Macbook pro won't boot.....

[grainofsalt]

I was experiencing the exact same symptoms as described in the original post. I followed scratt's instructions exactly (including the cup of coffee) and now my macbook pro is back to normal. My mbp is a year out of warranty and there's no way i could have afforded to take it to an apple store. Anyway, i just wanted to say thanks.

 

[smearedblue]

Same issue here

restarted my computer, and nothing.. no power to the usbs, no display,.. nothing..

i do have the same indicator light on the front lit dimly and when i close the lid it gets brighter.. so i know it's the same issue..

I don't think this is something everyone should just deal with.. it's a major power issue involving the logic board, and video card.

I took mine into the apple store, and the kind genius informed me that it is most likely do to the nvidia video card.

This will be my third logic board on this two year old macbook pro. But at least they are kind enough to replace it free of charge, even though my apple care ran out a year ago.

They know that the video card is the issue, and they fix it. props to apple, for addressing this serious issue, and knowing that logic boards should never fail after 1 month, or 1 year and 8 months.

 

[Piwem]

First Post

i have a 15" MBP bought in august 2008

Im having the same issue that alot of the ppl here have described. laptop worked fine this morning, i shut it down to take it to class and it wouldn't start after that. I can hear fans and the disc drive spool up but it sounds like it doesn't finish start up and there is no picture.

ive tried all the tricks described and still nothing, i have an appointment at the local apple store tomorrow so we will see what happens. ill post here with results.

 

[yrchern]

First Post

i have a 15" MBP bought in august 2008

Im having the same issue that alot of the ppl here have described. laptop worked fine this morning, i shut it down to take it to class and it wouldn't start after that. I can hear fans and the disc drive spool up but it sounds like it doesn't finish start up and there is no picture.

ive tried all the tricks described and still nothing, i have an appointment at the local apple store tomorrow so we will see what happens. ill post here with results.

I have a MBP (mid 2007) and they have replaced my logic board once last year because of the nVidia chip issue. OS X boots but totally no display. I know it is running because I can login and hear some sounds.

Now I got the problem as this thread. There's no display, no start up chime. I just brought it to a local Apple store this afternoon and waiting for their phone call. Probably they are going to replace the logic board again.

BTW, this is the third time I sent it to repair. The second time there's some problem with the LCD so they replace the whole upper lid for me.

 

[madhukarah]

Thanks for your support. Logic board got replaced yesterday. They replaced the speakers too..i dont know why..!

 

[Jeffpony]

Another offering of hope!

Hi All,

(look for @@@@, to skip the guff and head to the solution)

I'm posting today as I have managed to recover my macbook pro 15" 2.2Ghz unit through the inspiration this thread has given me. I had basically given up until I read through this thread yesterday and thanks to you guys I now have a mac sitting behind me furiously being backed-up. My solution is slightly different to what I have read in the rest of these posts hence why I am posting.

Okay, firstly some background.

My unit has not displayed any kind of problems until two weeks ago. Its running Mac OS 10.6.2 having had no issues with previous versions.

Friday 27th Nov, I set my machine shutting down. Now it took longer than usual, so I decided to shut the lid and finish the shutdown when I got home. I never bothered to do so when I got home. That sunday, I decided to play a DVD on the mac and got it out of the bag. The front power light was on glowing on and off. I pressed power on the unit and basically the original posters symptoms occurred. ****, I thought, as I mulled over the idea that leaving the laptop in the bag semi shutdown had probably cooked it.

So I ran through some basic trouble shooting, removed ram and the battery. Attempted the PMU / SMC reset, no beans, nothing.

Went back into work and had to explain that my laptop is dead, rued not getting applecare. That week I went into Mac Store MK and saw a "genius", who did the basic trouble shooting. The one point I will make now is why did he not tell me about all of the above? It does seem quite a common issue, anyhow he checked for the nVidia issue, that turned up negative and then basically left me with a diagnosis that the logic board was dead and that it was a £700 fix. I decided to decline. I don't know where they pull these repair prices from.

Anyhow, I basically accepted that the unit was dead and decided to move on, and thus I have been using a Windows laptop for the past two weeks!!

