Q: MacBook Pro black screen, no chime, no start up.

What year is the machine,(if it is a mid 2010 there is a known issue with the LB, you may ask if yours will fall into this program) if in fact the logic board is dead and your drive is OK, your files are stored on the HD. Having a back up is always must regardless, and having a redundant back is also a good idea.

You can try a couple of things..Reset SMC

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3964

Reset pram/NVRAM

Power on holding the following keys:

OPTION COMMAND P R

Hold till you hear the start chime 2 times and release

If it does start do a back up if possible,

If you are not under warranty/ AppleCare, you should ask abut Apples flat rate repair $310.00 I think but that is close, they fix what ever they find wrong as long it is not accidental/liquid damage. The normal logic board price is about $437.00 plus labor,

Good luck

That's kind of hard to say, this resets a number of things iincluding start up disk preferences among other things, somehow this file may have become corrupted, and the reset fixes it, as a simple explanation. It is difficult to sat what may have caused this, maybe the logic board is completely fine, maybe it is starting to go into failure mode, it may have absolutely nothing to do with the LB, and something else you did freaked one of the other processes in the memory area, screen resolution, etc...

That being said, if you do not have an external back up drive that you keep updated, this should be a wake up call to get and maintain one (or2, I have redundant back up drives, in case I have an issue with one of them ie: it falls off the table and is wrecked...) My data is worth much more to me than the (relatively) cheap cost of drives these days.

I'm glad to have helped, and happy you are up and running again

You are an amazing person!!! I was just freaking out. Just updated to OS X Mavericks. while updating all the software the computer restarted and made one beep. Never turned back on after that, no chime at all, just a black screen. Option Command P R saved me! The first things I was reading in another forum said there is nothing that can be done and computer is toast. Thank You SOOOOOOOO MUCH!!!

This discussion saved my life! I was freaking out my mind with this issue.

THANKS A LOT!

Hi thanks for your post, it happended this to me today and i almost die! to be more espefic it was my Gf's Macbookpro... jesuscrist! lol!

thanks again it works perfectly and i won't touch anybody's laptop again  

Carlos

I did exactly as you said and I heard the chime 2 times but the screen is still black!! I can hear applications turning on such as skype so I know its working but the screen is black .. please help me I have the same model of macbook pro I think..

It sounds as though the GPU has died, you may try taking it in to an Apple service center for a price for the repair, but at this point it may cost more than the machine is worth. You would need to make that decision,as the original post was from quite a while ago.

See the following link for further explanation.

https://support.apple.com/kb/TS4088

Best

I've tried doing option command p r and i heard two startup chimes but my macbookpro wont still turn on :( help

I am having the same problem.  Mid 2010 13" Macbook Pro, just updated to Mavericks last week.  The computer worked as it should before the update.  I had no problems downloading the update or installing it but since then my MBP would randomly freeze, something it has never done before.  Then yesterday I noticed one of my external Toshiba 1TB HD formatted to exFat wasn't mounting which gave me a panic, after some research I noticed that there were others who had the same or similar problems with their external HD after the Mavericks update.  After troubleshooting that problem I discovered that it was not the HD thank god, I reset the PRAM on the MBP and when the computer booted up the HD mounted.  That problem aside the computer froze again last night while streaming a movie.  Turned the power off and on again and booted up fine, watched the rest of the movie.  This morning I wake up to the computer once again frozen on the screensaver.  Powered it down and up again, no screen, no chime.  Just the spinning noise of either the fan, HD or disc drive.  Tried powering down and up again, same thing.  (I don't think I need to explain the sinking feeling of having your computer not turn on, especially in the middle of 3 projects you're working on).  So now it either turns on (little sliver light on face comes on but is dim) with no screen or chime and spinning noise and just stays like that indefinitely OR it tries to turn on (little light on) no screen, no chime, NO spinning noise and shuts itself down after 5 sec to only come back on to shut off again in 5 sec and this cycle repeats indefinitely or until I hold the power button till it shuts down. 

I have researched for hours and it seems this is a reoccuring problem with some MBP users and the Mavericks update.  I have read and tried every single troubleshooting tip to try and fix this on my end but none have been successful.  Everything seems to point to it being a logic board issue.  I have scheduled an appointment at an Apple store tomorrow but I am not thrilled that I have to drive 5 hrs round trip to do so, and I pray if they can fix it it that it won't take multiple days requiring me to drive another 5 hr trip to get it.

Any assistance outside of the default Apple Troubleshooting guide would be greatly appreciated.  I have tried all the resets, I have reseated the RAM, cannot start in safe mode, held eject key, held the power button for varying lengths of time all without success.

Another question for the more technically inclined, is it at all in the realm of possibility that the Mavericks update could have fried hardware?

As I said before I had NO problems at all before the update and a slew of them including total failure after and I am not the only one, this seems beyond coincidence.

I will update this post after my visit with the Geniuses but I am very wary as I bought this MPB used from a friend, but I've had it nearly a year with no problems till the Mavericks update.  I've read in other discussions on this topic in here that most cases like this they replace the logic board and charge a flat rate around $300 but again I am under no warranty or Applecare on this MBP so who knows?  But if indeed it was the Apple update that cause this problem I feel I should not be out of pocket on this.  Looking forward to seeing if there are even more people this has happened to and if there is anyone who can shed more light on this problem and its correlation to Mavericks.

P.S.  Not happy at all with Apple today, originally tried to post this from my iPhone 5s but when I clicked on reply nothing happend!  Had to pull out my old Acer to write this!  BOOOOOO.

Thank you so much for this howto. I came to work today, started my MBP late 2011 and the screen remained black. I have backups but replacing or repairing the laptop would be terrible since i couldn't work for days. You saved my life

I had the same problem. Took it to the mac genius bar and they said it was a processor and not worth fixing. Seems like if you have a machine that's more than a couple years old, they won't bother with it. Was ready to just sell it for parts then thought I'd try a few things first. Tried all the things I read in the forums- Nothing worked -

So I pulled the battery and plugged it in without a battery installed and everything works again!

Will try a new battery to see if it will work, otherwise will use it without one.

Sadly I've got the same problem on an early 2011 MacBook, initially PRAM worked but now no joy. Did putting in a new battery do the trick?  Is you Mac ok now?  I hope it is!

If the SMC and PRAM reset don't work, like they didn't for me, I found an alternative.

Shut down the system (I had to do a hard shut down by holding the power button).  Unplug the power adapter and then press the power button on your MacBook to initiate start-up.  In my case, I could hear the hard drive make a noise like the system was about to boot (not a clicking/grinding but it sounded like an attempt by the system to mount the HD) but then I would just get a blank black screen and no chime plus the dim indicator light on the front of the MacBook body.

Leave the computer running in it's hung state, unplugged, until the indicator light goes off. For me it was about 15 minutes. At that point the battery seemed completely dead.  Pressing the power button resulted in no noticeable response from the computer.

Plug in the power adapter and the MacBook should automatically boot into some sort of recovery mode where you can restore/reformat/run diagnostics/etc. 

I then chose to repair the disk (if necessary) but the system check found no errors.   After that, I chose to restart the system from Apple-icon menu and the system booted to OSX.  In my case, it seemed all of the RAMs (PRAM, SMC) had been reset as the system date was sometime in 2000.

Once I was able to get the system running I immediately backed up all my files to an external HD. 

I haven't yet tried to put the system to sleep again (and I'm not looking forward to what happens when I do), but in the case that you can't get past the Black Screen Boot with the PRAM/SMC reset "fix", here's a chance you can still get (at least) one last chance to recover your files.