# Macbook Late 2009 crashing



## lktoney (Dec 6, 2012)

My late 2009 macbook has been crashing during use of the battery, even though battery is fully charged. Not associated with use of any one particular app. There is a little "click" noise that precedes the crash each time. 

In addition, most recently, I had an error message pop up while I was using a browser. Everything, including mouse, was frozen. "You must restart your computer now. (written in multiple languages)". This happened when I was using my power cord, not when I was using the battery. 

Can someone kindly advise me about what might be wrong?


Thanks!


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## Anic297 (Jan 10, 2013)

The message you've seen, in multiple languages, is called a &#8220;kernel panic&#8221;. It's what happens when your computer comes to a state it can't handle (hardware or, more rarely, software problem).
The first thing I'd do is checking the hard disk's health. From the Finder, go to /Applications/Utilities and launch Disk Utility. In the left most list, you should see your hard disk listed. Select it's icon, go to the &#8220;First Aid&#8221; tab and click &#8220;Verify disk&#8221;. Next, please reply here, telling the results.


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## lktoney (Dec 6, 2012)

See screen shot. 
Thanks for your help!


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## tompatrick (Apr 19, 2010)

I would suggest to try out Stellar Volume Repair or Disk Warrior to analyze your HDD but I am doubtful that it will sort out your trouble as your HDD is producing clicking sound. It seems to be a case of hard drive failure and you need to approach to the data recovery services to extract all the needy information from the drive and then repair the hard drive if possible.


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## Anic297 (Jan 10, 2013)

Thanks for providing the screen shot.
Well, tompatrick is right that if there's a clicking sound, it sounds like a hard disk failure. However, in that case, I'd not even try to repair the disk (repairing would certainly fail anyway): the more you use the disk, the more it's about to fail (I'd even tell you to start as less as possible with that disk as the startup disk, if you can (a startup disk is often reading a lot of data); you'll have to change it soon anyway); that is, if you want to save the data it contains.
There are two proofs that your hard disk is failing (the clicking sound and the result of disk utility). However,if you want, you may go into Disk Utility again, select your drive (not the volume(s) it contains, but the parent drive), and look at the &#8220;S.M.A.R.T. status&#8221; at the bottom of the window (feel free to tell the result, if you tried). And, of course, you may also record the clicking sound and join the file.


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## Headrush (Feb 9, 2005)

For starters, don't be doing any of these tests while running off the batteries.

You very well could have a failing hard drive and recovery/backup first is always the first move.

However, there could be more to this. The click you hear could also be the hard drive spinning down, (which it does more often running off the batter) and if it doesn't spin back up, that can produce a crash also.

What version of OS X are you running, and if you go into System Preferences -> Energy Saver and turn off the option to put hard drives to sleep does that change anything?

Of course you won't be able to do these things until you use Recovery Mode or your original DVD to fix the corrupted disk.


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