[gprefix]

My MBP does not boot reliably. I have a 2.16GHz 15 inch core 2 duo MBP that developed a problem recently. It boots 50% of the time correctly but sometimes the screen does not come on. I hear the Superdrive making its usual noise after I press the power button but the screen remains blank -- no bang sound and no blue screen.

The way I have been getting it to boot is by removing all power sources (AC adapter and battery) and let the MBP sit cold for couple of hours. It boots fine if I connect the battery or AC adapter thereafter. I could alternately remove the RAM for couple of hours (maybe minutes, but did not check it) and reinsert the memory card and it boots fine. I ran the extended hardware test from install DVD and it reported no errors. Also the disk utility reported no errors on the disk. Everything is original on this MBP. Memory card is fine since I can use it on my MSI Wind and it works. Not sure what is going on here. Any ideas? I am running the latest Tiger. I reinstalled everything from the Tiger DVD and I saw the same problem. Something tells me this is a hardware issue. Also, I am out of warranty (didn't buy the extended warranty, oh well). My MBP is less than 2 years old.

[Simon]

Have you tried installing different memory?

Otherwise, could be a bad soldering joint, could be your MLB is toast. It's strange though that AHT doesn't report anything, but that has certainly happened before. You'll probably need to take it to an AASP to have them diagnose it for you and set up a cost estimate for repair. With AC this would have been covered, but it's definitely too late for that now.