Please someone help me - MBP dead?

[Jim L]

Ahhhh! This has been a terrible week at work. Then I come home tonight after dinner and I turn on my Mac and go to get some tea. When I come back the only thing on my Mac screen is an icon with a "?" and a file icon. I am not familiar with this.

does this mean my computer is dead? I always plug it in to my time Machien about every week. Has anyone else had this? I have turned it off an on 3 times and this is all it will do. I hope I haven't lost all the information on this thing. I do have the extended Applecare and it is just under 1 year old.

I hope this is fixable.

 

[Laco]

Most likely your hard drive died. Since you backed up with time machine your data is backed up. Also since you have Apple care the repair will be free. Simply go to the Apple Store and tell them what happened. Then when they fix your computer (free of charge) restore your files from Time Machine. If you did not have Apple Care and you did not backup with Time Machine I would worry but since you have both, everything is fine.

 

[Jim L]

Thanks! Is there anything to try before I take it to the apple store?

 

[pragmatous]

Just take it to the Apple store.

Thanks! Is there anything to try before I take it to the apple store?

 

[GhettoMrBob]

You could try repairing the disk permissions via the recovery partition.

1. Upon boot hold down alt/option key. Select recovery hd.
2. After this boots, select disk utility.
3. In the left column you'll see the partition named Macintosh HD (or whatever your boot volume is named), select it.
4. In the bottom right section of the screen you'll see "Repair Permissions". Give that a shot.

Most likely this may not work but it's worth a shot before you travel all the way to the store just for them to do the same.

 

[Jim L]

Thanks. Unfortunately it didn't help. I'm going to the Apple store. I wish I had gotten an Air instead. I was afraid the heat this thing puts out would cause something like this.

 

[snaky69]

Thanks. Unfortunately it didn't help. I'm going to the Apple store. I wish I had gotten an Air instead. I was afraid the heat this thing puts out would cause something like this.

Heat has very little to do with hard drive failure.

Hard drives are a mechanical device. Mechanical devices all eventually fail. It's a question of when, not if.

 

[GhettoMrBob]

I'm hoping you have a backup because they tend to erase-install rather than repair if it turns out to be OS or filesystem corruption. A backup would be even more important if the drive is failing because I've yet to see them attempt any sort of data recovery.