Well my wife’s Macbook went offline last night.  First it froze and she had to reboot it.  Upon restart, a flashing folder with a question mark appeared and then the machine halted.  Subsequent reboots resulted in the startup chime and a simple gray screen.  At this point, she lost her patience and handed the machine over.

I’ve spent many years debugging PC issues of all sorts, but Mac debugging is still a bit new to me.  Some Google search revealed the following debugging options:

  1. Safe boot - Boot with minimal drivers and kernel extensions.  (Didn’t work)
  2. Reset the PRAM - This process appeared to work, but did nothing to resolve the bootup failure. (Didn’t work)
  3. Choose a startup volume - Hold the Option key on startup.  (Didn’t work)
  4. Re-install Leopard - Restart the computer and hold the ‘C’ key to boot off the installation disc.  (Didn’t work)

Basically, none of the startup debugging options is doing much at all for me.  I’m going to have to drag the machine to the genius bar where I suspect they’ll tell me the hard drive is broken.  The machine is not covered under Applecare, so I am unsure at this point what the cost to fix it will be and whether it’s worth it.
Anyway, if anyone knows of any other esoteric boot options, let me know!