My Solution
A little while ago I went to pickup my MacBook Pro from the table and noticed it was extremely hot to the touch. It was supposed to be asleep, but for some reason had come back on. The fans were running at full speed, so I opened it up and instead of going through the shutdown process, I held down the power button to turn it off.
One morning, I woke up and went to wake my MBP. I had the exact same issue as this, though my fans were
not running. I should've took it as a sign to do a backup, but I am not smart.
I let it cool down a bit and then tried to boot it back up and the screen never seems to come on (it was working when I shut it down).
I was lucky at this point, as my MBP booted up no problem after I removed the power cord & battery, letting it sit for 10-15 minutes. Though my fans kicked in at full speed when I started the Mac up.
I put my Mac to sleep a few times that day, and the problem didn't seem to come back. However, around 7 hours later, it wouldn't wake up from it's sleep. I removed the power cord & battery, did SMC resets, did PRAM resets, I basically did everything suggested in this thread, no lucky.
I hear it turn on and the hard drive spin up, and the small light on the latch on the front comes on.
For the next day, this is exactly what my Mac did when I tried turning it on. The HDD would make it's usual noise, simultaneous to the 'sleep light' turning on, but no more than 2 seconds later it they'd both shut off suddenly.
I've tried removing the battery and holding down the power button for several seconds to reset the PMU and also held down cmd+opt+p+r to reset the PRAM but I never see a grey screen, and it doesn't reboot itself like it's supposed to.
I tried this plus all other suggestions in this topic, with no success. A little while later I booked a reservation at an Apple Store. Because I live about 2 hours from it and don't drive, I had to wait around 5 days before I had a ride.
On the day that I had the ride to the Apple Store, I noticed the Mac no longer made any sounds when trying to turn it on. The sleep indicator light would light up for under 1 second, then turn off. So it seems after a few days the issue gets "worse" in the sense that your Mac is showing less signs of trying to turn on.
Upon bringing the Mac into the Apple Store, the genius started with the usual. Tried a bunch of "simple" things like SMC & PRAM reset. He then checked to see if it was the RAM. It wasn't. After that, he attached what appeared to be an HDD, with a label "NVIDIA GRAPHICS TESTER" which got me excited, as I know it's covered if that's the issue.
At this point, he said it was a logic board issue. I guess the issue was close enough to the NVIDIA issue, as he said it'd be covered. My receipt shows the cost of the logic board and repair totally $556.09 CAD, so I was really happy that it was covered. On the receipt, it also shows "Warranty Status: Quality Program(E1)" which I assume is the NVIDIA thing.
The next morning, I got a call from the Apple Store saying my Mac was repaired and ready for pickup. I'm very impressed with the service and will definitely be buying extended AppleCare with my next Mac.
I hope this info has helped you. My advice to you: bring it to the Genius Bar at an Apple Store, or find out from Apple how you can get it to them if you live too far. Also, I went in expecting the worst and hoping for the best, and it really made me feel much better. Hopefully anyone experiencing the same issues as myself, and others in this thread, will be covered.
isitme? said:
is there something i'm missing? i have noticed that in canada they are very reluctant to replace or fix anything for free, "apple hates canadiens" as Kanye would say....
I am a fellow Canadian, so I was worried going into the Apple Store if they'd do the same to me. Luckily, the geniuses there all seemed to be in favour of helping the customers. I went to the Rideau Apple Store in Ottawa.
Edit: looks like I spoke too soon. After 4 hours of it working, it has stopped working. Instead of it shutting off 1-2 seconds after turning on, it shuts off after the apple logo appears. So it is on for maybe 20 seconds before shutting off.
Edit 2: I took it to the Apple Store. It was the hard drive that went. They said they'd try reinstalling Lion, but if it didn't solve the issue, that they'd replace the hard drive. I'm assuming reinstalling Lion didn't work, as my Mac has a new hard drive now. It's a bit of a bummer, as I now have to restore from my backup and redownload Lion after that (as my backup was pre-Lion and my Mac came back from repair with OS 10.6.3 – I had 10.7.1). I can't complain though, as I got a 250GB HDD (as they had no more 200GB ones) for free, as they put it under "Repeat Repair".
I'm not sure if the hard drive failure was related to my logic board failure, but I hope this information helps someone else. Cheers to everyone else who posted with helpful information!