A macbook that won't run OSX

Aydr

So my trusty old 2007 Macbook seems to have given up on me, and the quick tricks that I can think of to try haven't yielded any success. It hangs up on the startup screen and won't get anywhere. Oddly enough, however, if I switch to my windows partition, it runs fine.

Unfortunately this is a bit of a problem, since the vast majority of my data is on the other side of that partition. Including all of my notes for school. While this is a great excuse to ask for someone else's (undoubtedly better) notes, having two midterms next week makes this less than ideal. Any chance someone here might be able to help me?

The best information I've been able to get so far is that when I try and start it up in safe mode, the readout seems to get stuck on this line: disk0s2: 0xe0030005 (UNDEFINED)

It'll go into a bunch of other messages if I leave it for a while, but that error message keeps coming up and will repeat itself several times in a row. If anyone has any idea what this means and what I can do about it, or any other ideas on how I can get my computer back, I'd be forever grateful.

m4v1s

If you have the media for your OS you can reinstall your OS without affecting your data or applications.

Aydr

I probably have it SOMEWHERE, but if there's any suggestions that might get my macbook running sooner I'd appreciate them. The system discs would be at my parent's house, meaning it would take some time before I can even go look for them.

DHS Odium

I would burn a live Linux distribution, like Ubuntu, and boot off that CD. At the very least it will give you access to the files on your Mac partition if they still exist, and you can work on them on another computer or something. I'm assuming you aren't running Snow Leopard since the Bootcamp version with it allows you access to your Mac's partition from the Windows side.

FF

If you have access to a second Mac (friend, classmate, lab tech, etc) you could try target booting your Mac to theirs to see if it mounts your Mac partition. From there you could try grabbing your files and using Disk Utility to check the partition/disk.

bloodatonement

There is a know issue with some of the earlier macbooks HDs dieing out. Not sure if yours is quite old enough to fall into that category, and that might not be the issue since windows works.

Also, you should be able to get to your notes by using HFSExplorer