03-21-2012, 03:30 PM

My Macbook Pro had run perfectly for a year and a half, until a few days ago when I shut the lid and opened it a few minutes later to a black screen, so I shut the lid again, opened it back up, same thing. So I manually powered down and restarted, but when I powered the system up I had the same issue with the black screen and the system was shutting on and off by itself. After several attempts I did get the system to boot, but the fan was running constantly and the Apple OS was running very slowly. So, I restarted and booted with Windows, Windows ran perfectly fine, but the fan was still running for no reason.

I cleaned out the dust and I tried resetting the SMC, but had no luck. Any other ideas?

03-21-2012, 04:00 PM

Have you tried resetting the PRAM?

Resetting your Mac's PRAM and NVRAM

- Nick

03-21-2012, 04:08 PM

Originally Posted by pigoo3

Have you tried resetting the PRAM?

Resetting your Mac's PRAM and NVRAM

- Nick

I have not. I'll give it a shot right now.

03-21-2012, 04:11 PM

Originally Posted by Kibbs

I have not. I'll give it a shot right now.

Usually a "black" or dark display on a laptop is not affected by the PRAM settings...but we might as well try all easy things first.

- Nick

03-21-2012, 04:25 PM

Originally Posted by pigoo3

Usually a "black" or dark display on a laptop is not affected by the PRAM settings...but we might as well try all easy things first.

- Nick

Yea, it didn't work.

03-21-2012, 04:28 PM

Originally Posted by Kibbs

Yea, it didn't work.

The positive things (mentioned in your original post)...are that you were successful booting into Windows on your Mac. Which would mean that the displays backlight & inverter are ok (two parts that can go bad with the display)...and that the logic board is functioning (since you were able to boot successfully into Windows).

Do you have any sort of OS DVD that you can boot the computer from? If so...try booting it from the DVD (hold down the "C" key after restarting & inserting the DVD).

- Nick

03-21-2012, 04:41 PM

Originally Posted by pigoo3

The positive things (mentioned in your original post)...are that you were successful booting into Windows on your Mac. Which would mean that the displays backlight & inverter are ok (two parts that can go bad with the display)...and that the logic board is functioning (since you were able to boot successfully into Windows).

Do you have any sort of OS DVD that you can boot the computer from? If so...try booting it from the DVD (hold down the "C" key after restarting & inserting the DVD).

- Nick

Ok, once I have it booted with the DVD what should I do?

03-21-2012, 04:57 PM

Originally Posted by Kibbs

Ok, once I have it booted with the DVD what should I do?

The first thing would be to let us know if you were successful!

If successful...I would then go up the where the menu bar would be (it's usually not visible when you boot from an OS DVD)...with the curser...and then:

- Open/launch Disk Utility
- select the hard drive on the left of the Disk Utility window

Now you have two options (I would do both):

1. Repair Disk
2. Repair Permissions

Each can take a bunch of minutes...so just let them "do their thing".

Then reboot the computer (into the Mac OS)...hopefully you are successful.

- Nick

03-21-2012, 06:17 PM

Originally Posted by pigoo3

The first thing would be to let us know if you were successful!

If successful...I would then go up the where the menu bar would be (it's usually not visible when you boot from an OS DVD)...with the curser...and then:

- Open/launch Disk Utility
- select the hard drive on the left of the Disk Utility window

Now you have two options (I would do both):

1. Repair Disk
2. Repair Permissions

Each can take a bunch of minutes...so just let them "do their thing".

Then reboot the computer (into the Mac OS)...hopefully you are successful.

- Nick

Repairs are done, now I'm assuming I need to power down using the power button itself...or is there a way I can restart?

03-21-2012, 06:34 PM

Originally Posted by Kibbs

Repairs are done, now I'm assuming I need to power down using the power button itself...or is there a way I can restart?

I guess you were successful booting from the OS DVD...you still didn't confirm this!

