delete hard drive on mbp with black screen of death

[mogreezy]

i have a macbook pro that loads up with chime and everything but stays on black screen am looking to bring it in to apple to get fixed but want to clean the hd before hand as i have sensitive bank and other information on it wondering how to do this thank you for your help

 

[Mac.Genius]

Hey Mogreezy--

You have two options.

If you have another mac, boot the computer into target disk mode (Hold down T after the chime), then plug it into another Mac to erase the drive, and reinstall the OS.

If you don't have another mac; try an external display to see if you can get video to do an erase and install.

Sounds like probably a video card issue and hopefully the external display will work. Do you have the 8800gt in your computer?

 

[ThirteenXIII]

Well if you have the unibody system, just plop out the hdd.
It'd be easier with another mac to TDM into.

 

[mogreezy]

Hey Mogreezy--

You have two options.

If you have another mac, boot the computer into target disk mode (Hold down T after the chime), then plug it into another Mac to erase the drive, and reinstall the OS.

If you don't have another mac; try an external display to see if you can get video to do an erase and install.

Sounds like probably a video card issue and hopefully the external display will work. Do you have the 8800gt in your computer?

after cleaning the hard drive do i just throw in the install disk in drive of the mac with the black screen?

 

[mogreezy]

anybody else?

 

[Fox11]

As Mac.Genius said, best option is to try and boot into Target Disk mode (connected to another mac) to backup files/clean the HD. When you boot into TD mode, it'll be like mounting any other HD, so you can wipe it/format it, re-install OS, etc. I just dropped my MBP off to be repaired for the same problem (no video/black screen) and this worked for me!

Edit: You can pop the install disk into the other mac (probably best option). OR, as I had to do in my case (old Mac mini didn't like the DL-DVD), you can actually put the disk into the mac you have in Target Disk mode and boot off of that through the other computer (it'll mount, and then you just choose "install Leopard" or whatever OS version you have- and it'll automatically ask you to boot (will take awhile to do so, btw).
*As far as I know, this would probably have to be with the official Mac OS install disk, not with the disk(s) that came with the MBP.