Macbook pro not booting up??

My early 2011 MBpro 13" turns on, does the start-up chime, and the dvd rom drive makes its noises, then it comes up to the grey apple screen and a few short seconds later a pinwheel starts to spin, and a few seconds after that a progress bar shows up.. After the progress bars gets to roughly 15-20% it dissappears and then a few seconds after that the MB turns off.. The whole process takes roughly a minute and a half!! Would be ecstatic if i could get some help to get this thing back up and going... Please
MIke

Go step by step and test.
Startup in Safe mode
http://support.apple.com/kb/PH14204?viewlocale=en_US
Repair Disk
Steps 1 through 7
http://support.apple.com/kb/PH5836
Reset PRAM: http://support.apple.com/kb/ph14222
Reinstall OS X
http://support.apple.com/kb/PH13871
Erase and Install
http://support.apple.com/kb/PH14243

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Macbook Pro not Booting Properly 50% of the time.

I have a 3 year old Macbook Pro 13.3 Inch that I use for school. However over the course of the last 6 months it has begun to only boot up fully into OSX Lion about half of the time. The other 50% of the time it "freezes" during boot up and although I can move the mouse around the home screen, I cannot do anythign else besides do a forced shut down and reboot by holding the power button. Everything LOOKS like it loads except my IDISK icon, If the IDISK does not show up, then I know the computer did not fully boot, Howver If i can see my IDISK on my desktop, the computer is fully booted and works fine. Ive looked online for others having this same problem, and I have done a full wipe and reinstall from my time capsule with no luck, same problem. I have not found any threads like this and the guys at the Genius Bar had no idea how to correct it, any ideas?
Do I need to completely wipe the drive and partition and start with a fresh copy of LION that is NOT from my time capsule? If I do that can I retrieve certain things off of time capsule?
Any ideas would be helpful, the computer runs perfectly except for only booting 50% of the time.
Thanks

Lion on to old of a machine is likely your cause, revert back to Snow Leopard
How to revert your Mac to Snow Leopard

Macbook Pro not booting after update. ''Disk Utility can't repair disk''. Help needed!

I have recently updated my macbook pro as I had some pending software updates. I left it to do the job over night and the next day I noticed it was not letting me sign in to my account session as usual.
I restarted the computer and ever since then when I boot it, it just shows the apple grey screen with a bar that loads to about a 3rd and then it turns off again. I have contacted apple but they were unable to help me with this.
So far I have tried to:
1. Re-install OS X 10.8 - but it says the disk is locked or OS X cannot be installed on Recovery HD.
2. Verify and Repair the disk and I errors but it cannot fix them. Some are:
               'invalid leaf count''
               ''missing thread record''
               ''incorrect number of file hard links''
               ''overlapped extent allocation''
          and it finally says ''the volume Macintosh HD cannot be repaired'' Error: ''Disk Utility can't repair this disk.. disk, and restore your backed up files.
I would like to know a way to back up my files so that i can completely restore the disk without any data loss as I havent backed up for a while!
If anyone has any solution to this issue it would be much appreciated!

I just ran the Disk Utility, and cannot very disk. It gives me an error message;
Error: The underlying task reported failure on exit
1 HFS volume checked
Volume needs repair
and when I run the repair, this is the message:
The volume GERRARD could not be repaired.
Error: The underlying task reported failure on exit
1 HFS volume checked
1 volume could not be repaired because of an error
Repair attempted on 1 volume
1 volume could not be repaired
Prior to running Disk Utility, I have already tried DiskWarrior, and could not repair my disk. Anyway I can fix this problem??? Formatting the disk would be my last option (though I am unsure if it will fix the problem). Any advise would be greatly appreciated. Meanwhile, I will continue to back up my file, and delete unused data and try to run it again.
Thank you all very much for any input.
Cheers,
Matt

Why does my MacBook Pro not boot up with the Snow Leopard Disk?

I have erased the entire hard drive on a 2011 macbook pro that had snow leopard on it. I was corrupted. I not insert my Snow Leopard Disk and the machine will not boot. I chose target mode to erase the hard drive from my mac book pro with Mt. Lion on it.
Thank uou for any help,
Ken

Target mode? Is there a second computer involved? Why not insert the Snow Leopard disc in the computer on which you wish to install and hold down the C key to boot from it?
If the disc came with a different computer it will not boot another model. Retail discs also may not boot all model computers, even those that came with the same major version. For example, some MBPs came with 10.6.6 but a retail disc may only be 10.6.3.

