MacBook Pro will not boot from hard drive, external drive, or OS X DVD

Question

MacBook Pro will not boot from hard drive, external drive, or OS X DVD

Just a few weeks ago my AirPort card suddenly stopped working and I received an error message saying "No AirPort card installed." I ended up taking it to Apple, and they ended up replacing the screen assembly (including the Airport card) and the logic board.

When I got the computer back I wiped the entire hard drive, did a fresh install of OS X from my original disc, then downloaded all software updates. It seemed to work for a couple of days, but then the hard drive started stalling and the computer started freezing, requiring a hard reboot.

Now, the computer will not boot at all. It will not boot from an external drive, and it will not boot from the Mac OS X DVD. If I hold "alt" at startup I get the option to select the OS X DVD, but once I select it the computer just sits on the Apple icon and never does anything. I ran the extended Apple Hardware Test and it found no issues.

This is extremely frustrating and it would be very inconvenient for me to lose my computer for another week. Does anyone have any ideas for me?

MacBook Pro 15" 2.53 (Mid-2009), Mac OS X (10.6.6)

Posted on Jan 25, 2011 6:52 AM

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Answer 1

Jan 25, 2011 7:03 AM in response to stephenfdavis

As a follow up, I have tried to boot into Safe Mode by hitting "Shift" right after the chime and letting it go when the Apple logo appears, but again the computer gets stuck on the Apple logo and never does anything.

I am able to hold the "T" key and the computer does boot as a firewire drive.

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Answer 2

eww

Level 9

53,028 points

Jan 25, 2011 7:30 AM in response to stephenfdavis

Boot the computer while holding down the D key and run the extended version of the Apple Hardware Test. Post back with the exact text of any error message it reports.

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Answer 3

Jan 25, 2011 7:44 AM in response to eww

I ran the extended Apple Hardware Test and it found no issues.

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Answer 4

eww

Level 9

53,028 points

Jan 25, 2011 8:36 AM in response to stephenfdavis

I suppose that's good, though it would have been comforting to have found a problem that could explain your computer's symptoms so you could get it fixed.

You may want to try *booting into [Single User Mode|http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1492] and running [fsck|http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1417],* though I suspect that isn't going to be the answer either. If the machine won't boot into SU mode or fsck doesn't help, there's not going to be much of anything else you can do on your own. A machine that won't start at all from any source disk is very hard to diagnose.

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Answer 5

Jan 25, 2011 11:11 AM in response to eww

The computer entered Single User Mode, but repeatedly froze before it reached the command line. After repeating this process many times, I was eventually able to get to the command line. I ran fsck and it modified my file system. I ran it again and it did not modify my file system and did not say that my file system was OK.

Again, I repeated the process many times until I got to the command line. I ran fsck and it came up the first time with the message "The volume Mac appears to be OK." I then typed "reboot" into the command line and my computer began to startup. It displayed the Apple logo, then the rotating progress indicator, then froze.

The computer would still not start up normally after this, and would not boot into Safe Mode, so I ran fsck again. This time it came up with *** FILE SYSTEM WAS MODIFIED *** the first time, so I ran it again. After the second time, it said "The volume Mac appears to be OK." I typed "reboot", and still the computer froze during startup.

After all of this I tried again to boot the computer from the Mac OS X Install DVD, and still the same freezing issues. When trying to boot from the DVD the computer does not even attempt to read the disc -- I can hear it spin when I hit "alt" to select my boot disk, but after I select the icon for the DVD, I cannot hear anything happening. I tried again to boot from an external drive, and that still didn't work either.

Note: I don't if this has any significance, but one thing I have noticed is that very occasionally, the computer will boot up, but the display will not turn on.

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Answer 6

eww

Level 9

53,028 points

Jan 25, 2011 11:49 AM in response to stephenfdavis

More or less as I expected. I'm afraid it's time to take the machine back in for service. The technician will have more diagnostic tools available and should be able to rule out a variety of possible causes much more easily than you can.

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Answer 7

Jan 25, 2011 1:18 PM in response to eww

The question is, how could they not have identified this problem to begin with?

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Answer 8

Jan 25, 2011 1:56 PM in response to stephenfdavis

We would only be guessing! Let them sort it out but some of us would be interested to know what was found.

