Startup Problems - No Monitor Display

I have a refurbished MacBook Pro that I bought a little more than a year ago. It was a previous generation notebook as well. Anyway I've been leaving it with the power on for a while now, rarely powering down. I installed Snow Leopard recently and am pretty sure I have powered down since the install and rebooted.

Last night I powered off my MacBook Pro and this morning I can't tell if it's rebooting or not, or just what the general problem is. I turn it on and the light on the "latch" comes on and does the fade in and out thing but the monitor never kicks on. I'll hold down the power button to turn it off and reboot and the same thing happens. I tried rebooting with the Snow Leopard disc and holding down "c" and I can hear the drive reading the disc but same result. I have two external hard drives connected that I can hear kick on and my iPhone starts to Sync after I hit "power on". I don't hear any startup music, but if I have heard some of the tones go off. I also have a second monitor that doesn't recognize a signal. Any thoughts?

I have Apple Care. I don't want to have to mess with shipping it anywhere or taking it to an Apple Store (the nearest one is 3 hours away). But I will if I must.

 

I do have an external monitor that I use regularly that isn't receiving a signal.

I'm not sure how I would be able to boot from a a previous version of the OS. Is there an online guide for this?

I really don't remember any prompts about firmware on the install either, I just fed in the disc and let it happen.

So what does it sound like? A firmware issue or a video processor issue? I'm guessing a processor issue. Will this be covered by AppleCare?

I appreciate the help.