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White Screen of Death. Macbook Pro. Please help!!

Hi there! I desperately need your help.

So I was using my mac, everything normal until one day it freezes and I´m force to shut it down.

Unfortunately when I tried to turn it back on, it just got stuck in the famously known white screen of death. Most of the times, is just the white screen without logo or image folder or anything.

I know my computer is alive because sometimes (not often) the apple logo appears and I´m able to try reinstall OS X (but then it crashes again), but most of the times is just the white screen.I have tried most of the inputs and they do not do the trick (Cmmd + R, Shift, etc. Most of them don´t work and don´t do anything, except for the zapping PRAM input which is Cmmd+Option+R+P, however after the reset, it still just shows the white screen most of the times.)

Is there a way to fix this problem?

Thank you so much.

User uploaded file

MacBook Pro (13-inch Mid 2009), OS X El Capitan (10.11)

Posted on Feb 5, 2016 12:17 PM

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Posted on Feb 5, 2016 2:31 PM

Does it chime when doing a pram reset. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204063 It almost sounds as if your keyboard in malfunctioning. I had a mac laptop with a bad hard drive and still could run single user. It gave me a volume error .

17 replies

Feb 5, 2016 12:54 PM in response to JCLanz

if you can get to single user. Command S at startup You can use the command fsck -fy then click enter. If come back this Mac or (your user name) was modified run command again until it come back OK. You cannot get to recovery,Command R? or safe mode,Shift key down? If you get something else while running single user post it. Do you have a backup to time machine or anything?

Feb 5, 2016 12:59 PM in response to JCLanz

I think that screen is grey not white, the startup screen is generally grey 🙂.


I realise you have tried recovery mode, but lets confirm you were doing it correctly…


Recovery mode, hold cmd+R at startup, keep holding for a few minutes in case your HD is being very slow.

If that fails try internet recovery mode - hold cmd+R+alt at startup. It can take many minutes to boot like this & it also requires an internet connection. it's best to use an ethernet connection if you can - wifi can be unstable & fiddly.


A final option is to try Apple hardware test…

Using Apple Hardware Test - Apple Support


Hold D at startup & wait for the old style icon. You may also need to use the original OS disks to run Apple hardware test (AHT isn't installed by newer OS's), see if you can find the original Grey install disk with the description for running the test.



Other possibilities …

Use other bootable OS disks. Do you have any backups or spare disks?

You can create a USB bootable disk if you can find the original install disks or get into recovery mode.

Use another Mac to read/ repair the disk if it will mount. You need to use 'target disk mode' with appropriate cables.

Share files between two computers with target disk mode - Apple Support


Verbose mode may give some info, but is cryptic to decipher, have a camera ready to capture any output.

How to start up your Mac in single-user or verbose mode - Apple Support

Feb 5, 2016 1:11 PM in response to JCLanz

The lack of recovery & single user mode suggest a disk that is not working to me or possibly the early hardware checks are not completing - does it chime?


Try T at startup - does the Firewire icon start floating across the screen? The power button will shutdown safely in that mode.


I think your model is too early to support internet recovery mode…

OS X: About OS X Recovery - Apple Support

Sorry I was wrong earlier.



Do you have any other Macs available, bootable backups or install disks?

Feb 5, 2016 1:13 PM in response to JCLanz

Did you say that you did a pram reset? And while doing it got the chime sound? Try it again and let it chime three times. Also to cover everything do a SMC reset. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201295 Also what happens if at startup you hold down the option key. you should see the startup volume and the recovery volume. Do you have access to an external keyboard? You could try some of these commands using that.

Feb 5, 2016 3:01 PM in response to JCLanz

I think it's time for a new hard drive. Since you can only get to recovery sometimes. That would seem to mean that the drive is barley working at best. With a bad hard drive single user takes longer to start and run. Your computer is to old to run internet recovery with Command Option R. Do you have the install disks that came with the computer.

White Screen of Death. Macbook Pro. Please help!!

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