[sleeven]

A few months ago, my macbook stopped turning on (the dreaded black screen of death). I am under warranty, so fixing it isn't a problem, but I delayed that because I have important mixes I need to finish (I'm worried the drives will be wiped). Here's where things start getting dicey. Someone suggested trying an external monitor, so I tried it, but didn't work the first time. Then, I tried turning it on again, except this time I held the power button down. The front light started to flicker, and then I got a beep. Magically, my computer started to function again.

Now here's the problem: If I turn off the computer, it'll crap out. I try to do the same thing I did before, and only sometimes it will work. The light will flicker, but I get no beep.

Does anybody have any idea what's going on here? Why does it start up randomly? I'm not sure if doing the whole reset routine has something to do with it.

[Sur3Mac]

I think if you explain to our friends @ the Apple store, that the contents of your HDD is very important to you and must be preserved, they will surely honor your request/demand.

But it seems like there's only one thing to do, and DIY is not one of 'em

Good luck...

[chscag]

If it's still under warranty quit procrastinating and take it on in. Make an appointment first before you go as right now the genius staff is overloaded with Snow Leopard problems.

Also, the technicians at the Apple store will back up your Mac's hard drive before they have to do any work that might incur a loss of data. As a precaution take along an external hard drive with you or if you have one, make a backup yourself before you go.

You can use cloning software such as "SuperDuper" or "Carbon Copy Cloner" to make a bootable backup of your hard drive to the external drive.

Regards.