Boot up problems - nothing on screen!

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Level 1

4 points

Boot up problems - nothing on screen!

My 6 month old MBP with the latest firmware update suddenly stopped botting today. I placed it in sleep and then tried to wake it a few hours later. The battery was not flat. The light by the releae button comes on and I hear the DVD drive spin up but nothing comes up on the display.

I have tried the support pages here http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=303234 but nothing seems to work.

Any ideas as I really don't want to send it back as I have lots on my drive that I cannot now backup.

MBP 2.16Ghz 2gb ram, Mac OS X (10.4.7)

Posted on Sep 25, 2006 5:04 AM

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Answer 1

a brody

Level 10

82,941 points

Sep 25, 2006 6:23 AM in response to jmwhittaker

My suggestion is to take it to a service technician and ask them to carefully remove the hard drive and put inside a 2.5" Firewire hard drive case such as the ones from http://www.macsales.com/

That way, you'll have control over the hard disk.

Maybe even get that case first.

http://www.apple.com/uk/buy/ has a listing of authorized service providers who can do it.

And when you are done, you can use the migration assistant to reimport the data back that was in that drive.

Be careful not to drop that drive as the cases don't take a beating that well.

In the future always backup your data as my FAQ explains:

http://www.macmaps.com/backup.html

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Answer 2

jmwhittaker Author

Level 1

4 points

Sep 25, 2006 6:28 AM in response to a brody

Thanks. I have an external 3.5" firewire caddy. However i don't want to void my warranty on the Mac by opening up the case to get at the drive.

I was just hoping for a bit more of a clue on the main display problem. Would this a possible logic board failure?

Also if it goes into Apple for repair what waiting times are people having & do they wipe all of your data?

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Answer 3

a brody

Level 10

82,941 points

Sep 25, 2006 6:33 AM in response to jmwhittaker

The 3.5" caddy won't work on MacBook Pro hard drives since they are designed only for desktop hard drives.

Repair times vary anywhere from 10 days to a month based on reports on this board. I for one am insistant that the repair take no longer than three weeks before I ask for a replacement computer.

As for erasing the drive, it may be part of standard procedure to test whether or not there really is a hardware issue with your machine if they can't isolate it any other way. I don't know if it is, but some have found their drives erased.

Work with your service technician locally to see how the drive can be removed without voiding the warranty.

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