New Version MBP - Major Start Up Problems

Hi Guys, wondering if you can help me with this.

Over the past few days my MBP has been running slowly, and the beachball has been coming up a fair few times, something which I haven't seen in general use on there since I bought it in May.

So obviously I was concerned with that, but thought it might be a problem with Firefox as it was mainly happening whilst browsing the internet. Obviously I was wrong, because I came to turn it on tonight and it is not starting up. The start up noise comes on, then the Apple logo but it just gets stuck on the screen with the spinning dial.

I read that I should perhaps start it in Safe Mode, so I held down the shift key, and the little progress bar came up underneath the spinning dial but did nothing and the computer turned itself off. Now every time I turn the MBP on the Apple logo, spinning dial, and progress bar come up...which shouldn't happen, and then it turns itself off after a while.

What should I do? It seems pretty serious to me, I could be wrong. The worst thing is I haven't backed it up in ages, and I'm concerned I might lose everything.

Any help is much appreciated!

spinnerlys said:

Have you tried any of these steps?

Mac doesn't boot
Resolve startup issues and perform disk maintenance with Disk Utility and fsck
Troubleshooting: My computer won't turn on​

Click to expand...

I haven't tried every single step yet, but it won't boot in safe mode, I couldn't reset the PRAM, and when I run the hardware test it stops responding once almost complete.

Bad news I'm guessing.

spinnerlys said:

As that MBP is still new (less than 366 days old, unless you would have had Apple Care), contact Apple and/or go to the next Apple Store or Authorised Repairshop.

Click to expand...

Yeah that was going to be my next step, I do have Apple Care as well. I managed to boot OSX from the install disc, and ran disk utility. It says my HDD needs formatting...now here is a really stupid question which i'm sure I already know the answer to.

Is there any way that I can access my data on the HDD? Because I'm a complete idiot and haven't backed it up since May.

spinnerlys said:

If you have another Mac with Firewire or a Windows PC with Firewire (+ MacDrive trial to read HFS+ formatted volumes): Target Disk Mode

What does it say in Disk Utility under Partition Scheme and Format?

Btw, you can also extract the HDD and put it in an enclosure for 2.5" S-ATA HDDs.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the brilliant advice so far it's really appreciated. I've bought a FireWire 9pin to 6pin so I can use my old MacBook. In disk utility it says mac os extended (journaled) under format, the partition scheme is GUID partition table. Does any of this help?

ncfcstar said:

Thanks for the brilliant advice so far it's really appreciated. I've bought a FireWire 9pin to 6pin so I can use my old MacBook. In disk utility it says mac os extended (journaled) under format, the partition scheme is GUID partition table. Does any of this help?

Click to expand...

New update as it has started letting me do a bit more on Disk Utility. I've managed to get it to start Repairing the HDD now but it still won't work...here is a copy of the info that is popping up:

Checking Journaled HFS Plus Volume
Checking extents overflow file
Checking catolog file
INCORRECT NUMBER OF THREAD RECORDS
Checking multi-linked files.
Checking catalog hierarchy
INVALID VOLUME DIRECTORY COUNT
(It should be 145125 instead of 145096)
INVALID VOLUME FILE COUNT
(It should be 509418 instead of 509257)
Checking extented attributes file
Checking volume bitmap
Checking volume information
Repairing volume
Rechecking volume.

Then it just loops through, and eventually it can't be repaired.

Any thoughts?

Can anyone help? I managed to get it loading last night, but once the system had booted it just went to a blue screen with the cursor. My keyboard actually lit up as well.