macbook with mac OS 10.5.- not booting past apple logo

Question

For the past few days, my old macbook told me that it wa not charging, although the plug was plugged in. Unplugging it would just stop the computer from working, so the battery would really not charge. Last night, I accidentally pulled the wire out of the computer, and it stopped working. When I started it again, the indicator light at the front of the computer flashed a couple of times (I think 6), before starting seamingly normal, but it got stuck at the apple logo with the spinning disc, indicating something is loading, below it. I've waited for half an hour, seeing if something would happen, and I've tried turning it on and off. Does anyone have any idea what I can do to resolve this issue?

When reading the output of verbose mode, I notice that the call to function cat_delete() fails, and deleting a certain process on volume Macintosh HD is failing. After tat, some runtime corruptions on the same HD are deteced.

Answer 1

Firstly the blinking led on the front would have blinked 5 times, indication that the battery has problems or can't be seen by the computer. You should replace the battery or have it tested by Apple.

Also regarding the startup failure, you can hold down "CMD V" which is verbose mode and this tells you what the computer is doing in the background whilst booting up, so if you have a hard drive problem then you might see messages in verbose mode like "I/O error"

To fix the issue, boot up to the installation disc "grey disc" and use disk utility to verify your hard drive.