Yesterday I decided to give the unit one last chance, I hit the internet to do some research and then found this thread! It gave me hope and some conviction that the unit was not dead, just 'sleeping'. I tried all of the above, holding down power buttons on boot, etc and it did nothing to fix the problem, so I left the unit to recharge the battery over night in the hope that it might turn on the next day with a full charge. This morning came round and I turned on the unit, nothing, same blank stare.

@@@@

So what I decided to do was leave the unit turned on (in the funky sleep state), screen open, only connected to the battery. I left it like this until the battery had drained fully and the unit had turned off. I then reconnected my PSU, pressed power and the Mac booted! I have not restarted yet, but at least I have got my work off of the machine now.

Hopefully posting this will help someone else, loosing £1000 in the space of the weekend can be gutting, especially over something fixable. You do have to wonder why Apple has not fixed this via firmware updates, oh well.

Good luck and take care,

Jeff.

 

[spork183]

What worked for me...FWIW

The Machine: 1st generation MBP intel 2.0ghz with ATI 128graphics, upgraded ram (2x1gb) and upgraded 320gb HD.

The Problem: On power up, drive noises, glowing light, no chime, black screen.

Steps: Tried everything listed in this thread in the way of pram, ram swaps, pressing the power button with my pinkie finger while humming "Battle Hymn of the Republic", etc.

The Fix: When I installed one stick ram in upper (outward, first accessible slot) machine immediately booted normally. When I installed in the bottom slot, no boot. The bottom ram appeared to be seated correctly, however, when I reseated it and applied gentle pressure along the back edge (pushing it further into the connection, not down) with a flat screwdriver, it seated further in, even slightly bowing the spring clips. Reinstalled upper ram, has booted, slept, connected, sat, etc for quite a while now. Your mileage may vary.

Background: Last night I replaced the fried I/O board, and the left and right fans for good measure (heat issues, not boot issues). When I finished, I hooked it up to a 60w charger and left if on all night. Battery registered full charge this morning. Due to dead battery and late hour, I never attempted to boot last night, though I'm sure it would not have booted. This morning, when it wouldn't boot, I disassembled and rechecked all the cabling, to make sure I hadn't missed a connection. Same issue. Reinstalled ram (obviously not securely enough), popped battery out, punched power button til my finger hurt, etc. After browsing numerous forums and trying anything I could do at home (glad I didn't have a spare logic board or that would have gone in ) I stumbled across someone talking about a "ram issue" with the bottom slot. Tried it and... Luck

 

[wza]

thanks to everyone for help

I had been suffering the same problem as many of you since yesterday morning. MBP wouldn't awake from sleep, found this thread on my iphone searching for a way to fix, and tried everything, took ram out, ram back in, pram resets, taking battery out and holding power button for ages. I basically done everything, no joy. Have been doing that continuously since yesterday morning, nothing, black screen, couple of clicks, nothing else.

I had enough, so just left it, psu attached in its deep sleep state for an hour next to me on sofa, I leant over and turned power off, then power back on, and what do you know, it started, big smile on my face, i have my MBP back.

Thanks to everyone for posts as it saved me hitting it with a hammer, and all I can recommend is to persevere with it if its happening to you, keep trying all the things suggested on here, it didn't feel to me like it would work again as no response throughout the 2 days until it decided to wake up for me again.

I love my mac, and always big apple up, but having gone through this, and the worry that my £1300 mpb that is only 2 1/2 years old may be dead forever, reading some horror stories about new logic board and having to spend £700 to get fixed, made me feel a bit worried about the future, i know pc's go wrong, but you can normally fix, or find someone to fix for you, and pretty cheap to do. Don't get me wrong, I'll won't go back to pc, but I won't be singing the praises of apple in same way again.

 

[carlb3]

Same problems here

had the same problems as posted earlier.....

pulsing light, startup sound but no image...

tried all the resets, swapped memory...

took it to apple, they pulled out a hard drived labeled NVIDIA tester, I asked, common occurence? the reply was, "yes"

they are replacing the system board.

due to the holidays, will be several days to get it back....

damn glad I bought the applecare.

 

[wza]

I had been suffering the same problem as many of you since yesterday morning. MBP wouldn't awake from sleep, found this thread on my iphone searching for a way to fix, and tried everything, took ram out, ram back in, pram resets, taking battery out and holding power button for ages. I basically done everything, no joy. Have been doing that continuously since yesterday morning, nothing, black screen, couple of clicks, nothing else.

