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MBP does not start up

B

bwgary

macrumors member
Original poster
Jun 11, 2011
38
0
Dumas, TX
I have a 3 year old MBP that does not start up. My wife told me she had closed the computer and when she opened it up later, it never woke up. (This has happened before.) She held the power button to force it to shut down, but the unit would never come back on after that. Here's what it does when you attempt to turn it on. The CD drive spins and I can hear the HD spin. The LED on the front comes on, but is dim. The screen stays blank and I never hear the chime. I checked to see if any of the RAM chips had come loose, but they were secure.

I have not tried booting off the Snow Leopard DVD, but I do have a boot version on a USB drive and tried that to no avail. I'll try the Snow Leopard DVD tomorrow after I get it from my office. Does anyone have any suggestions?

Bryan
 
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Resetting the SMC did nothing.

Nothing else has worked. The only major thing I've done to this Mac was install iWork this morning, and now she don't work.
 
I tried booting off the Snow Leopard DVD and that also did not work. Guess it's going to the shop.
 
Well, from what you've described the HDD does not seem to be the perpetrator (if it was, you'd be seeing a drive icon with a question mark on the display) it is either the RAM or the display itself.
 
Does it make beeping noises? Or a click?

It could be the logic board because mine stopped working altogether just like that.

Also, do you have applecare?
 
re-seat the RAM

Thought I saw that you checked or moved the ram. Pull it out and re-seat it properly. Good luck. Tell us what happens.
 
I tried resetting te PRAM and that didnt work. I also took out the RAM chips and tried each of them individually in each bay and nothing. I don't think it's the display because even with a bad display to machine should still go through its boot cycle. I'm now thinking it's the logic board. We had Apple care, but it's expired.
 
The exact same thing happened to my wife's first gen MacBook about a week ago. I had given up on it and then last night as I was getting ready to pull the hard drive, I went to turn it on and it just started up again. Weird, right? It's been working fine since. I don't know what caused it, but it had the exact same symptoms yours has. I did have it plugged in the entire time it was "dead" so who knows. My wife does tend to run the battery down to zero, so maybe it went into a deep sleep and needed time to recalibrate???
 
This battery was never ran down. I'm going to take the unit apart and see if maybe the logic board worked it's way loose since I replaced the keyboard on it about a month ago. I looked up the price on new logic boards and they are going for about $300. If mine has come unplugged, then hopefully it'll be an easy fix. I may order a new one and replace it myself because I know the shop will charge at least $100 to replace it.

This is just wonderful. I bought a brand new MBP on Friday, and on Saturday my other one craps out. So my wife gets to use the new one (which is supposed to be mine) and I have to continue using my HP Hackintosh.
 
bwgary said:
This battery was never ran down. I'm going to take the unit apart and see if maybe the logic board worked it's way loose since I replaced the keyboard on it about a month ago. I looked up the price on new logic boards and they are going for about $300. If mine has come unplugged, then hopefully it'll be an easy fix. I may order a new one and replace it myself because I know the shop will charge at least $100 to replace it.

This is just wonderful. I bought a brand new MBP on Friday, and on Saturday my other one craps out. So my wife gets to use the new one (which is supposed to be mine) and I have to continue using my HP Hackintosh.
Click to expand...

What generation MBP is it? Could be the dreaded nVidia 8600GT issue.
 
I took the old MBP in today and they told me it needs a new logic board. $699 installed! So I bought the Mrs. a new MBP today. I'll look into people that can repair it cheaper, but for now I've got two brand new 15" MBP's.

It could be an NVIDIA issue but it's out of warranty and out of Apple Care. I may take it with me the next time I go to D/FW and take it to an Apple Store there and see what they say.
 
@bwgary:

The same happened to my MacBook Pro 17" Mid-2009. This model has a NVIDIA 9600M GT.

The Inquirer published some interesting information about the NVIDIA 8600 & 9600 chips:
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer...s-apple-macbook-pros-nvidia-bad-bump-material

You can find a very long discussion thread regarding this issue on Apple Discussions:
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/1727530?start=0&tstart=0

I will try to get an Early-2011 replacement, because it is impossible for me, to trust an NVIDIA-based replacement.
 
other threads covering nVidia / Logic board issue

The same issue is being covered in at least two other macrumours threads:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/497345/

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/578050/

I'm having the same problem myself and am being charged € 630 to have it fixed here in Germany. Another mac technician back home in Ireland has advised that it is probably the nvidia issue anyway, but I am reluctant to wait until I am home to get it sorted, and have already been charged € 60 for the test. All I can do now is keep my receipts and hope that Apple will refund me later on.

It does seem like they are having an awful lot of dodgy logic boards with the 2007 MBPs.

Update: Have just received a call to say that the repair is done and that I will not be charged. I'll have a look at the info when I pick it up and let you all know what's on the report. I'm guessing it was the technician who fixed it that made the call as I didn't speak to anybody from customer relations
 
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u never stated which MBP you have...

i'm gonna guess it's a 15 inch early 2008 macbook pro...

i had very similar issues... turned it off... next thing it won't turn on.

most likely u have a dead GPU (i assume u have the 8600m).

take it to the apple store and tell them you think it's the nvidia gpu issue.

the apple genius will bring out a harddrive/ipod and connect it to your macbookpro. he will then proceed to turn it on to run diagnostics from the harddrive/ipod.

they will replace ur logic board for free once they confirm it indeed is the nvidia issue. good luck!

p.s. doesn't matter if warranty is over... (obviously it is)
 
bwgary said:
I took the old MBP in today and they told me it needs a new logic board. $699 installed! So I bought the Mrs. a new MBP today. I'll look into people that can repair it cheaper, but for now I've got two brand new 15" MBP's.

It could be an NVIDIA issue but it's out of warranty and out of Apple Care. I may take it with me the next time I go to D/FW and take it to an Apple Store there and see what they say.
Click to expand...

You're still covered due to a class action suit against nVidia, you should've pressed the issue to get the 8600GT tested, you could've have that logic board for free.
 
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