MacBook Pro not booting up after Software Update ('prohibited' symbol)

Hi there
I'm having some issues with my (late 2008) MacBook Pro after installing a recent software update: the machine is not booting up, instead displaying the 'prohibited' symbol on the grey bootup screen, thus:
!http://img828.imageshack.us/img828/7215/photovl.jpg!
The back story: this morning I ran Software Update and installed the iWork update, the latest security update and the Snow Leopard Graphics Update. This installation apparently went fine, however on the required reboot the computer displayed the above image, and did nothing.
I booted from the Snow Leopard install DVD, fixed disk permissions and repaired the disc, which Disk Utility claimed was successful; the computer still would not boot.
I then rebooted from the Snow Leopard DVD and restored from my most recent Time Machine backup (dated a few days ago, before the software update). This, still, did not do the trick.
As I have never seen this particular issue before, I'm at a loss as to what to try next, partly as I don't really know what the symbol is signifying. Any assistance that can be offered would be very, very useful.
Cheers in advance!

Thanks for that, I did go looking for it but couldn't find it.
Unfortunately, resetting the PRAM and NVRAM didn't work. Will a reinstallation of OS X make a difference, bearing in mind I've already restored from a Time Machine backup? (I don't know if those clone everything or don't include system files).

MacBook Pro not booting - trying to isolate problem

Hi all,
So I am having major issues with my mid 2009 MacBook Pro. I will try to be as concise as possible and any, ANY input wil be greatly appreciated.
Last week I opened my computer from sleep (a USB stick was inserted) - It would not boot up and would reset itself. Every time I tried to start my computer I would see the grey screen, apple logo and spinning symbol below it. It would then soon restart itself.
I did many different 'resets' (NVRAM, Safe mode, Recovery Mode, Hardware Test). The Hardware test said everything was OK.
I further located my original OSX install CD and attempted to boot from that. I got past the spinning logo and into the OSX install phase. From here I checked Disc Utility and my internal hard drive was detected, with one partition (for some reason named disk0s2). I could perform a 'verify' on the partition - it told me there was disk errors and it needed to be repaired. On trying to 'repair' the partition/disk, it would freeze halfway through. I attempted this multiple times. If I tried to 'erase' the disk/partition, it wouldnt let me and would fail. If I tried to partition the disk it would fail and say it could not allocate memory (it would continually say 'unmounting disk'. If I attempted to use the boot CD and install a new version of OSX there would be NO target disk available for me to select. It seemed as if it would discover it in disk utility yet not in this function.
I further removed the internal hard drive from my computer and plugged it into a windows based computer via USB adapter. The drive was detected and I was able to format it in Windows formats.
I then had no ideas so I took my computer to Apple Genius Bar and they did some minimal tests on it, claiming it was most likely the hard drive failing. They tried to sell me a new drive but I decided to go to a computer store and try a new drive before I bought. I received the same errors with the new SSD drive that I installed at the computer store. This made me think my hard drive was in fact, OK.
I went home and decided to format my (apparently dead) hard drive on my friends macbook, through USB connection. I partioned the drive with ONE partition (GUID partition) on MacOSx Extended (journaled). It allowed me to do this successfully.
Now I thought I had it solved. I put the hard drive back in my computer with my OSX boot CD and guess what, It froze on the greay screen with the apple logo after about one minute. This happened multiple times. I then removed the drive and tried to boot again, this time it went through to the OSX install options! Why is it not reading my drive on the format it REQUIRES!? I tried to isolate the problem even further and removed the drive to try connecting it by USB and booting up. This was successful!! It read the drive and allows me to install OSX on it.
SO - to sum up:
*My MacBook would boot when the drive when it was formatted as NTFS from a windows format.
*It wouldnt let me repair, erase or partition the disc, although WAS recognised in disc utility.
*A new SSD drive installed was recognised in disc utility yet had the same restrictions on partitioning.
*My hard drive appears to be fine as I plugged it into another mac and successfully partitioned it to MAC OSX extended (journaled).
*After this it WASNT Recognised at all in my Mac and froze the startup (a completely new problem)
*My Computer would boot and discover the drive when plugged in via USB.
I want to know what is going on. Is an internal cable faulty? Is a board faulty? Why would it recognise the drive internally before yet not after it was formatted as MacOsx Extended? The hardwarte tests claim there are no errors.
PLEASE, I need assistance! Apologies on the long post yet I need to make sure I explain all faults and action taken by me. I thank eveyone in advance and hope someone can help.
Cheers

The 2009's are notorious for SATA cable problems, which this very much sounds like. Don't apologize for the lengthy post. You did a nice job in descrbing the problem and in the steps you've taken so far. If the drive works correctly in an enclosure and you're able to format and boot from it, it's almost certain to be the cable.
You can find both the repair procedure and the part on ifixit.com by identifying your exact machine. I didn't see whether it was a 15" or 13" so I didn't look it up for you. I suggest you shop around once you find the part number, ifixit tends to be a little high.