I had enough, so just left it, psu attached in its deep sleep state for an hour next to me on sofa, I leant over and turned power off, then power back on, and what do you know, it started, big smile on my face, i have my MBP back.

Thanks to everyone for posts as it saved me hitting it with a hammer, and all I can recommend is to persevere with it if its happening to you, keep trying all the things suggested on here, it didn't feel to me like it would work again as no response throughout the 2 days until it decided to wake up for me again.

I love my mac, and always big apple up, but having gone through this, and the worry that my £1300 mpb that is only 2 1/2 years old may be dead forever, reading some horror stories about new logic board and having to spend £700 to get fixed, made me feel a bit worried about the future, i know pc's go wrong, but you can normally fix, or find someone to fix for you, and pretty cheap to do. Don't get me wrong, I'll won't go back to pc, but I won't be singing the praises of apple in same way again.

All started to go wrong for me again, so i found the following info and all has been good for past 24 hours.

Mac HD > Library > Preferences > System Configuration. Then trash the preferences.plist file, restart.

 

[mwhitted]

...So I persevered.

1. Get rid of the PSU.
2. Get rid of the battery.
3. Do the >10 second thing on the Power Button with everything off.
4. Take all the RAM out. (This was what made the difference IMO).
5. Do the >10 second thing with the Power Button again.
6. Have a cup of coffee.
7. Do the >10 second thing with the Power Button again.
(I have to wonder if whatever that does takes a lot longer to drain / clear the PMU than Apple thinks.)
8. Stick the RAM back in.
9. Stick the battery in.
10. Connect the power.
11. Blow on your fingers, and fire her up.. et voila: Your Mac is back.

Hope that helps some people anyway.

Peace.

No joy. I actually replaced "Have a cup of coffee" with "Have lunch". I'm hoping (praying) that I can convince Apple that it's the nVidia problem, since I'm out of warranty.

 

[stupersonal]

Thanks

Hi All,

(look for @@@@, to skip the guff and head to the solution)

I'm posting today as I have managed to recover my macbook pro 15" 2.2Ghz unit through the inspiration this thread has given me. I had basically given up until I read through this thread yesterday and thanks to you guys I now have a mac sitting behind me furiously being backed-up. My solution is slightly different to what I have read in the rest of these posts hence why I am posting.

Okay, firstly some background.

My unit has not displayed any kind of problems until two weeks ago. Its running Mac OS 10.6.2 having had no issues with previous versions.

Friday 27th Nov, I set my machine shutting down. Now it took longer than usual, so I decided to shut the lid and finish the shutdown when I got home. I never bothered to do so when I got home. That sunday, I decided to play a DVD on the mac and got it out of the bag. The front power light was on glowing on and off. I pressed power on the unit and basically the original posters symptoms occurred. ****, I thought, as I mulled over the idea that leaving the laptop in the bag semi shutdown had probably cooked it.

So I ran through some basic trouble shooting, removed ram and the battery. Attempted the PMU / SMC reset, no beans, nothing.

Went back into work and had to explain that my laptop is dead, rued not getting applecare. That week I went into Mac Store MK and saw a "genius", who did the basic trouble shooting. The one point I will make now is why did he not tell me about all of the above? It does seem quite a common issue, anyhow he checked for the nVidia issue, that turned up negative and then basically left me with a diagnosis that the logic board was dead and that it was a £700 fix. I decided to decline. I don't know where they pull these repair prices from.

Anyhow, I basically accepted that the unit was dead and decided to move on, and thus I have been using a Windows laptop for the past two weeks!!

Yesterday I decided to give the unit one last chance, I hit the internet to do some research and then found this thread! It gave me hope and some conviction that the unit was not dead, just 'sleeping'. I tried all of the above, holding down power buttons on boot, etc and it did nothing to fix the problem, so I left the unit to recharge the battery over night in the hope that it might turn on the next day with a full charge. This morning came round and I turned on the unit, nothing, same blank stare.

@@@@

So what I decided to do was leave the unit turned on (in the funky sleep state), screen open, only connected to the battery. I left it like this until the battery had drained fully and the unit had turned off. I then reconnected my PSU, pressed power and the Mac booted! I have not restarted yet, but at least I have got my work off of the machine now.