Neville

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Answer 9

Jan 25, 2011 2:40 PM in response to eww

So I have been attempting to run fsck repeatedly to see what happens, and I just now encountered something interesting. After fsck checked the Journaled HFS Plus volume, the extents overflow file, the catalog file, multi-linked files, the catalog hierarchy, and the extended attributes file, I received the following message:

Failed to issue COM RESET successfully after 3 attempts. Failing...
disk0s2: no such device.
Invalid node structure
(8, 18840)
** The volume Mac could not be verified completely.
disk0s2: media is not present.

Does this shed any light on the situation?

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Answer 10

eww

Level 9

53,028 points

Jan 25, 2011 5:05 PM in response to stephenfdavis

Yes, it indicates that the hard drive, which was in the process of failing earlier and so was misbehaving intermittently for a short time, is now dead. This may not have been going on when the machine was in for repair, and it may have happened not to be misbehaving when you ran the Hardware Test. It's quite possible that the failure has happened since the repair work, and has nothing to do with it at all. Drives do fail, often very suddenly and without any apparent proximate cause. The progressive failure of the drive has been causing the repeated directory corruption that fsck has been struggling vainly to repair (because after each time it gets repaired, new corruption is created).

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Answer 11

Jan 25, 2011 10:50 PM in response to eww

hi everybody ,
i have a big problem :s
wanted to restore and getting "Restore Failure Could not find any scan information... then i've followed some terminal commands..finished and couldn't boot cause i only find Macintosh HD when i use "alt option" when i restart my mac and even if i go to "startup Disk" i can find my partition of the external hard drive but when i click on it nd do retart it's can't boot ...another thing is tht m having a slow start and it's ask for my Password (i've no problem with password it just doesn't ask me to enter it before)
Due to terminl commnds?? :((
Plz help :s

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Answer 12

rkaufmann87

Level 10

140,532 points

Jan 25, 2011 11:04 PM in response to Ataraxia99

Please create your own thread, you are attempting to thread jack this one. I know you are new and may not know the Terms of Use (look to your right), thread jacking is considered rude which I'm sure is not your intent.

Roger

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Answer 13

Jan 26, 2011 5:08 AM in response to Ataraxia99

Eww hit it right on the head. Unfortunately with electronics something could be on its way to failing but has not been in bad enough shape for diagnostic testing to pick up the failure. That's more where the human element and experience comes in. It definitely shows characteristics of a hard disk failure. Hard drives can be funny they will fight nd fight until they completely fail and will even pass hard disk tests. I am under the impression retail stores have more in depth diagnostic tools like for PC's we always used PC Doctor or PC Check compared to built in HP hard drive diagnostic tools. I can reassure that computers do go through extensive testing before they are shipped out. Apple has the lowest repair returns. Like everything else Apple hold high standards for everything Apple does, whether people agree or not. Hard drives and keyboards in all machines are the number one failures and t is very unfortunate and unfortunately it did not fail while they were repairing the computer. As you can see it passed hardware tests and the Depot really does not like to erase instal customer machines just because of keeping data integrity.

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Answer 14

Jan 26, 2011 6:56 AM in response to eww

I have more developments. Last night I removed my internal hard drive and tried to boot from the DVD to see what happened. It still froze a few times, but it eventually booted. I plugged in an external drive and I installed OS X on that drive. Booting from that drive resulted in freezing on startup as well, but I was eventually able to boot from it. I put my internal drive back in, and was still able to boot off the external drive, though I still experienced freezing issues.

I'm trying to figure out what all of this means. The computer is still freezing on startup whether from the DVD or an external drive, but will eventually start. Something definitely seems to be wrong with the internal drive, but how does that explain the issues I am having? Also, the issue I reported previously -- the computer starting up but the display not turning on -- has happened several more times.

In addition, when I was up and running from an external drive, I checked on the status of my AirPort since that was the initial problem I experienced. It was off and I was unable to turn it on. When I ran AirPort Utility it said that it could not find any AirPort wireless devices. This may be purely coincidence, but I also noticed that when booting in Single User Mode, the computer seemed to freeze right after the 802.11 Wireless Controller line most of the time.

Thoughts?

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Answer 15

eww

Level 9

53,028 points

Jan 26, 2011 6:51 AM in response to stephenfdavis

At this point I'll revert once more to "Take it in for service." You apparently have more than one problem.

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