MacBook Pro (mid2009) won't boot

I recently had a similar problem while running Snow Leopard on my MacPro. The freeze. Being able to start up in safe mode, but not normally.

Bottom line .... it may be that your graphics card has gone bad. Of course it can be something else, but if you are able to borrow a graphics card of the type currently installed in your computer and try it, that's an easy experiment to see if the problem goes away. My MacPro came with the NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT. After I replaced it, my Mac's working fine.

Here's a link that gives a little more detail about my problem ... if yours looks similar, consider swapping out the graphics card. https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5882928?answerId=24844660022#24844660022

Also here's a link to a somewhat unrelated topic .... but when investigating there about my problem it's where user 55plus responded to me and put my on the right track to fix my problem. (look at the last few posts on the 5th page of the thread between fiddleaway (me) and 55plus). https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3880430?answerId=24844848022#24844848022

Good luck

It's my opinion that being able to move the cursor - but otherwise having keyboard/mouse input ignored - is the common symptom that 55plus, I, and now you have experienced. And that points strongly to the graphics card being the problem.

If you can still boot your mac in safe mode, you can determine the type of graphics card you have by clicking on the Apple icon at the upper left, then 'more info...' , the 'system report', then 'graphics/displays'. If you cannot boot, if you have your original invoice, it'll have your computer's serial number on it and you can use that to have apple tell you what kind of card is in your computer. (I hope it's not built into the motherboard).

My wife's early 2008 MBP uses an NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT that is plugged into the PCI bus. However, her system report says she has no PCIe cards plugged in, so I'm not sure if the graphics processor is a plug-n-play kind of thing in the MBP like it is on a MacPro. You'll have to do separate research to find out if it's possible for you to change out your graphics card or if you have to pay an expert - check in your area for a computer shop that handles macs ... they'll be able to tell you what the possibilities are for changing your graphics card. If changing it is easy, you might be able to find a shop that has, and is willing to test, a graphics card in your machine to see if that's the problem.

The apple store didn't carry my make/model of the graphics card and they didn't carry the alternative either. If I had asked them to fix it for me, they would have ordered it online, just like I can, but would have marked it up about 300% from the prices I'm seeing on line for refurbished cards from (what appear to be) reliable sources giving short warranties. (30 to 90 days). The price range I saw on mine was $85 to $145. I went with one that a local computer shop recommended as their source for parts ... it wasn't the cheapest, but the fact that they used the source gave me a higher degree of confidence in the reliability of what I was buying ... and it was delivered to my home the day after I ordered it.

Hope this helps

The fact that you can boot up from an external drive tells me that it's probably not a software problem. You'd like to think that apple's hardware test is comprehensive enough to detect a graphics card problem (or any problem in any significant component), but such tests have their limitations.

I was told, I cannot remember by whom, that the freeze problem I was seeing was either caused by the graphics card ... or was of an unspecified nature (h/w related), and if the latter was true, I might as well get a new machine.

From my experience, the failure in my graphics card exhibited characteristics of having a bad section of its own memory such that when the computer caused the graphics card to use the its bad memory segment, the symptoms occurred .... and having occurred, you're hosed until you cycle power putting you back in a state where you can reboot in safe mode (which doesn't seem to fire up services that trigger the problem). Another factor is heat .... sometimes marginal components don't fail until they heat up. My graphics card has a huge (3" x 4") heat sink riding on it. That suggests a nominal operating condition that may limit its life cycle.

There's no question that the graphics card hypothesis might be a red herring. But your symptoms seem so closely related to mine, it'd be a shame if you can't find a way to test the hypothesis without spending much money.

If you live near an Apple Store, make a Genius Bar appointment to have the computer tested. Supposedly there is no charge for testing.

Genius Bar Reservation US

Was afraid that might be the case. One upside is that if it is your graphics card on the fritz, the contents of your HD is probably OK. If you get a new Mac, I'm sure they'll be a way to get the data from your current HD into it. I've heard they make external fixtures that into which you can put an internal drive ... and thereby treat it as an external drive. After that, it's just a matter of copying your data to a new machine. If your new machine will run Snow Leopard (don't know if this is possible with new machines), you could copy an image of your old HD into the new machine and boot up on it.

Good luck

Just ran across this: http://www.mac-forums.com/forums/apple-notebooks/287759-determining-failing-vide o-card.html in mac-forums.com and thought it might apply to you. If your MBP uses two graphics cards, you could experiment with forcing it to use one or the other to see if that helps.

Thanks for the update. Sounds like your problem really was different than mine. Glad you got it fixed. Hope you could save your data.