Hopefully posting this will help someone else, loosing £1000 in the space of the weekend can be gutting, especially over something fixable. You do have to wonder why Apple has not fixed this via firmware updates, oh well.

Good luck and take care,

Jeff.

Worked for me
Had to let the battery drain before it worked.

Stu

 

[joshalee]

Suggestions

I have been having the same issue with the resetting, blank screen, no chime, sleep light is on and I hear the HD spinning. I am curious if my issue is the video card or not. I have the 2nd gen MBP from 2006. I did upgrade to two megs of ram and bought a cosair one meg ram. I have an appt on Monday morning and backed up everything. They mentioned before to reinstall m OS. Is it worth investing the $300 on fixing the unit?

 

[buthidae]

This is now happening on one of our MBP's at work!

Going to try and get it covered under the extended nVidia warranty

 

[simonshek]

I am having a MBP 1,1 2.16GHz, 2Gb ram with snow leopard installed and boot camp is not installed.
I was watching video clip in quick time x but it crash when it was switching to full screen. Beach ball of death shown up and was spinning. I did a hard shutdown. Next morning it won't boot into OS X and stuck blue screen, then it gave me a broken gray screen.

I have tried:
1) reset pram - nothing happen
2) reset PSU - nothing happen
3) boot up from ext. usb hd - nothing happen
4) boot up from snow leopard install cd - nothing happen but i can get into safe mode
5) it did can boot up from the restore disc that came from mpb. i did the restore. After the restore, mbp still keeps crashing

 

[ksavai]

What works? HELP!!

I read whole thread and it is not updated since one year.
I have exact same problem and from above description I found out there are 3 methods everyone tried and got success.

Method 1:- Rechecking RAM (removing and placing)
Method 2:- Drain whole battery and try
Method 3:- wait for 18-20 min and try

I tried all these method atleast twice and nothing seem to work (method 3 actually worked once but not this time)

With so many people got stuck this way anyone got any other ideas or what they did for long term?

Thanks in advance

 

[nttranbao]

Hi,

I also have a MBP which can boot, but the screen is blank, even if external monitor plugged in and screen mirroring is turned on.

However, using another mac, I can use Screen Sharing (SS) to remotely connect to my MBP, and work normally.

So there is something wrong with the VGA card/ Monitor I thought. And when System Profiler is opened (still via SS), the VGA is ill-reported as "Intel GMA3100", although infact is NVIDIA Geforce 8600M GT model!!!!!

After a while, I found out the reason why. Check my response on this thread for more info: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=12189549&#12189549

Quick info: it is because of faulty Geforce chipset on MBP, as quoted:

"In July 2008, NVIDIA publicly acknowledged a higher than normal failure rate for some of their graphics processors due to a packaging defect. At that same time, NVIDIA assured Apple that Mac computers with these graphics processors were not affected. However, after an Apple-led investigation, Apple has determined that some MacBook Pro computers with the NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT graphics processor may be affected. If the NVIDIA graphics processor in your MacBook Pro has failed, or fails within four years of the original date of purchase, a repair will be done free of charge, even if your MacBook Pro is out of warranty."

So guys, if you are on same boat with me, contact Apple asap for FREE fix/replacement.

Good luck,
Bao

 

[jeanga]

Hi there,


I seem to have a similar problem to the ones experienced by you guys, so I booked my appointment at the Genius bar and pray that my MBP is experiencing the NVIDIA issue talked about...

I won't be able to see anyone for another week though and I've got a lot of critical data on that laptop...

Bao, how did you manage to connect to your MBP using screen sharing, I don't know if our issues are similar, but I'd like to try this as I kinda need to reach that data...

Otherwise, doesn any of you guys know how I could simply access the data on the MBP?
I've got access to another MBP, so can easily try to connect via SS, and I've been trying to connect to the hard drive via firewire but without success so far...

I would really appreciate your help

THANKS MILLIONS,
This thread has been tremendous help already...

JeanGa

 

[coreyb]

I've been having the same issue with my 2006 15" macbook pro 2.33ghz intel duo core w/ stock 2gb ram.

