MBP sits at start screen... freezing

[doobybiggs]

When I turn on my MBP it sits at this screen and the gray bar gets almost to the end and then stops and stays in that spot for hours ...

Its a 2011 13" MBP ... thoughts on what could be wrong? I'm thinking hard drive died on it .. but wanted some opinions or better knowledge first

 

[doobybiggs]

Opened it up and blew out dust and then made sure all my connections were good .. still doing it.

 

[Idefix]

Hold down the shift key (for a long, long time) on startup. Safe Boot.

Report back on what that does.

 

[doobybiggs]

Hold down the shift key (for a long, long time) on startup. Safe Boot.

Report back on what that does.

Just does the same thing .. it shows the screen like in the first.post and then turns off after awhile of loading

 

[bs-2010]

This happened to me not long ago. Took it to the Apple store and the hard drive bracket needed replacing. It was about $50 total. It could be a hard drive failure though.

 

[doobybiggs]

This happened to me not long ago. Took it to the Apple store and the hard drive bracket needed replacing. It was about $50 total. It could be a hard drive failure though.

By bracket you mean the connector into the HD?

Either way $50 isn't bad..

 

[priitv8]

If you are absolutely sure, that you did start an EFI firmware (aka Mac's BIOS) update that didn't complete successfully, I'd look into troubleshooting the sleepimage:
http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/tssleepimage.html

 

[doobybiggs]

If you are absolutely sure, that you did start an EFI firmware (aka Mac's BIOS) update that didn't complete successfully, I'd look into troubleshooting the sleepimage:
http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/tssleepimage.html

Was not updating BIOS ... turned it on when I got to my hotel room to connect to wifi, then it froze and then it started doing this ...

 

[priitv8]

Was not updating BIOS ... turned it on when I got to my hotel room to connect to wifi, then it froze and then it started doing this ...

In that case I can only suggest you'd look into the sleepimage troubleshooting. That bar indicates it is trying to read the RAM image back into memory from the disk sleepimage file. There's something wrong with this. Bad HDD would be the first suspect.

 

[Idefix]

Do you have an external HD to start up from?

Alternatively, do you have (or can borrow) a second Mac where you could try starting it up under firewire target disk mode? You could run some diagnostics that way...

Lastly, do you have Applecare?

 

[niteflyr]

A few things I would try in this order.

1. PRAM reset:
http://support.apple.com/kb/PH11243
If no luck:

2. Option boot (hold Option key while booting) select start drive.
If no luck:

3. Boot to recovery mode (Command+R) run Disk Utility, First Aid on HDD.
If no luck:

4. Genius Bar Appointment.

 

[Idefix]

niteflyr reminded me that it's a good idea to try starting up in single-user mode and running fsck -fy

hold down command and s at startup. report what happens...

 

[doobybiggs]

nothing seemed to work ... but I did find https://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/39701/lion-diskmaker

Lion Diskmaker seemed to fix the problem so far ... I got to install at the moment and just waiting for it to finish. Will report back once I get done and see if it works.

 

[bs-2010]

By bracket you mean the connector into the HD?

Either way $50 isn't bad..

I think that's what it was. They said "hard drive bracket" specifically so I assume that is the connector to the HD. Anyway I'd take it into the Apple store since they'll diagnose it for free.