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

Slugg

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Aug 21, 2009
11
0
When I installed Snow Leopard, it did the installer for a bit, but then the screen went black and the CD drive stopped spinning. After 10 minutes or so, I held the power button and rebooted, only to see the flashing folder with a '?' in the middle. Now when I try to run the Snow Leopard DVD, it shows the normal boot procedure, but then when it should be going into the installer, the display goes blank instead, but I can still hear the CD drive spinning as if it's doing everything correctly except starting the display.

Is anyone else having this issue?
 
When I installed Snow Leopard, it did the installer for a bit, but then the screen went black and the CD drive stopped spinning. After 10 minutes or so, I held the power button and rebooted, only to see the flashing folder with a '?' in the middle. Now when I try to run the Snow Leopard DVD, it shows the normal boot procedure, but then when it should be going into the installer, the display goes blank instead, but I can still hear the CD drive spinning as if it's doing everything correctly except starting the display.

Is anyone else having this issue?

I am having this problem as well on my 13 MBP.
 
here's another one... 13" mbp. black screen on install. reset pram, installer continues. i'll post again if there are any other problems.
 
Mine went black for a good half an hour with the DVD occassionally stopping. Eventually it came back up and finished the install in 45 minutes on a new mbp2.26ghz. Maybe there really isn't a major problem, it just wants everyone to be patient.
 
I had the same issue with my brand new MBP 13". I googled and found the suggestion about holding a flashlight up to it and sure enough, it was waiting for me to click continue. The backlight just wasn't turning on.

I have to wonder how in the heck a bug like this gets out there. It's a brand new laptop fergoodnesssakes!

Oh well, hope it helps someone else to find this thread.
 
I'm having this problem with my 15" UBMP but after the installation and during normal use first time it happened was when i was encoding using Handbrake, 2nd time was just googling, the only way to get my screen back is to close the lid to put it into standby then opening it up again :mad:
 
When I installed Snow Leopard, it did the installer for a bit, but then the screen went black and the CD drive stopped spinning. After 10 minutes or so, I held the power button and rebooted, only to see the flashing folder with a '?' in the middle. Now when I try to run the Snow Leopard DVD, it shows the normal boot procedure, but then when it should be going into the installer, the display goes blank instead, but I can still hear the CD drive spinning as if it's doing everything correctly except starting the display.

Is anyone else having this issue?

This just happened to me as well. I have a brand spankin' new MacBook Pro (13-inch, core 2 duo, aluminum) that I bought about 3 weeks ago. The only things I've installed on it are Adobe Reader and Xcode. I intentionally did not install a bunch of stuff, because I knew I was going to upgrade to OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard as soon as it came out. Well I got my installer DVD today, I booted up and inserted the disc. The installer seemed to start fine. After about 5 minutes into the install, it rebooted the machine. It showed the Apple logo and spinning circle thingy for about a minute (what it normally shows at bootup). Then, suddenly, the screen went totally blank. I could hear the DVD drive making some noises every couple of minutes, so I just waited patiently, and did NOT hit the power button or anything. However, after about 20 or 30 minutes, I could not hear anything, so I hit the space bar several times. I wonder if hitting the space bar effectively clicked the OK/Proceed button (that I couldn't see, due to the blank screen), because a minute later I heard the CD/DVD drive spinning again, and a couple minutes later it rebooted the machine again. This time the screen was not blank, and it started up and showed some video/animation with music, obviously something on the install disc.

I really hate to do something major like upgrade an Operating System, and NOT receive some kind of positive acknowledgement or feedback indicating that it completed successfully. Call me insecure, but I would very much prefer to see a big green checkmark, with a message that says "Installation completed successfully!" Did Apple not test this upgrade on the new MacBook Pro's? How can I be sure that everything got installed/upgraded properly? I go to "About the Finder" and it shows 10.6 -- but then, that's just the Finder version... This is a bit disconcerting. I am thinking about doing a complete re-install. Any ideas/suggestions? Thanks.
 
Same

I had the same issue with my brand new MBP 13". I googled and found the suggestion about holding a flashlight up to it and sure enough, it was waiting for me to click continue. The backlight just wasn't turning on.

I have to wonder how in the heck a bug like this gets out there. It's a brand new laptop fergoodnesssakes!

Oh well, hope it helps someone else to find this thread.

