My MacBook Pro is stuck in boot screen

Use the command-R I said if it works.

That's normal. Does it boot normally after finishing repairing permissions?

Time to get Alsoft Disk Warrior, and if that doesn't work, then you probably have a dying hard drive.

a brody, greetings; Not to impugn the efficacy of Disk Warrior nor your advice, a thought occurred to me. Disk Warrior sells for $100 and new HDD in most cases sell for less. From a cost/benefit standpoint, purchasing a new HDD makes more sense, at least to me.

Ciao.

Well then you have to get some special sized screwdrivers, and have the know-how to replace the hard drive in the computer which is on:

http://www.ifixit.com/

If you have a 2011 MacBook Pro or later, a thunderbolt hard drive is certainly faster, but one pull on an external boot drive, is much like pulling the tires of a car riding down a highway! External drives are much better suited for backup than as primary drives.

And the hard drive replacement can't be done under warranty, unless you have a nice enough Apple authorized dealer nearby, who either can be convinced it is a warranty issue, or will document for Apple that they did it under an Apple authorization.

Disk Warrior will at least tell you if you must go through that mess or not.

Generally yes as long as there have been no accidents. And you are unfortunately limited to Apple's supply they give the technician of drive sizes. You can yourself get additional sizes if you shop around. I like to get AppleCare during the first year, so you have it up to 3 years from date of computer's purchase.

Failure to start in Safe Mode indicates a corrupted OS installation or a hardware fault. Run Apple Hardware Test to check your hardware for potential faults. Run the extended tests. If it reports "no problems found" given what you described so far I suggest you completely erase your hard disk and install OS X from your original System Install DVD, or by using OS X Recovery if your Mac shipped with Lion / Mountain Lion.

The problem with reinstalling OS X as you suggested earlier is that it would not remove any aftermarket system modifications that may be causing the failure to boot. You could try that first if you are so inclined though.

Once OS X is installed, you can migrate your previous User Account information from your Time Machine backup (not "restore from Time Machine backup"), or restore your backups using your preferred method, and then use Software Update as necessary to update your system.

There is no guarantee Disk Warrior will fix anything, in any event you would have to spend $100 to find out. You have a backup, so use it. In your case there is little justification to use data recovery software perhaps only to find that it can't restore some or all of your data.

After you completely erase the volume, install OS X using OS X Recovery as you described. Do not use "Restore from Time Machine backup". After it completes, create a brand new, temporary account using a name that you can dispose of later.

Use the machine in this configuration and satisfy yourself that everything basically works properly after multiple shutdowns, reboots, and logins.

If you find no problems, use Migration Assistant to migrate your existing User account from the Time Machine backup. Log in to that account and satisfy yourself that everything works the way you expect, including verification that it still has Administrator privileges. Your previous work environment should be restored in this manner.

After that, you may delete the temporary account you created after installing OS X.