You don't need to be an 'investor' to invest in Singletrack: 6 days left: 95% of target - Find out more
My Macbook refuses to start, no response at all. It only has a single 2GB stick of RAM in it after the other went pop sometime last year - if the remaining stick has gone bad would this explain why the thing won't start?
Yes.
Usually though if it has no ram you'll get a series of beeps or something.
It could easily do that. That's one reason it's handy to have two as it is easy to find the dodgy one.
Yes, there's a thing called a POST (power-on self test) which gives out a series of beeps when the thing fails to boot but can get some sort of life coaxed out of it.
Here's the article for Mac POST: http://support.apple.com/kb/ht2341
TBH, RAM is so cheap, just get onto the crucial website and buy a new matched pair. If it turns out your Mac is an antique it may not be but ebay can be a good option (I may also have some lying around here somewhere).
Thanks all. It was working fine a couple of hours before with no error messages at all. When the previous stick went it gave 3 beeps until I'd removed it. I'll get some more RAM to test, hopefully that'll be it!
Define "refusing to start". What symptoms are you seeing, how far does it get?
(Not that I know anything about Macs, but your description is ambiguous.)
No power at all, completely dead, nothing at all happens when I press the power button. The magsafe charger shows a green light to signal a fully charged battery (which it should be) but no signs of life otherwise.
with faulty ram i'd expect at least some sight of the computer starting for a brief period of time. broken power button?
No power at all,
It's not RAM, then. Cheap or no, there's little point spending money on something that's not going to help.
Pull the battery out (can you do that on a Mac), disconnect the charger, press the power button (assuming there is one) to discharge any residual juice, then try it on battery only or charger only.
Ah poop. Sounds like more than a £30 repair then.
I've tried powering up with and without the battery and mains charger but still get the same result.
Is there any way to test for a broken power button?
Well one advantage of the mac power supply is the little light on the bit that connects to the laptop. If that's on, the cable is working fine.
Float has it, looks like a faulty power button!
A bit of Internet research showed that it could be started without the power button by removing the keyboard and shorting across a couple of bits on the mother board. Well if that didn't go and start it up as normal, so I just need to order a new keyboard to get it 100% again.
Only one small but profusely bleeding cut on a finger too so this has been my most successful IT repair to date!