MBPro does not startup - how to get my data?

[bballhoop]

Between May 2007 and September 2008 it was found that in Macbook Pro Laptops, NVIDIA's GeForce 8600m GT graphics processor had a higher than normal failure rate, resulting in premature laptop display issues such as distorted or scrambled video on the computer display. MY computer will not boot. Nothing happens when I hit the power button.

At this point I would like to see if I can get my data off of it, but how do I do this? I have found a video of "cooking" it as a way to reflow the graphics processor, but I'm not sure I want to go down that route. And then I would need to solve the battery issue. Any suggestions?
Thanks!

 

[JTToft]

If your only concern is your data, simply

1) take out the hard drive, connect it to another Mac with a SATA-USB cable or external USB enclosure, and just copy your data from it, or

2) provided you are able to start from an OS X installation medium, do that with an external hard drive connected to your MacBook Pro, and then use Disk Utility to clone (or, in Disk Utility terminology, "restore") the internal drive to the external drive.

 

[DebianJunkie]

Target disk mode

No need to take the disk out. Before turning it on press and hold Command and T keys then press the power button. Voilà your MBP becomes a very expensive HDD enclosure. Now grab some Firewire (or maybe USB too?) cable and connect to another Mac.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XauB38RldGQ

As for freezing up and such you can get GPU chip reflow or reballing done for 150-300$. Also you can try some of Chinese replacement mobos off of ebay.
http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_fro...13&_nkw=macbook+pro+2008+motherboard&_sacat=0

Very typical symptom of bad gpu/chipset is black screen all the time or as you said some heavy graphic artifacts. If you get apple grey or spinning wheel its probably your hard drive dying. Then you will have to take your hdd out and rescue the data from it.
In case of light to medium hdd damage you can rescue your data to another blank hdd (same size or bigger) using any Linux distro and free util called ddrescue like this:
/dev/sdb - bad hdd
/dev/sdc - new hdd
Warning - data on whatever is /dev/sdc will bee wiped out and replaced with /dev/sdb data

ddrescue -vfd /dev/sdb /dev/sdc logfile.txt

You can get a ubuntu live cd and boot from it like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EApc2QL2jW4
or from windows:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFeri7UiYNs

 

[garirry]

You can either turn on Target Disk Mode (press T on startup) while a firewire cable is connected from that computer to another Mac. After that, you will be able to access all drives from that computer. Otherwise, you will have to manually take the hard drive out and insert it in an enclosure and go through that pain.

 

[JTToft]

No need to take the disk out. Before turning it on press and hold Command and T keys then press the power button. Voilà your MBP becomes a very expensive HDD enclosure. Now grab some Firewire (or maybe USB too?) cable and connect to another Mac.

- Right you are. I completely forgot about that.

 

[bballhoop]

Alright so I have run into a problem. Before opening up the computer I went to charge the laptop. The cable showed yellow and then went to green after fully charging however my macbook will not turn on whatsoever now. It doesn't make any sound, the power button doesn't do a thing.
So what are my options? Take out the hard drive, but do I need to attach it to another Mac or will a pc work?

 

[garirry]

Alright so I have run into a problem. Before opening up the computer I went to charge the laptop. The cable showed yellow and then went to green after fully charging however my macbook will not turn on whatsoever now. It doesn't make any sound, the power button doesn't do a thing.
So what are my options? Take out the hard drive, but do I need to attach it to another Mac or will a pc work?

Well, since you cannot boot the computer at all, you have no choice but to remove the hard drive manually and attach it to an external enclosure or computer. A PC should read the hard drive, and if I'm correct Windows only reads Mac partitions in read-only format. If I'm wrong, then you'll have to plug it directly into a Mac or connect it via enclosure.

 

[CaptainChunk]

Windows will only read Mac partitions with HFS drivers installed (included when Windows is installed on a Mac with Boot Camp) or with 3rd party software such as Paragon HFS and MacDrive.

 

[Evren Carven]

“Nothing happens when I hit the power button. “

Can you hear some sounds when you press power button? If there is nothing happen(no any sounds), that means there is some power failure for your mac.

Is there something display on the screen? If there are some information on the screen, that means there is no hardware failure for your mac. You should follow its tip on the screen to repair your mac.

Whatever situation, the hard disk should be good. So your data on the disk will be intact. No worry about data loss. Though, you cannot access your data before your mac is running normally. If you need your data urgently, you can get your internal hard disk out of your mac, and then attach it to another mac to read the data.