My MacBook pro freezes during start up after 30 secs. Any ideas?

Does it ever finish booting? If so, launch the Console utility and look for messages that might explain the problem. If not, will it boot into "safe mode"?

hoss007 wrote:

It never finishes booting just stays at that point.

Even if you try a "safe mode" boot?

You may find some useful advice in this Apple document.

Try booting into "verbose mode". When the boot process stalls, write down (or take a picture of) the last few messages and post them into a reply here.

On my Mac that DSMOS message appears about 20 seconds into the boot process. Booting finishes about 30 seconds after that.

Do those letters "v" really appear on the screen?

Unfortunately, if those are the last messages on the screen, I see nothing there that explains the hang. The next message I see after the DSMOS message is one about an AirPort daemon, although I'm not sure I understand any connection there might be between that and your hang.

Since you don't have a system restore disc you won't be able to do the next thing I was going to suggest, which is to run the diagnostics that came with that Mac. If you have an OS X 10.6 installation disc, you could try reinstalling OS X over the top of what's on it now. Right after that finishes use Software Update to apply any missing OS X updates, or download and install the "combo" updater for the version of OS X 10.6 that you want. If that Mac has a software problem doing that might help.

hoss007 wrote:

Since I'm traveling for next 2 weeks I won't be able to reinstall til I get home.

If you're anywhere near an Apple store during your journey you could stop by to see if they could help you.

I was reading this thread which exactly explains my dilemma. Mine also freezes during the spinning gears. I've checked RAM and HDD and both function well. I have also gone through the Apple troubleshooter to no avail.

I'm suspecting a motherboard issue.

I mainly wanted to see if anyone on here could glean any info from the screen capture I took just recently.

Thank you.

I do see some odd things there, but nothing that I'm sure identifies a problem. Does the boot process hang indefinitely after the last message appears? Have you tried running hardware diagnostics?

Thank you for the reply, William. Unfortunately the "c" option does not bring up the hardware diagnostics. I'm not sure if it matters, but I did see the Macbook Pro 3.1 label during reports. Maybe this is too early for that feature (2007 I believe).

The spinning gears freeze after several seconds of loading. I'm awaiting my retail disc to hopefully run the aformentioned diagnostics.

kdslemm wrote:

Unfortunately the "c" option does not bring up the hardware diagnostics.

Do you mean the "d" key? The "c" key has a different purpose.

Yes, excuse me. I've been pressing and holding too many keys lately.

Did you have that Mac's "system disc" in the drive when you tried to boot with the "d" key pressed?

kdslemm wrote:

I did see the Macbook Pro 3.1 label during reports.

That identifies it as a "MacBook Pro Mid/Late 2007" model.

That Apple document mentions something about "if the hard drive does not contain AHT." I haven't run AHT on an Intel Mac, so I'm a little clear about how that's supposed to work. That document also mentions that "Apple Hardware Test is included on the DVDs that are shipped with some Macintosh computers. If the copy on your hard drive becomes unavailable, use the DVDs to run Apple Hardware Test." Try booting with the system disc in the drive.