Macbook pro not booting after software update

Dear all,
Since two days ago my macbook pro hangs at the gray apple screen, the round circle keeps on turning. Kept it running for nights but it does not exit this status. I read on the internet that I could run it in verbose mode, that's what I did, see screenshot below. What do you recommend? This seems to be a hard disk issue. How can I boot up in safe mode and possibly recover the hard disk data? Any other recommendations?
Thanks,

Get your Mac to a Computer repair service, or do it yourself. You will need to put it in an external SATA reader, like I did. I recovered files via an older mac running Slow Leopard and copied files to it.
What I did:
1. You will have to remove the screws at the bottom of your Mac, in order to get to the HDD (or SSD, whatever you have).
2. You need to remove the HDD and put it in an external Case/SATA reader
3. Copy files from your HDD to another Mac
4. On that other Mac, go to Disk Utility (search in spotlight) and Erase as 'Mac OS X Extended (Journaled)'
5. Download Mountain lion on another Mac from the AppStore, and go to that Applications folder.
6. Right click on the downloaded file and select “Show Package Contents”. Go to “Contents” and jump inside the “SharedSupport” folder and you’ll find a file titled “InstallESD.dmg”. Copy this over to the desktop.
7. Plug in a USB flash drive to your Mac having at least 4GB memory. We highly suggest going ahead with an 8GB one just to be on the safe side.
8. Now open up “Disk Utility” and drag InstallESD.dmg from the desktop to the left-hand sidebar. Select the attached USB from left side and click on “Partition” tab.
9. Select “1 Partition” from the Volume Scheme dropdown menu. Choose “Mac OS Extended (Journaled)” from the left.
10. Now click on “Option” at the bottom. Select “GUID Partition Table” and press OK. Now click on Apply at the bottom right to start formatting.. (NOTE: This is will erase all data on your USB flash drive)
11. Once the drive has been formatted, click on “Restore” (it’s right next to where you clicked on “Partition in Step 5).
12. Choose USB drive you plugged-in in Step 5 as “Destination” with the InstallESD.dmg file as “Source”.
13. Click Restore and type in your password (if you have any). This will create the intended Lion bootable USB flash drive
14. Reboot your Mac with the USB drive plugged in. Hold the “Option” key on your keyboard when you hear the iconic OS X startup chime. You can now boot into your Flash drive from there.
15. Follow the on-screen instructions to install OS X , and after that, reboot
16. Format USB back to FAT in Disk Utility, copy your files from old PC to new using the USB.
That's it, you're done . Takes a lot of time, but recovered my Mac this way!

MacBook Pro not booting after stop sign appears

Hi,
On Friday I was browsing twitter whilst running photoshop CS5 on my MacBook Pro 13", when safari crashed on me. I tried to close safari normally, but it wasn't responding.
After trying the various ways of closing the program, I was forced to just leave it and hope for the best. I opened photoshop to try and burn some time whilst waiting for safari to respond - unfortunately photoshop proceeded to crash as well. Shortly after CS5 crashing, I stopped being able to input from the keyboard or trackpad clicks. At this point, not even the finder would open , and after some quick research I decided the only thing left to do was to power down the MBP by holding down the power button for a few seconds.
Once it had powered down I left it for a good amount of time (maybe 20-25 mins) and turned it back on again. Everything seemed to be working just fine with the reboot - untill the grey apple logo was replaced with a 'stop sign' above the loading wheel. This sign stays there for hours and nothing happens, and I can't even boot in safe mode either .
One last thing - I bought this MBP from my cousin, and it has had several problems before (such as replacing the hard drive in the apple store) and is under warranty untill october.