Basically i cannot shut it down or restart it if i need to use it in the following 24 hours. So any osx update that requires a restart i cannot run. It's becoming a huge issue but i'm almost getting use to it at this point - it's probably happened 5 times in the last week. When i press the power button i see the power light come on and stay steady and i hear the hard drive spin but i never hear the chime and the display never turns on. Is this 100% a logic board issue? If so how much is it to replace the logic board? If i do replace it and spend the $300 or so will i be ok for a few more years or should i just replace it now? Or maybe fix the logic board and sell it on craigslist with full disclosure and then buy a new one?

 

[darion]

Ok, in Thailand on holiday so no Apple support help out here.

I have macbook pro, 2.16 2gb ram and bootcamp is not installed. I put it to sleep last night having been listening to some tunes on itunes (I also watched a DVD).

Today when I tried to start the macbook pro this is what happened.

1) the light on the front of the macbook pro glows faintly (constant)
2) the DVD spins (there is a movie in the mbp)

The macbook pro does not get past these 2 stages, it does not start up, the screen stays black, the keyboard does not respond, however the processors do get warm when it is left in this state for a period of 5 minutes or more.

I have tried the follwing,

1) held down the power button until it beeps - it didn't beep
2) reset the pram - nothing happened
3) tried starting in safe mode - nothing happened
4) tried holding down the mouse button upon starting - nothing happened
5) held down cmd option and the other one before starting - nothing
6) held the macbook pro up to see if the dvd would fall out - it didn't

It seems like the keyboard is not responsive, the caps lock and num lock lights are not working. No power is coming out of the usb ports, when I try to start the mbp I plugged my ipod in and it didn't charge.

Can anybody please help me with this one, I am in Thailand for another 3 weeks and seriously need to get this sorted. Thanks in advance.... ;0

I have exact the same problem on my MacBook Pro, a 2.4Ghz Penryn on Santarosa chipset. Got refused to get the warranty from a Vietnam ASP because they couldn't run the test procedure on my Mac cuz it don't boot. Mine last for 1.5 years without any stressful works, just office, Internet, some Popcap games and video. I've heard about this famous problem on Santarosa MBPs and didn't even play any 3D games on this Mac

But still there are lights. I found some posts on the net talking about keep the MBP power on to heating itself up and eventually it will boot. Tried that and keep hitting the power button every 2-3 minute for about 20-30min, the white screen with Apple logo appeared and the Mac boot up again. Hey Steve, is it a miracle or what? =))

I checked the System Profiler and still can see my GPU reported as NVIDIA 8600GT, it still works but PCIe lane width only 1x instead of 16x, WIERD!!. I successfully updated my Mac to 10.6.4, restarted a few times with the same procedure I mentioned above to make the Mac boot.

If there are alot of people suffering this problem, why Apple still don't want to have a look at it and do something?

Full link: http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/feedback/MacBookPro_video_failure.html#warmup

 

[mafalduki]

no luck

same problem.
tried everything suggested in this forum. No luck.
Apple sets a €75 for diagnosis and if its the logic board €600.
My question is, if this is a common problem, as it seems, how are they not acknowledging it and compensate for it? I mean, €675 is a lot of money for a machine that is only 2 years 3 months old.

Outrageous.

 

[buthidae]

I don't know if "common" is really fair though. There's only, what, 15-odd reports in this thread? Things happen, sadly.

 

[mafalduki]

well, there are other forums where this issue is approached. if it happens to a number of computers, then something is wrong.
I managed to reboot mine, did permissions repair, disk, etc., but when I shut down it went back to the same problem.
I took all the RAM out again, etc. and I'm crossing my fingers I can reboot again, but what am I supposed to do then? keep the computer always on?
I also got rid of the plist mentioned in a post in this thread. I am sorry if this question is already answered, but I would appreciate if someone could give me advice on how to sort out the problem if I manage to reboot again. Many thanks.

 

[machut]

I tried those steps but nothing happens,after pressing and releasing the keys with the power button,the magsafe change color from red to green and still my macbook pro does not boot.

What can i do next? TIA.

 

[machut]

I tried those steps but nothing happens,after pressing and releasing the keys with the power button,the magsafe change color from red to green and still my macbook pro does not boot.

What can i do next? TIA.

BTW my Macbook pro is 1 month old Macbookpro 15inch i7.