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MacBook Pro Won't Boot Up--Help!

MacConvert2007

MacConvert2007

macrumors member
Original poster
May 23, 2007
63
2
I have a mid-2009 MacBook Pro with 4 GB of RAM running OS 10.9 Mavericks. My hard drive currently only has about 2 GB of free space on it. Also, my battery is in bad shape. It only gives me about an hour of use on a full charge.

Last time I got it to boot-up fully, it happened slowly, and all the programs were crashing, even the Finder (that's what command-option-escape was telling me at least).

So I tried to boot into safe mode by holding the shift key down and restarting. It spent 3 minutes trying to start up then suddenly just shut down, as if the battery ran out or power was lost. This was strange since the AC cord was plugged in with a green light on it at the time.

I have since tried to start it up again 3 more times, same result each time. MBP tries to boot-up in safe mode for about 3 minutes, then just loses power as if the battery has run out.

I'm a bit perplexed by this. What should I do next?
 
OSX doesn't always handle low HDD space very well. Do you have a spare HDD you can use to install a new copy of OSX too see if your MBP is still working?

You could also run Apple Hardware Test.
 
I have an external hard drive with my time machine backup on it. How do I run the hardware test?
 
I tried to start the Apple Hardware Test by holding down D and pressing the power but I got the same result as above.
 
I turned the machine on, then slipped in the applications/apple hardware test DVD, and held down the D key. Immediately, the drive started a low tone beeping and after 30 seconds or so spit the DVD out. I then put the DVD back in and it did not beep this time. So I turned it off then and turned it back on holding the D key. It booted up to Apple Hardware Test.

I'm running the test now.
 
Last edited:
Alert! Apple Hardware Test has detected an error

4HDD/11/40000004: SATA (0,0)


What does this mean?
 
My guess would be a hard drive error.

Do you have the original install disk? You could try booting to that and checking the HD using disk utility.
 
The machine is stuck trying to start in safe mode every time I turn it on. Is there a key that will start it in regular/normal mode instead?
 
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