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MacBook Pro died..

K

kolax

macrumors G3
Original poster
Mar 20, 2007
9,181
115
This morning, it was working fine. I encoded a video quickly, then once it was finished, I shut the lid (i.e. put to sleep) for a bit, then when I came back to use it, the screen wouldn't turn on. I tried restarting it, resetting PRAM, SMC and the screen just remains blank.

It does boot up (chime at the start, hear the hard drive doing stuff) just the screen doesn't come on. So I hooked it up to my external display and tried, no luck.

The fact that the external display doesn't work makes me think it is definitely the GPU and not the screen (I had weird issues with my screen sometimes, had to push the screen, as if the cable was loose).

I'm going to take it into John Lewis tomorrow for repair (first year of Apple Care gone, on my second year via 3rd party), but was going to see if there was anything else I could try before flying in with the assumption that my GPU has failed, after having my MacBook Pro since July 2007.
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/525.18.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1.1 Mobile/5F136 Safari/525.20)

try taking out the battery then unplug the ac adapter. Once both those are done hold the power button in for 60 seconds. Then reconnect everything and try it
 
Jonnyfive said:
try taking out the battery then unplug the ac adapter. Once both those are done hold the power button in for 60 seconds. Then reconnect everything and try it
Click to expand...

That resets the SMC and I've already tried that..
 
Jonnyfive said:
Maybe try crying and begging then. If that doesn't work then yeah you should bring it to someone to have a look at it.
Click to expand...

^ unnecessary.

Do the sound keys emit a dong when you use them. This would definitively determine that its the GPU.
 
Is it an 8600GT GPU? Have you been gaming on the machine before. It sounds like your GPU died, either way you need to make an appt with the Genius bar.
 
If it's booting, hook it up under target disk mode and back it up. Always an idea before a repair. ;)
 
Happened to my Macbook. After an update (I skipped one update and then updated with minimal memory), after it restarted the screen would just stay blue.
I went to a Mac repair shop and they removed the old 80 gig hard drive and placed it in an enclosure (which I now use as an external drive). I upgraded my drive to a 160 gig and everything has been fine since. This happened over a year ago.
I was able to retrieve everything because it was stored on the old drive...user profile and all.

Good luck.
 
This sucks man. I'd think if you contacted Apple, they may still fix this even though it is out of warranty.
 
Hope they help you, this would send me in a very heavy depression...since I do no thave much tech knowledge and would freak out BIG TIME!:eek:
 
Kilamite said:
This morning, it was working fine. I encoded a video quickly, then once it was finished, I shut the lid (i.e. put to sleep) for a bit...
Click to expand...

I have read around here people having problems when they do GPU (sometimes simply just CPU) intensive work and put the Mac to sleep immediately after. It's the reason I wait for everything to cool down before sleeping. Just a thought.

Wondering, do you game on your laptop? Regular intensive stuff other than gaming?

(Because I game a lot and all these threads always give me a little hesitation before I boot into Windows for a 2+ hour COD4 session)
 
Have you tried to take out the battery and use the power adapter only? My friend had the exact problem then she took out the battery and it works fine.
 
Thanks for replies - read your thread jmpmntwnty3, seems I have got the exact same problem.

I'm really interested in the fact that your LCD blew. I have had issues with my LCD screen prior to this (flickering, had to press the screen in to get it to stop), so maybe my screen has blown and that is the only culprit.

But if the LCD screen has blown, why would connecting to an external monitor not work?

Anyway, I took it back to John Lewis and it is being sent away for repair. Could be 2-4 weeks though, but at least I still had another 7 months of my John Lewis warranty. I really need my laptop too for coursework at University...I'm pretty pissed.

I too will be selling mine once it comes back on eBay - not sure how much I could get for it, but if new MacBook's are released, I'm definitely going to get one.
 
Kilamite said:
Thanks for replies - read your thread jmpmntwnty3, seems I have got the exact same problem.

I'm really interested in the fact that your LCD blew. I have had issues with my LCD screen prior to this (flickering, had to press the screen in to get it to stop), so maybe my screen has blown and that is the only culprit.

But if the LCD screen has blown, why would connecting to an external monitor not work?

Anyway, I took it back to John Lewis and it is being sent away for repair. Could be 2-4 weeks though, but at least I still had another 7 months of my John Lewis warranty. I really need my laptop too for coursework at University...I'm pretty pissed.

I too will be selling mine once it comes back on eBay - not sure how much I could get for it, but if new MacBook's are released, I'm definitely going to get one.
Click to expand...

I feel your pain. I've been without mine for a week already. I was supposed to be able to pick it up from iPlace yesterday but apple put the screen on back order so they can't fix it until they get it. It's hard doing school work without your original laptop. Lucky for me, I'm using my mom's at the moment, but I still miss my MBP :(
 
jmpmntwnty3 said:
I feel your pain. I've been without mine for a week already. I was supposed to be able to pick it up from iPlace yesterday but apple put the screen on back order so they can't fix it until they get it. It's hard doing school work without your original laptop. Lucky for me, I'm using my mom's at the moment, but I still miss my MBP :(
Click to expand...

Yeah, I'm stuck using an old Windows laptop...extremely frustrating! Especially when I need the likes of Final Cut Express and Photoshop!

For a warranty repair, isn't replacing the screen quite an expensive job? Spoke to a few people and they're surprised that the whole laptop isn't being replaced because of the cost of labour and parts.

But as soon as it's fixed, it's being whacked on eBay with a hopeful bid of at least £600!
 
I too had the same issue.
Glitchy logic board/failed GPU. I think it was because of the issues NVIDIA was having with the 8600's. Anyways, take it in and hope for the best...... I got a free upgrade (either mistake or purposely due to lower failure rates/more recent logic board) but I went from a 2.2 GHz Core 2 Duo w/ 128 MB VRAM to 2.6 GHz Core 2 Duo w/ 256 MB VRAM :) Needless to say I'm happy and was totally over the fact that the logic board died as soon as I found out :)

Good luck.
 
Kilamite said:
Yeah, I'm stuck using an old Windows laptop...extremely frustrating! Especially when I need the likes of Final Cut Express and Photoshop!

For a warranty repair, isn't replacing the screen quite an expensive job? Spoke to a few people and they're surprised that the whole laptop isn't being replaced because of the cost of labour and parts.

But as soon as it's fixed, it's being whacked on eBay with a hopeful bid of at least £600!
Click to expand...

Nah, apple's fixing it for free. Even if I did pay, it'd only be about $750, which is way cheaper than $2300+ for a new machine.
 
Just a wee update to my situation:

The logic board is being replaced. So that to me, says the GPU failed. However, they didn't mention the screen, so I'm hoping the screen is being replaced too, since I had to push the screen in (nothing to do with the GPU) because it would flicker.
 
Jonnyfive said:
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/525.18.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1.1 Mobile/5F136 Safari/525.20)

try taking out the battery then unplug the ac adapter. Once both those are done hold the power button in for 60 seconds. Then reconnect everything and try it
Click to expand...

5 seconds, not 60. per Apple.
 
alphaod said:
This sucks man. I'd think if you contacted Apple, they may still fix this even though it is out of warranty.
Click to expand...

Yeah, it's the GPU. And as long as you bought it less than 2 years ago, they will fix it - even without AppleCare.

And if it is over 2 years old, yell and tell them to fix it.
 
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