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markw10 · Aug 24, 2009, 03:08 AM

I have a MacBook Pro that is approximately 2 years old. It has always worked fine without any issues at all.
Tonight I was installing some scanner software for a Fujitsu S300M scanner. After installing the software it asked me to reboot so I had reboot. At that time I came back a minute later to see just a black screen.
I then after a couple more minutes decided to hold down the power button and turn off the power since nothing was happening. I then pressed the button again and I saw the light turn on on the button that opens the screen but that is all. There was no startup chime, nothing. All I could hear is at the same time the light came on the optical drive makes it's noise that it makes at bootup.
I have tried repeatly to start the computer. I have pulled both the AC Power and Battery for several minutes with still no luck. As I said just the light comes on and the optical drive makes noise and that's it, no startup chime, nothing.
I don't think this should be related to scanner software and I'm assuming it was a coincidence that it happened then but any idea what could be causing this and can I fix it without a trip to the genius bar?

Simon · Aug 24, 2009, 03:35 AM

I know this may sound silly, but after booting, did you try cranking up the brightness?

There was a bug introduced with a system update a while ago that would make some MBPs boot with screen brightness dimmed all the way.

markw10 · Aug 24, 2009, 03:41 AM

I wish that's all it was but I just checked and no luck. Since I don't hear the startup chime I didn't have much hope. I even left it at the black screen for almost 20 mins and nothing. I can hear the fan turn on at bootup but it just never does anything.

Simon · Aug 24, 2009, 03:47 AM

Do you have an external screen you can attach to see if that lights up when you boot?

Have you tried resetting the SMC and the PRAM?

Can you boot into single-user mode? (boot holding cmd-s)
Have you installed third-party RAM? Could you remove that and replace it with the stock RAM?
Can you boot from the install DVD and run AHT (boot from the install DVD while holding d)?

markw10 · Aug 24, 2009, 04:52 AM

I tried resetting the PRAM and that partly solved my issue. Now when I turn it on it does the startup chime and the screen comes on with the Apple logo and even the circle below where it shows activity that it's booting.
The problem is that's all it does. I have had it on for over 5 minutes.

I then decided to plug in an external hard drive that's a mirror of the internal. I pressed the option key at bootup and it showed 3 hard drives, the first two were the internal hard drive and the 3rd the external.

When I tried the external it booted perfectly. It also did not show the internal hard drive in the finder which I think it should do. Does this mean the internal hard drive may be bad? What confuses me is the hard drive does show at bootup with Option key but it shows twice. Why would it do that? I have even tried selecting both of the internals with no luck.

Simon · Aug 24, 2009, 05:54 AM

When you boot from the clone, run Disk Utility and see what it reports. Does SMART verify for the internal disk? Does the internal disk itself verify?

Try booting from the internal while holding shift (safe boot mode). Does it boot?

richwig83 · Aug 24, 2009, 06:22 AM

Use your MacOSX DVD to boot into dick utility and verify permissions and repair them! Its worked many times for me in the past!!

markw10 · Aug 24, 2009, 02:11 PM

After a few tries and hitting the left of the two hard drives it booted fine. I don't know why since before that I had tried hitting both and neither worked but this time it worked. After verifying everything worked fine I did a backup of the hard drive since I had to backup some important work I did this week.
Well this morning I ejected the backup drive, left for a few minutes to come back and find the computer on but no screen. I rebooted and am now in the same situation and now I don't have the screen again.
I'm thinking of making an appt. at the Genius Bar today. It seems maybe it's a hardware problem but I will see what they say.

amazing · Aug 24, 2009, 05:07 PM

Yep, sounds like the internal HD is failing. If you bought the extra Applecare, you'll get an immediate replacement. Good thing you have everything backed up!

Just to verify the above, try booting off the external HD once more

markw10 · Aug 24, 2009, 11:05 PM

Yeah, that's right. I took it in today and that was it and AppleCare replaced it.

amazing · Aug 26, 2009, 11:19 AM

thanks for reporting back! glad to hear you're back with new HD!