Can you boot to the Recovery partition (holding down the Command and R keys while booting)? If so, use Disk Utility to both verify and repair permissions and verify and, if needed, repair the hard drive. If the hard drive can't be repaired, and you're still under warranty, or even if you can't boot into the Recovery partition, make an appointment at your local Apple Store and have them take a look at it. If your cousin didn't transfer the warranty to you (which, the last time I did it, was an arduous task) then have he/her take it in.
Good luck - let us know if you can get to the Recovery partition...
Clinton

MacBook Pro not booting to mac osx making partition on windows side and windows not booting either help

I have a macbook pro with windows 7 on bootcamp partition. I made a partition in windows 7 using disk mgmt and after that my computer wont show mac os partition and only show windows and when i boot to windows it errors out with blue screen unmountable volume. I was able to get in to command prompt of windows and use that command to boot to mac os but it failed giving error bootcamp.msi not found please any help in this issue will be appreciated.
Thanks

Highwaytohells wrote:
Hi,
I own a Macbook pro 13 inch since about 3 years and
snip
but there is no way for me to boot in the Mac OSX. Could anyone help me ?
It is broken, take it to the Apple Store for repair.

Macbook Pro not booting right after installing mavericks

I downloaded Mavericks on my 2007 macbook pro and after I booted it for the first time it has the apple sign, loading circle, and loading bar. After it is done loading it powers down, if i start it up again it repeats the same thing. Please help.

Hi, I had exactly the same issue last night on my Macbook Pro late 2011 model. Unfortunately, I could not find a way out of it. Has yours actually installed? Mine kept saying it was installing but then getting stuck and saying "error in install there is a problem with your hard drive."
Sadly, I found the only way out of it was to restore my Pro from my back up copy (which thankfully i'd taken 5 minutes before attempting upgrade.) Others might me able to advise you of more ways round it, but I took to the forums and read up and this seemed the only way to get my Pro back so I could use it again.
You need to get it to the screen to provide options to do this, so start in recovery mode, which I think is CTRL CMD, plus R button. It should then bring you up with a list of options and choose recovery from time machine.
I decided to wait until they've ironed out some of the clear difficulties with this new operating system.

Macbook pro not booting after travel

I have a 2013 13 inch macbook pro. I closed the lid shut when there were programs running, put it in the carrying case and went to the airport. I was at the airport in less than an hour. At the security desk when I took out the macbook it wasn't noticeably hot. I put it back in the case and after takeoff I took it out of the case to work. It wouldn't boot. All I see is a grey screen and the computer is slightly hot at the bottom and back. I have tried many times since then to reboot with no luck. I have tried holding the shift key after powering, holding command, option, P, R keys etc. Nothing. No sound. No logo nothing. Only grey screen. Is it kaput?

Reset SMC. http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3964
Choose the method for:
"Resetting SMC on portables with a battery you should not remove on your own".
Best.

Macbook Pro not booting up all the way, weird problems

Last night I was using my Macbook Pro, closed the lid then came back later and when I opened the lid it wouldn't wake back up. Shut it down by holding the power button, then tried booting it back up. You can hear the CD/DVD drive spin up, (got my copy of X-Plane in there) but nothing else happens. Keyboard backlights never turn on, display stays dark, and the sleep light never lights up all the way either, just stays dim. Leave it for a few minutes, then close the lid and the sleep light gets bright like the computer is awake, and you can still here it running.
Sounds like classic SMC issues right? Well tried resetting that several times, no luck. Reset the PRAM while I was at it as well, no luck. Really not sure what's wrong now.
Macbook Pro was purchased spring '08, can't remember all the specs off the top of my head but it was the top-of-the line processor, 2-gig of ram, the nvidia 8600 video card. I've heard that there have been some issues with that card however I'm not yet convinced that this is a video issue. Software update ran just a few days ago, so I'm running whatever the latest version of mac os X is. (10.5.??)

Here's a link to the NVIDIA program:
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS2377
There is a specific test they run to diagnose this problem. If it pulls the right error code, you get a free logic board replacement. Print out a copy of the article and take it along--oddly enough, there are still a few Apple guys that don't seem to be familiar with this program.
So far I have not experienced the NVIDIA problem myself, but I have read a number of posts about it. Some people have reported multiple problems--some so severe that their Mac won't boot up enough to run the test. However, since your Mac sounds unusable the way it is, you may as well make an appointment at the genius bar and see if you qualify for a replacement logic board. That could cure many things.
Good luck!

My Wife's MacBook Pro not booting

Hi All,
I hope someone can help, My wife's macbook pro (bought early 2011) was suffering from split screen then freezing. I read online that it could be due to logicboard issues so I did the Apple Hardware Test (AHT) and it said everything was fine. So while opening final cut pro, the Mac froze and nothing was happening, so we had to do a hard shutdown (held down power button).
The next thing we know is, chimes, loading with Apple logo then grey screen. So recovery mode => loading screen with Apple logo and bar at bottom => Frozen blue screen.
I read some more online, did reset of PRAMand SMC. Did the Internet recovery. held "option" and selected recovery (now instead of showing Macintosh HD it shows "EFI boot")
There was no CD that came with the Mac so i cant even do a repair.
I am getting pretty desperate on what options are left, any other suggestions would be helpful.

