No display at all after 10.5.7 update install

So I got some good news... not sure if it helps anyone else out there but the authorized apple service center called yesterday and said apple was going to cover the repair... new logic board? I dropped my mbp off 2 days ago after running the update. I'm convinced it had something to do with that update. But I should have a fixed mbp later today. Told the techs i'd buy them a beer! My apple care had expired so i was really bumming at the thought of forking out the cash to fix that. I'll post more when I get my laptop back.

CollectedMule,

From what I understand, the OSX install disc will install the necessary video drivers for all types of macs, someone please correct me if I'm wrong here.

mokeiko

Maybe its correct, but If we don't see ANYTHING even the grey splash screen how can we use the install disc? there is not way only it will work if you can use a second mac to connect it through firewire...

I will know hopefully next week whan is going on with my macbook pro, I am waiting the technical service call 😉

CollectedMule: I did this a few times. The times it worked I just inserted the DVD part of the way into the optical drive bay and the MBP pulled it in and booted from it, without holding down the C key... Once or twice this did not work and it pulled in the DVD and did not boot from it with or without the C key down. In those cases I had to eject the DVD using other ways (once I did it by keeping the MBP in target mode and using a second computer to eject the drive; another way is to hold down the mouse button/trackpad key while starting up .... you need to hold it down for about ten seconds to get the blocked DVD back).

After reading more and playing with different machines here I am sure this is something to do with access to certain video cards. My little MacBook 13" has no similar problems (Macbooks just have video emulators instead of real cards) so I have been doing my troubleshooting from the MacBook using 10.5.7 but my other machines are now happily humming along again using 10.5.6. I strongly encourage people to try to get 10.5.6 back on their machines ... some people have reported what has worked on this post but most of the workarounds have required a second computer ...

I am encouraged to see a recent post that Apple seems to have acknowledged the issue but I am not sure that logic board replacements are necessary (but don;t turn them down if offered for free!! ... especially if you have an NVIDIA 8600M card in your machine [that is the dodgy one that Apple did a recall of last year but has not replaced all of them faithfully - I have one that supposedly passed all Apple tests last year so they would not replaced but both the Tech and I are convinced my card is still "iffy" ...)

I am taking my machine in for service today. I most definitely have backups. Booting from the CD does nothing. I get no display at all under any circumstance. I cannot access my machine via networking.

I have a Radeon X1900 XT in it, purchased from apple. Replaced by apple about a year ago.

My MacPro did originally come with leopard but my MacBook Pro came with Tiger. The mixer works just fine with my laptop.

As far as the mixer goes, it worked under 10.4, Apple changed something that stopped it working on some machines under 10.5. Mackie is an industry leading company (and has been for a very long time) and I really don't think people using the hardware should have to give it up because of a screw up in firewire audio under 10.5.

Regardless, the mixer really is a separate (known) issue. I don't want to hijack the thread with it.

I finally had to take my iMac into the repair shop a couple days ago, and have just been told the same thing: the logic board needs to be replaced. No word on what caused the problem, of course. Luckily, I have about a week left on my coverage. I guess I'll see if replacing the logic board really fixes anything when I get my Mac back this Monday. And I'll be observing a strict policy of "if it ain't broke, don't update it" from now on.

(They replaced the logic board on another Mac for an unrelated problem once before, but ended up having to replace the entire computer a few days later.)

Hello to all!
Same with me - and even worse:
Installed the 10.5.7 update on my 10.5.6 17 inch macbook pro (2.4ghz dual core, late 2007 I assume), I used the combined update and hat "Onyx" run all maintenance scripts before
I ran the update, made the required restart, everyting was fine.
After some work, I restarted to another partition (10.4.11) and the screen stayed black. I can hear the hard disk spinning, the shortcuts for shutting down or restart do work.
What is left over from sleep mode looks different, the white LED is not softly pulsing anymore but stays lit.
I did reset the pram/smc, no fix.
Started from the installation CD, no fix.
Replaced the original harddrive with one backup drive (10.5.6 + 10.4.11), no fix.
Again, I could boot into Leopard or Tiger but will have a black screen.
What seems a little odd to me, resetting the smc does not work as being described by apple support.
Pressing ctrl alt+shifpower for a short time simply lets the mac start. Pressing them for a longer time, will make the LED next to the lid flicker and I hear the "firmware sound".
According to Apple, I should hear nothing and boot the mac in a second step.
Or did I get anything wrong?
I did also press the power button for 5 seconds to reset smc with removed power chord/battery, no fix
I have no other Intel mac, only a Qicksilver, so my only option is booting the Macbook pro into target disk mode, this works.
Removed all preference files which were created during the last attempt to boot and did erase the 10.5.7 partition, this did not help either.
So, the only "workaround" left is having the macbook rest over night with power cord and battery removed. What a mess...
Are there any batteries on the logic board to make a full reset?
All the best,
nironaka

I have a 15-inch MacBook Pro (mfgd. in Oct 2007) with 20-inch-ACD. I eventually upgraded to 10.5.7-Combo with no problem (although I set it so my machine and hard-disk wouldn't sleep).
The only problem I had was with the download of the Combo v10.5.7.
The first time I (with "Safari") downloaded from the Apple Support website, the site may have been overloaded, and I got a faulty download with no error -- the filesize of the downloaded Combo indicated a faulty download.

All you people out there -- did you check the S.M.A.R.T status (with Disk Utility) of your internal drive before you upgraded ? Repairing permissions, before and after the upgrade may be controversial as to the benefit, but did you at least "Verify Disk" with Disk Utility before applying the Combo update ?

Also, am I reading this right, that mainly 17-inch MacBook Pros manufactured late in 2007 are affected ?

