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Sep 8, 2016 11:57 AM in response to tstpilotby Allan Jones,Does the display remain dark but you hear all the "right sounds?" If so your lovely old MBP, like one of mine, may have succumbed to the dreaded Nvidea Curse. A 2008 17-inch MBP is coded MacBookPro4,1 and has an Nvidea Geforce 8600M GT chipset. The chipset is soldered to and integral with the logic board and thus, changing the chipset means a complete new logic board. Read on.
Nvidea sold faulty Geforce 8600M GT chipsets to many computer makers including Apple. A large percentage have failed. At one time Apple had a Repair Extendion Program (REP) that covered the problem but, as you can see from what's left of the web posting about it, the program expired in December 2012: MacBook Pro: Distorted video or no video issues - Apple Support
Today there is no practical safe fix. The repair requires a new logic board and so many boards failed that the supply of new boards is non-existent. My 15-inch MBP with that chipset failed in 2013 only six months after the program expired and, after many calls to different parts of Apple, I found out the logic board supply was already exhausted.
The only good new is that your hard drive is probably unaffected. I connected my no-video MBP to my iMac via FireWire Target Disk Mode and was able to recover everything on the drive even though I could not see the screen.
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Sep 9, 2016 12:09 AM in response to Allan Jonesby tstpilot,Thank you Alan for spending the time to write such a detailed report on my problem! Unfortunately I don't "hear all the right sounds" as mentioned in my post - the most important "apple start-up chime" is missing!
I recovered the HDD data by removing it and with a special adapter was able to transfer all onto my iMac.
Somehow, Apple Products don't seem to like me -they always quit when I need them most - my G5 left me sitting in the dark with no warning a few years ago so that I had to go out and buy an iMac the same day.
"It must be the age where computers takeover and rule the universe !"
Thanks again.