New Unibody MBP won't boot from DVD or external drive, just loops

Hey
We bought a new Unibody MBP on Monday, and loaned it to our CTO for a presentation. Having got it back from him now I wanted to nuke the installation and put a fresh copy of leopard on it, so I dropped the DVD in the drive, powered down, and booted holding the "C" key.

I get the chime, screen lights up, thinks for a bit, and if you use your imagination you can almost hear the DVD spin up. Then the screen goes black, lights up, chime, thinks a bit, goes black, lights up, chime and so on

I've tried booting from an external bootable clone I created with CCC (firewire external HDD), and same symptoms.

I even tried swapping in a hard drive that I know has a working bootable copy of Leopard on it, and then all I get is the eternal cycle, without pressing any keys on startup.

I also tried holding down the Option (Alt) key on boot to get the boot device selector. This correctly identifies the various boot devices - the DVD, on-board HDD and external firewire drive (if connected), and lets you select them, tries to boot, thinks, black screen, screen lights up, chime, repeat cycle endlessly until extremely frustrated.

Is there a known cure for this or am I doomed to take the thing back to the Apple store on Monday?

Thanks

Konrad

15.4" MacBook Pro 2.53GHz, Mac OS X (10.5.5)

Posted on Nov 14, 2008 12:56 PM

26 replies

parry_pb

Level 2

290 points

Dec 5, 2008 11:32 PM in response to Raj

Not making any effort to understand, huh? Any way to each pal his own belief 😉 Bye.

Dec 7, 2008 5:03 PM in response to Varmint_za

I just brought home a new Unibody MacBook Pro, hoping to continue working on a current project by booting from an external drive. The computer sees the external boot volumes (I have one on an ext FW800 drive and another on a SATA disk in a WiebeTech RTX enclosure. The machine won't boot from either external volume, and they are both current 10.5.5 installations - in fact the FW800 clone was made yesterday using CCC.

Is this a bug?

I can select the other systems in the Startup Disk panel, or by holding the Option key at start-up, but the machine just keeps looping.

Dec 8, 2008 6:57 PM in response to Varmint_za

I have the same promlem. I got my macbook in june, and the day after my warranty was over, i had the same problem you did. Mine will turn on, iwill hear the apple "jingle" then i will see the loading screen, then after a minute or so it will turn off and kepp repeating the process over and over. I havent done anything different except that i just installed adobe CS3 premium, and when i restarted it, all this started happening. Now i have to deactivate my software before i can reinstall things such as logic studio, protools, and cs3. I run my own audio and video production business, and if i can't get all of my software back, i may end of having to shut it down because i can't afford to buy a new license for all of that software. not a pleasent thing. need some serious help.

Dec 13, 2008 6:36 AM in response to Lisa Yimm

You don't say anything about these boot volumes but I think you'll find that the latest MBP (I have one) require a more recent OSX installation and from what I've seen it won't boot from anything created from the Retail DVD. I'm in a the same boat as I want to create an emergency boot partition that my Unibody can boot from and it doesn't look like it's possible because the Install Media that comes with the machine won't let me install OSX on an external drive.

Dec 13, 2008 7:26 AM in response to Raj

You say it's a hardware issue that the Unibody cannot boot from a Retail Leopard DVD?

For the record mine cannot boot from a Leopard Retail DVD and I suspect every other unibody cannot either. Does that make all unibody's hardware faulty? Not in my mind. It's not unreasonable to think that this hardware isn't recognised by the original Retail DVD.

Dec 14, 2008 12:36 PM in response to Varmint_za

I can say this, as long as i have bootcamp flagged as enabled my MBP will boot from any bootable cd i stick in. that being said unless the bootable cd has SATA HD in mind it either will not finish the boot or will simply allow you to corrupt your whole drive. Windows XP PRO SP2 cd or later will work as long as i hold option during startup. Later Ubuntu and associated install cd's had sata support and large drive support so they work fine. Also this part is just an educated guess but i think you will have much better luck with odd boot cds as opposed to dvd's because these drives all support basic cd instructions but to get dvd function you need drivers in play.

Dec 15, 2008 2:10 AM in response to Varmint_za

Add my name to the list new MBP-unibody users with this same issue.

New hardware not boot from a commercial 10.5 DVD, but will boot to provided installer DVD.

I shall consult the 'genius' portion of our local apple store today and see what they have to say.

Message was edited by: BarryGrimes

Jan 8, 2009 12:31 PM in response to BarryGrimes

something new about this problem?

Mindbend

Level 1

7 points

Jan 14, 2009 9:13 PM in response to Varmint_za

I can confirm the same problem. 15" unibody MBP will not boot to standard Leopard disc. I first noticed it when I tried to boot it from an external Firewire drive with a base install of Leopard on it that I had been using for Logic Pro work. After that didn't work, I figured I'd try reinstalling Leopard on it. Sure enough, the MBP won't launch the disc either. It's clearly a fault of some sort on the unibody machines. Obviously, some people have gotten it to work, but it's definitely not a unique occurrence given how many of us have the exact same problem.

As long as I can install OS X and boot it to the unibody MBP from an external drive, I'll be happy. But if not, I'm going to be very ******. I have an 80GB SSD drive in mine so I don't have the space for Logic and all its assets. I need an external drive for that. Logic seems to require its assets be on the boot drive (unless someone knows a way around that).

Jan 14, 2009 9:48 PM in response to Mindbend

As most have posted above, you can certainly make an external drive bootable. You can clone your internal drive using SuperDuper or equivalent, or you could use your install discs to install a clean system. But you wouldn't be able to use a retail Leopard disk. (I have no explanation for the poster who claimed it is a hardware issue and that a replacement machine boots from the retail disk.)

t1mb0

Level 1

0 points

Feb 5, 2009 11:32 AM in response to Plecostomus

This may diverge a little form where this forum is heading, but I was able to create a boot disk for my unibody Macbook. I was unsatisfied only being able to use disk utilities from the Leopard install disk. I blogged the details and was hoping that someone would take this further.

http://hopeforcedmetoblog.blogspot.com/2009/02/leopard-boot-disk-for-unibody-mac book.html

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New Unibody MBP won't boot from DVD or external drive, just loops