MacBook Pro -Mid 2009- Grey Screen

[grjone]

Hello!

I have an 09' macbook that will eventually load the no file system found folder, but thats it. I cant get it to boot to recovery mode. I did the opt+cmd+P/R. Pulled the HDD out, unplugged the sata cable, reseated ram.

Just curious if there are any other steps to get this thing live again.

Thanks.

 

[CoastalOR]

I have an 09' macbook that will eventually load the no file system found folder, but thats it. I cant get it to boot to recovery mode. I did the opt+cmd+P/R. Pulled the HDD out, unplugged the sata cable, reseated ram.
Just curious if there are any other steps to get this thing live again.

It sounds like you may be having a HDD problem or internal SATA drive cable problem.

Wha did you mean by "unplugged the sata cable"? Do you have another working Mac? Have you tried booting from your removed HDD with an external enclosure? Do you have any backups? Which macOS were you using?

 

[grjone]

I dont have another mac. I unplugged the HDD and tried booting, because i figured that was the issue initially. I unplugged the sata cable from the motherboard. I had one with a bad cable a few years ago that caused issues. So currently, there is no sata cable plugged into the board, or HDD in turn. I dont know what OS is on it, but given its unable to boot to recovery, i dont imagine the OS is the issue.

 

[CoastalOR]

I dont have another mac. I unplugged the HDD and tried booting, because i figured that was the issue initially. I unplugged the sata cable from the motherboard. I had one with a bad cable a few years ago that caused issues. So currently, there is no sata cable plugged into the board, or HDD in turn. I dont know what OS is on it, but given its unable to boot to recovery, i dont imagine the OS is the issue.

The questions I asked were to determine what testing capabilities are available.
Have you tried booting from your removed HDD with an external enclosure? If you can boot from your old HDD in an external enclosure then your HDD might not be failed/failing.

Do you have any backups? Some backups are bootable, like clones or Time Machine (if not created while using El Capitan (10.11.6) since there was a bug).

 

[grjone]

I dont have a mac platform to try and boot it from. No backups either. Its a friends computer.

 

[CoastalOR]

I dont have a mac platform to try and boot it from. No backups either. Its a friends computer.

Unfortunately you do not have any resources to work with in solving the problem. A 2009 MBP is old enough that it may not be worth spending a lot of money, but it may come down to getting it checked out by a local Apple Service Provider to get an idea of what is wrong and the repair cost.

Additional items that could be causing problems (besides the ones mentioned in previous posts):
RAM
Logic Board
Graphics

But from the symptoms in the first post it sounds like HDD and/or SATA cable.

 

[grjone]

I figured either the board or the GPU. Ill send it on! Thanks for the help.

 

[grjone]

Update:

I've got it to boot. After I plugged the sata cable back in, plugged the drive back in, it will boot into 10.10.5. Seems to be running normally. Disk Utility states repair need to be run in the repair tool, but it will not boot into the repair tool. Any way to get into the repair tool from the normal OS?