Mac will turn on, but not boot up...

[Britnee]

it will go right to the first booting up screen (white background with the apple symbol in the center) and make the noise, but it will got go past that screen. it's like it freezes right there everytime. except that the little circle thing keeps going around. as you cann tell, i am NOT a computer savy type person. i know next to nothing about them. I know that i have an older model that was purchased used, so no cd or warentee or any thing like that.
any info you can give me that would explain why this has happened and how to fix it (in very lamen terms please!) would be really appreciated!

 

[Spawn_Dooley]

Can you provide a bit more info because there are quite a lot of different Mac Notebooks ... what do you think you did to bring this on? Did it ever boot up properly?

One thing I can add is that you will need the Software install media for times like this, so that's something to think of. For Snow Leopard & Lion, the more recent OS's, Apple only distributes the software via the App Store as a download. Prior to this you can sometimes pick up a bargain at say, eBay or something. You just need to be very very careful to ask here first for advice because there are folk out there who will try to sell you an old boot, telling you in it's item description that it will be exactly what you need to start up your ailing Mac !!

Basically, you've not given us anything to go on other than you have an issue and no discs. Sorry :*(

 

[Shirley]

Help! While using a duplcate file eliminator, i put over 29.000 photo files in the trash. Then i realized these were good files. So i made a folder on my desktop and highlighted all items in trash and as i was moving all files to the folder, it missed and is trying to load all 29,000 files to my desktop. Tried to stop it but did not work. After a few hours it all locked up and the colorwheel stopped spinning.did this four times. Tried to boot up on safemode by holding down the shift key, but all the files are still backing up to the desktop. What can i do except cry.

 

[Kaveman]

Looks like you need to take it to an Apple Service Centre near you.

I'd sugest using Target mode and go in and sort it out via another Mac.