Message was edited by: Randall Blanchard

I found the solution very simple at this point. Follow the instructions if you're a careful MAC USER having a backup hard drive:

Power ON.
Insert OSX installation DVD.
Press Power Button and Power OFF when the STUCK gray screen with the wheel appears.
As soon as you power ON, keep pressing ALL OPTION key until you see DVD image.
Select and HIT the DVD image.
Wait Approximately 10 minute or less, to appear the installation mode.
Select your language and HIT CONTINUE.
When you see FINDER BAR, HIT UTILITIES.
Hit RESTORE SYSTEM FROM BACKUP.
Select the most recent Backup Date from the list WITH 10.5.6.
Hit Continue and when the WARNING MESSAGE pops up, hit continue.
You will lose the most recent data you store after 10.5.7 update installed in your system, but you will revive your system again to 10.5.6.
It will take 45 minutes to 3 hrs in most of the cases but may extend the time depending how much computing you were used to at the point of the last latest backup with 10.5.6.
It's far better than reinstalling the OSX. Trust me.
And remember, until the corrected/fixed version of 10.5.7 is not announced, never dare updating again.
Thanks and enjoy. I really honor the data you have in your system and understand your frustration because you must be in **** need of your system running smoothly. May it save you the way expected.

I woke up my MBP unibody after a night and the only thing i saw was a black screen. No response from system - I tried to login but there was no response - not even a beep from the system that password is incorrect. The only thing that work was Caps Lock LED.

Nice. It 2000$ alu brick!

It's not just the 17inch models my 15inch MBP bought in July 07 is suffering a blank screen. Both models use the same graphics chip.
Having tried resetting PRAM and SMC and gotten nowhere I decided to reinstall Leopard. Rather than use target disk mode I switched voiceover on instead and used that to guide me through. I now have a fresh copy of leopard but still the blank screen. I'll enable vnc this morning then get a copy of the system log and give my apple reseller a call.
From my efforts above the update has either written something to the graphics card or I'm dealing with one of the dodgy batch that nvidia fessed up to in the knowledge base article towards the top of this thread.

Cheers for all your help and I'll keep you informed.

SOLVED!

Having another mac, leopard retail dvd and ssh/afp/target disk mode is key for solving this problem.

Through ssh/afp/target disk mode copy to backup all your files in your User home directory to somewhere else.

Download the 10.5.6 Combo.
Download Pacifist

Extract the /System/Library/Extensions folder from the combo update to somewhere on your working mac (you'll need to authenticate and it will copy them as root)

sudo su - (to become root) on your working mac
then copy (ssh, afp etc) the Extensions to your non-working mac's drive (to your normal user home directory)

ssh to your broken mac, sudo su - (aswell to become root)
Got to /Users/<username> then copy the files in the Extensions folder to the same place /System/Library/Extensions
we then need to make sure all the files are root...
cd /System/Library/Extensions

chown -R root:wheel *

then type reboot.

You'll now see the normal grey boot screen, then some of the window manager loads but there are still problems as you can't see the log in window etc... but at least you have the grey screen working and can see!

Next pop in your leopard dvd, power off the mac... then power it on again.

Press C to boot the disk

Voila, you have the leopard install!

Once you're done. Update to 10.5.6 with the combo update, install the progs you need and restore your files from the backup.

Hope this helps.

G

Same problems here.

Upgraded to 10.5.7 on my iMac G5 via software update. After install display is either blue or showing small bars across the screen, like someone has pulled columns out of sync

Install crashed at the end, screen displayed multiple small images of the apple space background and lines across the display. After a whole day of force shutdowns and reseting the PRAM the best I can get of the mac is to display a blue screen (via a normal startup). When I have that on the screen I can connect to my iMac via the network and see it's drives etc.

Managed to get the iMac to boot into safe mode. Ran disk verify permissions. It found a few problems, probably because of all the rebooting but I still can't boot the mac correctly.

Got the iMac booted into safe mode again and ran the combo update. Still the same problem.

Tried putting the OS X install disk to go back to initial 10.5 but it hangs in a similar way. I get to the screen where it asks you to select the language and the screen is all out of sync with lines across the screen and it just hangs.

I was working away fine on 10.5.6 yesterday with no problems.

Have been a mac user for nearly 20 years and I am completely unimpressed by this. I buy apple products so that this sort of thing does NOT happen.

Thanks but for most people this is not going to work as they never get to a stuck gray screen (see previous posts). At least when i was trying this approach I could not get the gray screen.

My best hopes at getting a gray screen seemed somewhat random and inconsistent but involved resetting PRAM, having a second drive plugged in (my clone in this case), having given the MBP 30 minutes of rest with battery out and AC unplugged. You may as well try resetting the SMC too at this stage (battery out and AC unplugged - hold down POWER key for 5 seconds) but that never seemed to do anything for me (nor for anybody else).

gverdian thanks for your efforts. Curious if you ever located the inner bug? Given taht this is spreading to different machines I think it is a video card acces issue but I no longer think (as I expressed previously) taht this is just the bad NVIDIA card experience.

My other question is whether, once you had 10.5.6 re-installed if it booted right away without the black screen? I also managed to get 10.5.6 back (it was a bit easier for me as I had a recent clone so once I managed to find a way to reboot from that I simply used my clone software (SuperDuper) to recover the system to my internal Hard Drive. BUT, the first time it rebooted from the reinstalled 10.5.6 it still showed up as black ... it was only on the second restart (after resetting PRAM in my case ... which may have been irrelevant) that the start-up cycled normally. I have subsequently used my system as 10.5.6 for a whole day with no residual after effects - normal start-ups after sleep, multiple sleep, and shutdown are all OK.