Chosen Solution

Hi guys, I’ve searched all 278 other solutions (and some seemed similar) but nothing really helps me further with the following problem. From one day to another, Macbook started up with blinking ?-folder, meaning no system present. facts:

  • MB hasn’t been dropped or suffered a severe shock. Self-analysis:
  1. Tried to boot from Leopard install DVD and works fine but no HD visible in Disk utily.
  2. Booted up with an external harddrive and MB works fine, but still the internal HD doesn’t show up.
  3. Built-out my HD and put it in another MB => HD with my system works and boots fine on the other MB! So this means i can rule out HD-failure. Checked also with diskwarrior and Techtoolpro => all fine…So I’m thinking about a connection problem 4)opened up my MB and replaced the harddisk connection cable with a new one. Checked connection slots for failures but everything looked ok. Unfortunately, still the blinking ?-folder at boot :-( Now I’m all fresh out of ideas… I have a perfectly working MB core duo but it fails to see any internal HD. Is there anything left I can check or is this L/B failure? (which I would find strange since it boots perfectly from external drive :-) Thanks in advance for your help! Regards,

Alternate route. When all else fails, take a different route. If it just won’t work, drop in an optical Bay Hard drive Adapter and try your hard drive in that. Here’s what I’m talking about: [linked product missing or disabled: IF107-078-1]

the SATA connector cable has a few different versions, did you make sure that you ahve one from the same model MacBook? if you got the right one, first try resetting the SMC and PRAM, if no change, you have a logic board failure.