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Early 2011 MBP Mavericks blank screen on startup

Hi everyone,


I went to use my MBP this morning like any other morning, except it didn't turn on. The screen remained black with the cursor able to move around. I tried hard restting it, and nothing. Same thing.


I've tried everything I can find:

  • Reset PRAM
  • Rest SMC - although no proof
  • Swapped back to Apple RAM, no difference
  • Booting into safe mode does the same thing, black screen with cursor
  • Reinstalled Mavericks
  • Connected external display - same black screen with cursor
  • Boots into Windows via Bootcamp perfectly - fully functional


Unfortunately I can't make it to an Apple store easily, not beign under warranty, and finals weeks approaching I can't afford to not have my MBP. For now I can still use Windows, even though I prefer to get OSX working.


Any advice and anything I can try to get this functioning correctly? It has to be some sort of OSX conflict since Windows works fine?


Thanks!

MacBook Pro (15-inch Early 2011), Mac OS 9.1.x

Posted on Mar 2, 2014 6:06 PM

Reply
19 replies

Mar 2, 2014 6:09 PM in response to MEngineer

MEngineer,


you can try this: boot your MacBook Pro into Recovery mode by holding down a Command key and the R key as it starts up. Once the Mac OS X Utilities menu appears, select Disk Utility. On the left-hand side of the Disk Utility window, select your internal disk’s boot partition (typically called “Macintosh HD”). On the right-hand side, press the Verify Disk button if it’s not greyed out; if it is greyed out, or if it reports that errors were found, press the Repair Disk button. Once the verification/repair is completed, exit Disk Utility and select Restart from the Apple menu to restart in normal mode. Do you still get the blank screen?

Mar 2, 2014 7:20 PM in response to MEngineer

Even if this doesn't actually fix my problem at hand, are you saying that it is still possible to save all of my documents to my external HDD? That is my main concern here! I want to know that what's on my computer now is safe. Then, worst case, I can replace the computer without losing anything. So, if I am understanding this correct, how do I go about saving my internal HDD to my external HDD?

Mar 2, 2014 7:27 PM in response to RandyRR2

Load the disk utility, command + R after pressing the power button. Once loaded you will see your Macintosh HD drive. Connect a secondary drive. Go to the restore tab of the Macintosh HD. The source will be Macintosh HD and the destination will be your external. Then click restore and it will confirm.


Once compelted you can open the external on another computer that will read the HFS format and double check to make sure everything is there.

Mar 2, 2014 7:31 PM in response to RandyRR2

Plug in an external disk onto which you will make a backup. (Mac OS Extende (journaled)).

Boot in Recovery Mode (Boot - Command-R) and run Disk Utility.

Select the Restore tab.

Drag the internal system volume (Macintosh HD) to Source.

Drag the external disk volume to Destination.

(Do not reverse these!)

Click on Restore.


If that will not complete, post back for another emergency data recovery method.

Early 2011 MBP Mavericks blank screen on startup

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