Boot to "no" symbol--> not the hd's fault

Question

Boot to "no" symbol--> not the hd's fault

My macbook pro running 10.6.4 is set to turn on at 6pm when i get home from work. However I get home from work and the power is out. It stayed out for about 24 hours and when the power came back on my mbp boots to the "no" symbol that from searching others have experienced. I immediately thought hard drive was to blame but still did the usual (pram reset, boot to safemode, repair disk permissions) to no avail. Then i pulled the hard drive and stuck it in an external and it booted right up with my mac mini. So it is not the hd's fault which leaves the question what is??

Other background info:
MBP was running with no battery as i am currently using it as a desktop 24/7 bc the screen broke.
I have a time machine back ups.
Don't have snow leopard disc but do have a leopard disk (which i used for disk utility).

Anyone have a guess?

Thanks!

Machook Pro 3,1, Mac OS X (10.6.4)

Posted on Jul 11, 2010 6:22 PM

Reply

Answer 1

thomas_r.

Level 7

31,989 points

Jul 11, 2010 6:38 PM in response to boilermike1421

i pulled the hard drive and stuck it in an external and it booted right up with my mac mini. So it is not the hd's fault which leaves the question what is??

MBP was running with no battery as i am currently using it as a desktop 24/7 bc the screen broke.

I think you've got your question and answer right here. What trauma broke the MBP's screen? Whatever it was, I think that something else was damaged as well. I recently dropped a MBP, and it continued working for about a month, then just died out of the blue.

If the machine wouldn't boot from a hard drive that 1) it used to boot from and 2) can still boot a different machine, it's got to be a hardware problem. Call Apple for service.

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Answer 2

Barney-15E

Level 10

112,620 points

Jul 11, 2010 7:34 PM in response to boilermike1421

Here is Apple's tech not on the prohibitory symbol: http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1892

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Answer 3

jimblu

Level 1

50 points

Jul 11, 2010 11:51 PM in response to Barney-15E

well we know the no symbol means the os can't find something -- a blessed system folder or something else. just for fun why not manually pick a hd in /system preferences/startup disk, click restart from there and see what happens.

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