Question Fixing an old Mac help needed!

[xwickedywacko]

Hello, I'm trying to fix an old Mac for someone for their kids to use. I'm not super experienced with Macs so I could use some help. It is old, not sure what year, but its probably 4-5 years old.

At first, I could get it turn on but it infinitely spins with the apple logo. I found out later that the B-tree is corrupted. I tried putting an old Mac disk. I could get it to load that with the disk utility. But it failed to fix the broken B-tree. I came back to it later and now I can still get it to turn on but after about 5 min the screen, not the computer, turns off. I cant seem to avoid it either. I know it's still on because I can hear the fans. It doesn't matter what I can get it to load. It will go black. I can get it to start loading the disk but the screen goes black before I can finish. If I load single user mode then that will work until ultimately going black as well.

I'd appreciate any help!

 

[jsmithepa]

So we are talking a desktop Mac, not a MacBook right?

Sounds like corrupted/failed HD to me. Always suspect mechanical things, rarely the solid state.

Macs have a hardware testing mode, witch you get to via some keyboard-Combo at boot up, just need to Google it 'cuz I don't remember it either.

 

[xwickedywacko]

Thank you for getting back to me sorry yes, it is a desktop or I guess what a pc person would call an all-in-one.

I have tried that command. I've tried most of the boot commands. The problem is that the screen turns off after about the same amount of time every time. It could be the hard drive but I dont know it seems odd to me. It definitely doesn't have a solid state though so its possible.

 

[jsmithepa]

OK you are a little obsessed with the screen, do any of those boot commands show anything, menus, options to take blah-blah while the scree is up? What those boot commands do is like to invoke a PC BIOS. If they don't show anything, the basic hardware is bad, can't even get into BIOS, needs professional help.