MacBook Pro 17 wont boot. Blue Screen

[hillm]

I have been having a problem with my 17" MacBook Pro which I purchased 3/2009.

Every 5-6 weeks, the computer fails to boot up and weeks of normal use. Each time, it gets past the Apple logo screen and then goes to a blue screen with the spinning cog wheel. It never gets past this point. Each time I have had to restore from my time capsule backup and everything is fine for several weeks again. It just happended yesterday for the fifth time since I have had it. I switched from a windows machine to this one becuase I thought it would be less prone to crashing. Not true so far. Anyway, Anybody out there ahve any idea why it would do this? Or, how to reslove it for good since it is a real pain to have to restore every month or so.

Thanks

 

[BinfordsTool]

You aren't running a 500gb Hitachi 5400 drive, are ya?

I have the same model, my MBP hd crashed... sorta. I'm running it off an external drive at the moment, the internal drive periodically comes back and allows me to read data off of it, but other than that it is kinda screwed.

My guess, bad hard drive?

 

[mrsir2009]

Try using an external drive next time that happens, and if it works you know its the HD...

 

[hillm]

I originally bought it with a 320GB drive. It happened twice so I thought the drive was bad also. I replaced it with a 500GB Seagate - Momentus Hard Drive. The same thing keep happening so I dont think it is the hard drive at this point.