My early 2011, 15" MacBook Pro will not start.

Question

My early 2011, 15" MacBook Pro will not start.

Before leaving on a trip about 5 days ago, I simply closed the lid. Upon my return, I opened it and it immediately commenced listing e-mails, reminders and opened programs I'd left running. I noticed a message that referenced an update was available, but closed all notifications. I decided to reboot the machine, and selected this option from the Apple icon. It confirmed I wanted to restart, which I affirmed and deselected the option to restart currently running programs. It commenced shutting down, and the start up chime played, followed by the grey screen, with Apple icon and spinning wheel. For the 1st time, I noticed a "progress" bar beneath the apple and wheel, which starts to fill, stops, starts again but never gets beyond about 15 to 20%, then the screen goes blank. Pressing the start button has the same effect, grey screen, apple, wheel and progress bar, then nothing. I'm running the latest OS X.

MacBook Pro, OS X Mavericks (10.9)

Posted on Apr 6, 2014 7:49 AM

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Answer 1

Melophage

Level 5

7,213 points

Apr 6, 2014 9:43 AM in response to clivefromcape town

clivefromcape town,

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 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. Does it get past the progress bar screen now?

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Answer 2

Apr 7, 2014 12:01 AM in response to Melophage

Hi and thanks for the advice. I been down the disk utility road and tried this. Sadly it was greyed out, (the Mac HD partition) and once verified, it found errors. I tried to rerpair it where upon it said it could not repair it, that I should back up as much data as I can, and reformat the disk... Very p'ed off right now - it suddenly gave up the ghost! Will see if the Genious guys here in Cape Town can help...

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Answer 3

Apr 7, 2014 12:04 AM in response to clivefromcape town

clivefromcape town,

You're HDD is obviously dead - if you're still under an AppleCare warranty, they will replace the drive for you. If not, I would suggest going the DIY route rather than an Apple repair as it will be much, much less expensive.

Just my 2¢...

Clinton

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Answer 4

Apr 7, 2014 2:12 AM in response to clintonfrombirmingham

I was afraid of that... Going to take it to apple and get them to confirm. I can't do it DIY, as I don't have the skills, will get them to quote on a repair/replacement. @$£&!

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Answer 5

Melophage

Level 5

7,213 points

Apr 7, 2014 11:42 AM in response to clivefromcape town

clivefromcape town,

replacing a hard drive is not a difficult task; toolwise, you’d only need a #00 Phillips screwdriver (i.e. suitably sized for screws in eyeglass frames) and a T6 Torx screwdriver. You can see here for a guide on how to DIY. (If you’re careful about discharging static electricity before touching your MacBook Pro’s innards, you won’t need to bother with disconnecting the battery connector in Steps 3 and 4 shown there.)

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Answer 6

Apr 8, 2014 5:51 AM in response to Melophage

Hi and thanks for your input - you make it all seem so simple. As you sound so clued up, would you mind giving me your opinion on the HDD vs SSD issue. Price is a factor, but I'd consider putting a smaller (250 or 500 GB) SSD into my Mac. I run a 4 TB for all my data, movies, music etc, but would love it if the programs ran faster. I recently "upped" my RAM from 4 to 8.

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Answer 7

Melophage

Level 5

7,213 points

Apr 8, 2014 9:29 AM in response to clivefromcape town

clivefromcape town,

replacing a hard drive is one of the easier “surgeries” to do in a MacBook Pro; it really isn’t difficult.

Regarding my opinion on HDD vs. SSD, I have a Mid 2010 MacBook Pro, and I did a SSD “transplant” on it this past autumn. I’d chosen the 512 GB Samsung 840 PRO SSD; a major selling point for me was its five-year warranty, which I’d interpreted as being representative of Samsung’s best estimate of product return rates. Other people here have good things to say about the Crucial SSDs; I’ve never had one, so I can’t comment on them. My MacBook Pro certainly boots up faster and loads programs faster because of the SSD, but a SSD will not make programs run faster unless a program’s performance bottleneck is with disk access; most programs will not have such a bottleneck. Your recent RAM increase will probably help more with program run speed than a SSD would. That being said, I neither watch movies nor listen to music on my MacBook Pro; perhaps a SSD would help with movie playback, since that might be an example of a disk-bound program.

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