Black screen at boot, no startup sound, indicator goes to idle.

Question

Elloha,
I hooked up my iphone to my macbook pro 4.1 to charge when the macbook was in idle mode. The computer woke up shortly like usual and went back to sleep, I didn't open the lid.
When I opened it a bit later he would come out of idle mode but the screen kept black, no backlit led's went on, dead silent. The indicator in the front stopped flashing as is would in idle mode but was a lot more faint then usual. I had to force it to shut down by holding the power button.
Now it doesn't boot anymore, no startup sound, just a blank screen. The indicator at the lid lights up and immodestly dims down like it would be in idle mode. I did all the memory resets but nothing helped. Opened up the computer and disconnected the pram battery to force it to reset but nothing...
In the store they immediately said the problem was the motherboard and it would have to be replaced.
However, I had this problem before. I work on a separate monitor most of the time and keep the lid closed and plugged in usb devices before that would make the computer behave this way, only a few times though. Usually the problem would solve itself over time by rebooting or by plugging in my external monitor. However it doesn't seem to help this time.
The thing is that I have a difficult time believing that my motherboard should be replaced. I read about other people having the same issue when plugging in different kinds of usb devices when their computer was in idle mode. But didn't read of any solutions.
It's like the computer is stuck in idle mode when I try to reboot or something...
Anyone any thoughts?
Cheers,
Karel.

Answer 1

So I went to an apple authorized service center they tested it with the hard drive for the nvida issue, no luck then the opened up the macbook and did an other test (I don't know what kind of test) and it didn't generate an error code or something which they need to order the parts and to repair it for free...
I'm very angry about this because I've read so many stories of people with the same issues, "went to stand by and didn't wake up", and almost non of them got the service they deserved. Appearently it's so difficult to comply to the nvidia diagnostic that only 10% of the people with the actual problem get the service they deserve. Because ALL the chips from the 8600 were bad and it's just a matter of time before they fail. And even if they get replaced they will fail again over time because they never made "decent" versions of the chip.
The problem is that the solder underneath the chip can't handle the heath generated by the chip itself and will eventually crack because of the many extreme temperature changes.
Apple's claims, that it's something else then the GPU-fail just doesn't make sense because of the many similar stories you read, and the many solutions when people tamper around with the GPU.
Check this link: http://russell.heistuman.com/2010/04/27/cooking-the-books-or-baking-my-macbook-p ro-logic-board/
QUOTE:
*As a little background, I put my MBP (17″ 2.5GHz-early 2008, Model A1261 to be exact for you that are searching) to sleep by closing it up for the night, which I’ve done for the past 2+ years with no problems. The next morning I noticed that the glowing power light on the latch release was off and thought it strange and then went to open and wake it and nothing happened. After futilely trying to wake it by varying degrees of banging on random keys and quickly pressing the power button I waited several minutes before I committed to powering it down. After powering it down, I tried to start it back up. While I could hear the hard drive spin up and the optical drive go through its start-up whirrings, there was no start-up chime and no effort to display anything on screen. I tried all the start-up key combinations to start in safe-mode, reset PRAM, start diagnosis—nothing worked. Tried to insert original system install disk and boot from that, all to no avail.*
Here is a guy who ended up baking the entire logic board in order to meld the cracked soldered connections underneath the chip!
Other people heat up the GPU with a heatgun to only target one specific part of the logic board, a process called "reflowing". But it's only a matter of time before the GPU fails again. The guy baking his logic board is down to his fifth bake by now...
Other people "reball" the chip and implement the entire thing back on the logic board with decent solder, a more permanent fix so it seems...
My guess is that I'm going to bake the motherboard, hoping to get the thing working again. Then I'm heading back to the apple store hoping to get the NVIDIA diagnose so they will replace the entire motherboard...
I'm very unhappy with this, I paid a load of money for this machine that's just over two years old. Even cheap PC's tend to last longer...