Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

stone315

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jun 17, 2008
149
0
opened up my girlfriend's macbook, which had been in sleep mode for a few hours, and the screen is grey. you can see what had been up on the desktop, but it's like looking at it through a thick grey lens. everything is fuzzy, no color; it's like there's a screen over it, and then at the bottom there's what looks like a progress bar (a series of vertical dashes), that started out empty and then started moving across and filling up with white, but it stopped with three empty dashes left. any ideas on what happened and how to fix it??? please help...

EDIT: here's a pic of the screen:

2680883555_2c11189f8b.jpg


edit again: when you close it/open it the sleep light goes on and off accordingly, but the apple stays lit up continuously and the screen stays backlit. you can see it around the edges. again, the screen has like a grey layer over it, you can't see the cursor, and there is zero response, with the progress bar remaining how it was in the picture. someone please help me....
 
Nothing guaranteed

Strange. Was the battery almost empty before this issue appeared? If so, you might try if connecting it to the poweradapter fixes anything.

If not, the only thing I can think of is to shut it down (forced) first by pressing the power button for 5 seconds or so. After that I'd boot the MacBook from the install disk (put in the disk before you shut down your Mac and press the "C" key just after the chimes when starting up) and repair disk permissions (Disk Utilities under the utilities menu). After that your MacBook should be able to boot normally.

If the MacBook can't be shut down this way, I'm not sure what to do. Pulling the powerchord isn't really an option I guess, but does anyone know if it's possible to (safely) shut down a MacBook by taking out the battery?
 
thanks. Well, the battery was dead when I woke up this morning, so I kinda don't want to plug it in and possibly mess it up again, so I'm gonna call apple later today. Thanks for the advice though!
 
Your computer went into deep sleep (saves all settings/open apps etc to disk). This happens when the battery is totally depleted. Plug it into a power source and it should start up ok. This is totally normal behavior.
 
Strange. Was the battery almost empty before this issue appeared? If so, you might try if connecting it to the poweradapter fixes anything.

If not, the only thing I can think of is to shut it down (forced) first by pressing the power button for 5 seconds or so. After that I'd boot the MacBook from the install disk (put in the disk before you shut down your Mac and press the "C" key just after the chimes when starting up) and repair disk permissions (Disk Utilities under the utilities menu). After that your MacBook should be able to boot normally.

If the MacBook can't be shut down this way, I'm not sure what to do. Pulling the powerchord isn't really an option I guess, but does anyone know if it's possible to (safely) shut down a MacBook by taking out the battery?

You could simply pull the battery out :rolleyes:
 
Your computer went into deep sleep (saves all settings/open apps etc to disk). This happens when the battery is totally depleted. Plug it into a power source and it should start up ok. This is totally normal behavior.

Thank you so much! I'm at work right now on my iPhone but as soon as I get home I'll do that and let you know how it goes.
 
delete this. iphone said it couldn't connect to server so i thought it didn't go through, but i guess it did.
 
alright it's been plugged in for the past 6 hours or so and i am now posting from it. thanks so much!
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.