I'm at my son's place in Maryland and their macbook won't start up. It's an older model bought about 4 years ago. It was working yesterday. Any ideas on what we could possibly do would be appreciated before having to take it to the nearest apple store? They don't have any utility programs here, so I'm at a loss on how to approach this problem. Thanks for any ideas besides telling my the hard drive died.

An update to the prior post: for some reason the computer started up again so I was able to check the status of the hard drive and it checked out okay. I also did a permission repair. If there is anything else I can do to see that this doesn't happen again, I would appreciate any input from all the mac genius members reading this. Thanks.

What didn't startup before???

Did it power on and hang at the gray Apple screen???
Flashing Folder with ? icon???
Blue Screen???

You left us hanging by not supplying enough info to help you. Glad it's working now but next time tell us exactly what worked and what didn't.

Sorry, when I said it didn't start up I should have said when the power button was pressed nothing happened. The computer just showed a black screen like when it's shut down.

OK...

If that happens again try these steps:

1) Unplug from power adapter
2) Remove battery
3) Hold power button down for 10 seconds
4) Replace battery and plug into power again. Press power button and unit should start!

What you are doing is resetting the PMU (Power Management Unit) on the MacBook to factory settings. Sometimes a unit will get a "power hiccup" and not want to start properly.

Glad it is working again. The Hard Drive is NOT the cause of this problem.

Thanks so much for the info. I'll pass it along. They'll be so relieved to hear it's a fixable problem.