One more black screen

Question

Hey everyone,
I have seen ,multiple threads reporting this or a similar issue, just want to make sure I got that right:
I upgraded to Snow Leopard on Friday night. I often do not shut down my computer at night but merely close the lid. Saturday, I first experienced that my screen would not come back on upon opening the lid. I tried several keystrokes and ended up hard shutting down by holding the power button for several seconds. I turned the computer back on, there was the startup chime, but the screen remained black. I turned it back of, removed the battery, waited a couple of minutes for everything to cool down some, put the battery back in, turned it on. Grey startup display, SL boots without any problem. I forgot the issue.
One day later, same problem. Only that this time, I rebooted the computer probably a hundred times, had it cool down over night, had the battery load all the way up, all the way down, with and without AC. Tried to reset PRAM, VRAM, and tried to reset the SMC (even though the instructions were for early 2008 MBPs, but mine is late 2007). Unfortunately, I do not have a second Mac to try the "sleepfile deleting" (suggested here: http://ariejan.net/2009/04/05/macbook-pro-black-screen-of-death-or-is-it-just-fa king/) or an external Monitor to check whether that would work. I can safely say that the system boots as it should, because I can open a terminal blind folded and issue the say command which works just fine. I also have a windows xp installed, which leaves the screen black, the same goes for any attempts to boot from disk, booth snow leopard and ubuntu linux. I a, furthermore quite certain that it is not a problem with the backlight, as even with a flash light pointed at the screen, I can not see the faintest thing. It is totally black.
From what I have read so far, my symptoms indicate it is the problem with the nVidia 8600M GT, which surprises me a little bit, as I never have been experiencing any problem with it up to this point. I strikes me odd that this all happens just after I installed Snow Leopard. But then again, it does not seem to have anything todo with software. I already made an appointment with a Genius Bar, unfortunately not before Wednesday, and sure hope this will resolve the issue. The warranty is over, however, as I've read the nVidea failure should still be covered since the MBP is not older than 3 years. I hope they won't have me waiting for the repair too long, as my everyday work strongly depends on this device to work. Any suggestions what I could maybe try are most welcome.

Answer 1

I had that problem constantly since I upgraded from Tiger to Leopard. All the problems you describe, as well as your attempted solutions including letting the MBP cool down etc. I upgraded to Snow leopard on release day and the startup issue is gone. (so far!) Maybe you should try reinstalling snow leopard?