon, a Ctrl-C at that point in the boot will kill this load and will often allow the boot to complete with only minimal loss of functionality, depending on which daemon doesn't get run. You can usually get the machine to the point where you can copy off data and/or reinstall the OS.

Do this:

0) see if it boots in recovery mode, and if so, try a "repair drive" on the Macintosh HD volume.

1) start up the machine as you usually do, when the boot stops progressing, as best you can tell mostly based on disk drive activity, type Ctrl-C and see what happens.

2) reboot in verbose mode and repeat, note the information on the screen (take a picture of it) just before and after you have to type Ctrl-C.

One or the other of these might be enough to give a clue how to proceed.

December 04, 2020, 11:26 AM

Lineman101

To run win programs on a Mac, you could check out this:
https://www.codeweavers.com/crossover
That’s if you get the Mac working again.

December 04, 2020, 11:45 AM

golddot

quote:
Originally posted by architect:
Macs can be booted in multiple modes, Google will tell you the details better than I can.

One of these is "target disk mode" This turns the entire machine into an external disk drive that can be connected to another machine as a supplemental drive. The Apple Store will likely try this as a way to extract user data, although it is possible to do it yourself. A certain amount of care is required, if you are not a naturally careful person, I'd not try it.

Another is verbose mode, this might provide illumination on exactly where the boot is failing/hanging.

If a boot is hung on loading a daemon, a Ctrl-C at that point in the boot will kill this load and will often allow the boot to complete with only minimal loss of functionality, depending on which daemon doesn't get run. You can usually get the machine to the point where you can copy off data and/or reinstall the OS.

exec info ! looks like we are heading to the Apple store lol

Do this:

0) see if it boots in recovery mode, and if so, try a "repair drive" on the Macintosh HD volume.

1) start up the machine as you usually do, when the boot stops progressing, as best you can tell mostly based on disk drive activity, type Ctrl-C and see what happens.

2) reboot in verbose mode and repeat, note the information on the screen (take a picture of it) just before and after you have to type Ctrl-C.

One or the other of these might be enough to give a clue how to proceed.

December 04, 2020, 12:08 PM

comet24

Currently going through some issues with my mac.

There are a few different boot modes you can boot into.

There is also a hardware test you can boot into. I would try this first. If you have an Intel mac hold down "D" as soon as you turn it on.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202731

Apple will usually look at it for free and let you know what it would take to repair it. I've taken out of warranty Macbooks to Apple have them help diagnose the issue. Just took my current one to them yesterday.

You have to make an appointment online. I had trouble getting one but was finally able to.

December 04, 2020, 12:40 PM

shovelhead

Watch the official Apple stores.

Long story short, I took a liquid damaged laptop in. Floor rep took it into the shop. About a half hour later he came in with "photos" on his phone purported to be of a totally trashed insides unit.
I took it and left after it was "reassembled". Later that night at home it started working again but would not charge the battery. Next day I found a unauthorized repair shop, he took it apart in front of me, ONLY corrosion was in the charging area. 180 bucks for disassembly and cleaning, works still almost two years later.

I have my own conclusion, Apple store wanted to sell me a new laptop and hoped I'd tell him to trash the old one. He makes a sale, someone in the store would have the old one repaired and they had a free laptop.

I contacted Apple with my concerns, never got a reply despite my asking politely.

That's how I see it anyhow.

December 04, 2020, 12:51 PM

Aeteocles

Please use this as a reminder to set up some sort of scheme to back up your photos.

Had the photos been backed up, resolving this would likely have been much cheaper.

December 04, 2020, 01:38 PM

cparktd

I have had amazing luck at the Apple store with repairs. Don't like what they say walk away. They once did a $650 repair on a laptop... out of warrantee... that my grandson dropped then stepped on the display... for free. I just told them exactly what happened. Don't go in pissed off and griping. Just ask nicely for them to run their diagnostics on it and go from there. When the touch quit working on my one year old iPhone X they didn't even blink, just handed me a brand new one. I do have a long history with Apple and have spent a lot of money with them over the years and they see that when they pull up your account so that may have helped IDK.

If it is a regular hard drive, not SSD, it might have crashed the heads against the platters when she slammed it shut, they have drop protection built in to prevent that but that can only go so far...

It's wasn't difficult to remove the hard drive from my 2011 model when I upgraded to SSD so one possibility would be removing it and putting it in an external drive case to attempt access it.

December 04, 2020, 09:11 PM

shovelhead

cparktd,

At least you had a better experience than I had. I would hope that my experience was an isolated case but even so it soured me on their store.

I too have been an Apple repeat customer, several Iphones and about three months before that two Ipads and one earbud package for the holidays.

December 04, 2020, 09:27 PM

Jack830

I've always gotten the best help by calling direct to
Apple tech support. 1 800 myapple.
give it a try. regards, Jack

December 05, 2020, 07:19 AM

Graniteguy

My family has been using Apple products for several years. The products we are seeing/buying today are absolutely not of the same quality as in the past. We have had 2 MacBooks go down this year, both less than 2-years old. Previous Mac's have given us 5-6 years of reliable service. The only thing the Apple Store is going to give you is a $500 repair bill or a new $1500 Macbook.