I have an appointment tomorrow at Mac, but wondering if any of you have ever had this problem. My MacBook pro was working just fine, I was in the process of uploading a wedding to my online lab, left for 3 hours and when I came back, the mac screen was black. My sleep indecator light was on but not flashing. I can hold the power button down and the sleep light goes off, then press it again and the dvd thats in the drive starts spinning like its trying to boot, but nothing. The apple care guy had me do a few things to it, but still no luck. Its only like 9 months old, I'm so bummed. just wondering if anyone else had has this problem and what it was? Thanks!

hard drive...

hopefully you had backups! bust of luck to ya

hope you're using time machine. i'd attribute it to HD failure as well... have you dropped it at all?

Did you try taking the battery out while it's unplugged and then plugging it in and booting?

Bill has a good suggestion.

If the screen is black its hard to think that it would be the hard drive. If it was the hard drive you would intially get a grey screen with a blinking icon saying there is no startup disk, but the screen would light up.

Other ways to maybe rule things out is to insert the install CD that came with your Mac and try starting the machine holding the "C" key. See if the machine will boot at all. If not I might think its the logic board.

Also holding the "Option" key down at boot will also show you bootable options. You can see if the hard drive shows there, if it is select it and press the right arrow.

Your nearest Apple Authorized service provider or Apple store is probably going to be in your future...

Nope, havent dropped it. I did try doing the battery thing... and I would stick the original cd in if there wasnt already a dvd stuck in there that I cant eject. Thanks for your suggestions> I'm gonna go buy a firewire and see if I can hook it up to another mac and pull some of my files off it. Thanks guys!

Restart the machine holding the mouse button/ trackpad button down. That should eject the disk

haha i just came in to post that... yeah, try that then restart and see if it will boot.

thanks guys, but that didnt work:(

Does your machine boot into target disk mode (hold "T" down on restart till you see a floating firewire logo)?

Yes, I tried that and its not working either. I actually drove 40 minutes today to purchase a firewire cord to hook up to this mac and my parents mac so I could tranfer some files, but it didnt work. thanks so much for your suggestions.

your hard drive is most likely fried. or your logic board. let us know what happens with your appt. tomorrow

I had a similar issue when I had a powerbook a few years ago- i know its a different chipset and build and everything- but still same situation- couldn't get the thing to boot at all- turned out my hard drive was the issue- sent it off and they fixed it- and it worked fine after that- I was lucky to fall under a just out of warranty policy- it only cost a few hundred bucks- man i thought I was screwed at first- good luck with that. hope it works out

josh

Hard Drive "frito"! (Fried)

Sorry to hear...

Laptops are very heat sensitives. Make sure they get good air circulation all around. I have a Ilap that works like a heat sink as well as keep me from frying... you know what

yea, I've been real careful with the heat thing. I keep it elevated on a cookie cooling rack so it has air circulation. Man I'll be so bummed if its the hard drive. It's less than a year old! I was in the middle of processing edited wedding pictures that I had just finished and hadent saved yet to the dvd. I thought it went into sleep mode, but I guess it turned out to be a coma . I'll be so bummed if I have to edit them again. Anyways, thank you all for your replies. I'll let you know what apple says tomorrow when I take it in.

Have you tried to boot from Disk Warrior? It'll also tell you if your HD is fried for sure, or, if you're lucky, it will fix whatever is wrong with it. Either way, a cheap way to know for sure.

No, I havent ever heard of that, how do you do it?

Christee,

Disk Warrior is a really great program, but doesnt it cost? One option you might want to try before you buy disk warrior, is running the apple hardware test. You might have said the computer wont boot at all, and if so, this probably wont work- but you book from the first install disc while holding D. It should be able to run diagnostics on all of your hardware if you can get it to boot. When I did this with mine- If while running the test everything geeks out and fails, then its definately the hard drive.

True to a point... The Apple Diagnostics are great if your machine will boot.

As we found out through earlier posts, your machine won't boot (stays at black screen), your machine will not eject the disk already present inside, and your machine will not go into target disk mode. With all of these factors being true, Diskwarrior (yes it does cost $$) and/or the Apple Diagnostics are a bit null, as you need to be able to boot off their respective disks.

Note** Your machine will be able to boot from a bootable cd no matter if your hard drive is dead or not, because.. well... you are booting from a cd and not from the hard drive.

Hope things go well either way and you regain use of your computer.

Hey Guys, sorry took so long to post, I dropped the computer off on my way out of town for the weekend and havent been by one till now. It ended up being the logic board, wich he said is just like the mother board. Should have it back at the end of the week and he said everything should still be on there, but I paid to have them back it up anyways. Thank you all for your help!

ah ha! that logic board will get ya!

glad to hear you've got it under control... good idea on the backup, you just never know.

enjoy apple service at its best! you should have it back this week.