KimoMansour,
since your wife’s MacBook Pro was bought in early 2011, it will have originally come from the factory with two grey model-specific installation DVDs. (Models that came from the factory with Lion or later didn’t come with grey installation DVDs in the box, but Lion wasn’t released until July 2011.) You can buy a replacement pair of these grey DVDs from Apple, but not through the online Apple store — you’ll need to call Apple to get the particular pair that her model needs; have her MacBook Pro’s serial number handy when you call. One of the grey DVDs has the original bootable version of Mac OS X for her model; the other one has the Apple Hardware Test and the iLife apps for her model.

Mid 2009 MacBook Pro not booting

My MacBook Pro is not booting at all. I try to power it on and I hear the optical drive spin but no chime and the screen remains black. The battery indicator light on the side works as does the keyboard(caps lock lights up). After about 5 min of nothing it automatically shuts off. I tried resetting the SMC and same issue. I replaced the RAM sticks and still same problem. I then removed both RAM sticks and tried to boot up and got several beeps upon powering up. I am thinking it is the logic board or the GPU after looking around the Internet. For the past few months I've had this problem intermittently. I would power on and I would get the chime but a black screen for a couple minutes before it started to boot correctly but this is the first time I haven't gotten the chime. Would it be a battery problem? Logic board battery? Any advice would be helpful. Thanks!

I have just solved this problem, with a fresh head this morning i realised that the external drive was empty and the cloning process didn't complete for some reason?
Anyhow i ran the clone again and booted externally which worked so then replaced my old hard drive with the new scorpio black and wow what a difference! I had beachballing before as my old drive was critical but now with the with the new speed 7200rpm drive its flying, very happy:-)

Can I get my personal files off of macbook pro not booting?!

So my MacBook Pro June 2012 has pretty much died in a sense. I was using it today and kept getting error messages and my apps kept quitting for no reason. So naturally I restarted my computer...well now it won't start up. I get to the Apple logo and a bar comes up underneath it. The bar fills about an eighth of the way before it shuts down. I tried running disk utility to repair it but that didn't work. Then I tried running it in safe mode and that didn't work. I also have come to the attention that Disk Warrior doesn't work on this particular model of MacBook. Now when I go to disk utility I can clearly see that there is space taken up on the hard drive and I can get to the directories with all my personal files, but I cannot access them. My question here is how can I get these files onto an external hard drive before I have to wipe the thing clean. These files are very important to me so I need to exhaust every option before abandoning ship. They have to still be there if I can see them right?

damage data? NO
just
A: dont squeeze top to bottom the HD....
B: try not to touch the green circuit board on the HD
C; dont shake or drop (eeek) the HD.
Very easy to do.
Get a GOOD HD enclosure, junky ones are more common than snowflakes in January
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Anker-2-5-Inch-USB-3-0-eSATA-to-SATA-Hard-Drive-Disk-HDD -External-Enclosure-/321085534744?pt=US_Drive_Enclosures_Docks&hash=item4ac23072 18
See this on HOW to install it, takes 10 seconds, easier than falling down:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLNv8RMzfjo

Macbook Pro not booting on OSX.

Hi,
I own a Macbook pro 13 inch since about 3 years and recently I encountered a weird issue. My macbook dropped on the floor from about 3 feets and shut down and since, the whole mac part of my hard disk isn't working. My hard drive is split into 2 sector, one is for mac OSX the other for windows 7. Since the day I dropped my mac, which was a month ago, I don't have access to the Mac part of my laptop. When I try to boot on mac, it stays stuck at starting screen with the Apple logo and the loading circle. I tried everything I found over internet nothing worked. I decided yesterday to give up and format the whole Mac part. When I boot after reinstalling my whole Mac, I still get the same issue and I still can't boot on Mac. What is weird is when I look into the Mac section from my windows 7 (because I can still boot on windows 7) I see all my files and everything as if I never formatted my Mac. I can access all these files from windows 7 but there is no way for me to boot in the Mac OSX. Could anyone help me ?

Highwaytohells wrote:
Hi,
I own a Macbook pro 13 inch since about 3 years and
snip
but there is no way for me to boot in the Mac OSX. Could anyone help me ?
It is broken, take it to the Apple Store for repair.

Macbook pro not booting up??

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