Thanks for the tip, same thing with my wives brand new MBP 13, the flash light tip worked and allowed us to select the continue button. Little bit grumpy about this as my wife just switched to a MAC from Windows to get away from Vista - all my MAC friends say they never have issues and so easy to use, but as an ex admin this isn't winning me over. - although it doesn't crash every 90minutes, which is a bonus
- may convert yet :confused:
 
Apple OS X Snow Leopard is JUNK!

:mad::mad::mad:
This was my most shocking experience during any OS upgrade. Ever! Having dumped windoze for Mac after 10 years of suffering, that's saying something. The screen going blank during an OS install is just completely unacceptable. I captured a video of how horrible the experience really was and posted it to Youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O19p7MyM9Ec
I couldn't believe this was really happening! I feel very let down by Apple over this. Having advertised new MacBooks with the promise of the upcoming Snow Leopard OS, missing something as basic as running a few test upgrades to catch something like this begs the question: What the hell kind of a quality process does Apple's OS releases entail. This just feeds to the increasingly omnious feeling that Snow Leopard could really be Apple's Vista. Apple really ought to pull the ads ridiculing Windows 7. This experience shows Apple in extremely hypocritical light.
 
Try a Flashlight

For those of you that are stuck, it appears that during the installation there is a problem with the brightness. Meaning, the screen is actually on. You just can't see it.

Anyway, I used a flashlight to see the screen contents. This allowed me to follow the directions and continue the installation. Yes, it's a bit tough to see. But, I was able to get through the installation and it's working now.

Oh, and as for Window 7, half the installations in our labs at work didn't work correctly. So, let it go. Let's agree that both Microsoft and Apple both have their defects. And, if you know anything about computers, you know enough to not fall for the marketing hype from either company.
 
For those of you that are stuck, it appears that during the installation there is a problem with the brightness. Meaning, the screen is actually on. You just can't see it.

Anyway, I used a flashlight to see the screen contents. This allowed me to follow the directions and continue the installation. Yes, it's a bit tough to see. But, I was able to get through the installation and it's working now.

Oh, and as for Window 7, half the installations in our labs at work didn't work correctly. So, let it go. Let's agree that both Microsoft and Apple both have their defects. And, if you know anything about computers, you know enough to not fall for the marketing hype from either company.

I have two MacBook Pro Intel based machines. One is an early 1.83 Mhz and the other a later 2.14 Mhz. Snow Leopard installed no problem on the 2.14, but returned black screen on the 1.83.

That made me recall an earlier problem on the 1.83 caused by connecting to an outside monitor - which also can cause the screen to black out I discovered. Eventually I realized the screen was actually there but could not be seen. After much trial and error I was finally able to reset the brightness in the preferences panel by holding a flashlight on the screen in a darkened room until I finally located the cursor and carefully guided it over to the preferences panel. Of course, this is not possible when the screen is darkened before you can click the 'agree' button somewhere through the process.

Apple needs to correct this issue. It's enough to make you pull your hair out.
 
IT's the NVIDIA logic board, get it replaced for FREE from Mac Genius

I have a Macbook Pro 2.4GHZ 17" bought back in Aug 2007, ran fine until recently installing Snow Leopard, and the screen went black a day later. Was able to bring it back by holding down power button for 10 seconds and after the loud beep it came back. This happened almost daily for 1 week then finally earlier this week it went dead. I have spent almost entire day reading dozen forum support sites, did everything to reset it but no avail.

I wanted to share this frustrating experience so no one doesn't have to go through with this.

I took it to Mac Genius Bar today and the guy diagnosed as a known NVIDIA video card problem because by plugging an external monitor still nothing showed up. He scanned my MacBook Pro and told me that the logic board with the video card will be replaced in 3-5 days at NO CHARGE to me even though my warranty is long gone, but it's a known issue, so Apple will replace for FREE under the customer satisfaction program. I hope this solves the problem by next week.

Take it to your local Mac Shop and get it checked out and fixed before this runs out.

Cheers
 
ManyThanks!

I had the same issue with my brand new MBP 13". I googled and found the suggestion about holding a flashlight up to it and sure enough, it was waiting for me to click continue. The backlight just wasn't turning on.

I have to wonder how in the heck a bug like this gets out there. It's a brand new laptop fergoodnesssakes!

Oh well, hope it helps someone else to find this thread.

I ran into this problem and was wondering WTF? Fortunately I found you post. And yes you hold a flashlight up to the screen and you can see the installation is running and waiting for input. Aye Ca rumba
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.