You should be able to shut down or restart the computer from the same menu's you were able to access after booting from the OS DVD.

But if for some reason this does not work...then just press & hold the power button till it shuts down. You may also get a dialog box (after pressing the power button) with three options..."cancel, restart, or shut down".

- Nick

03-21-2012, 06:52 PM

Originally Posted by pigoo3

I guess you were successful booting from the OS DVD...you still didn't confirm this!

You should be able to shut down or restart the computer from the same menu's you were able to access after booting from the OS DVD.

But if for some reason this does not work...then just press & hold the power button till it shuts down. You may also get a dialog box (after pressing the power button) with three options..."cancel, restart, or shut down".

- Nick

Haha I can confirm I booted with the OS DVD, and I can also confirm repairing the disk didn't work

03-21-2012, 07:06 PM

Originally Posted by Kibbs

Haha I can confirm I booted with the OS DVD,

Could have used this info 3-4 posts ago...just to keep the information flow a "two-way street". Just trying to help...since it helps to know what's going on at your end...so I/we can continue to think of options in case something doesn't work.

Originally Posted by Kibbs

...and I can also confirm repairing the disk didn't work

Sorry to hear that! But I think that this whole process at least confirms that we're not dealing with an expensive hardware replacement issue. I'm sure that you would not want to hear that you needed a $500-$700 replacement logic board...or a $300+ dollar display repair.

It's seems that if you are able to boot from your MacBook Pro's Windows partition (and not from your Mac OS partition)...and since the disk repairs didn't work, and the SMC & PRAM reset's didn't work...that there must be something wrong (or missing) with you computers Mac OS partition.

Is there something that happened with this MacBook Pro that hasn't been mentioned so far?:

- recent app. installs
- recent accidental trashing of files
- files moved from one folder to another
- computer was dropped
- etc.

- Nick

03-21-2012, 07:21 PM

Originally Posted by pigoo3

Could have used this info 3-4 posts ago...just to keep the information flow a "two-way street". Just trying to help...since it helps to know what's going on at your end...so I/we can continue to think of options in case something doesn't work.



Sorry to hear that! But I think that this whole process at least confirms that we're not dealing with an expensive hardware replacement issue. I'm sure that you would not want to hear that you needed a $500-$700 replacement logic board...or a $300+ dollar display repair.

It's seems that if you are able to boot from your MacBook Pro's Windows partition (and not from your Mac OS partition)...and since the disk repairs didn't work, and the SMC & PRAM reset's didn't work...that there must be something wrong (or missing) with you computers Mac OS partition.

Is there something that happened with this MacBook Pro that hasn't been mentioned so far?:

- recent app. installs
- recent accidental trashing of files
- files moved from one folder to another
- computer was dropped
- etc.

- Nick

Nothing I can think of happened, but there's always the possibility of something going unnoticed because I'm pretty dumb.

Also, I bought my Macbook Pro at Best Buy and purchased the three year Geek-Squad support so I'm covered for any hardware issues. But I'm doing everything possible to avoid Best Buy because it'll be two-four weeks before I get my laptop back.

03-21-2012, 09:17 PM

Originally Posted by Kibbs

Nothing I can think of happened, but there's always the possibility of something going unnoticed because I'm pretty dumb.

Also, I bought my Macbook Pro at Best Buy and purchased the three year Geek-Squad support so I'm covered for any hardware issues. But I'm doing everything possible to avoid Best Buy because it'll be two-four weeks before I get my laptop back.

Usually I hate to resort to such drastic measures...but with everything tried already (without success) an OS reinstall may be the next thing to try.

This isn't necessarily such a big deal...except if someone has lots of files & applications that are not backed up. Since we can't seem to get access to your Mac OS partition...if there are items you need...we may not be able to get access to them to back them up first. And if we reinstall the OS...some stuff may be lost. Or if we had to reformat the HD...and do an OS reinstall...then everything on the HD will be lost.

Let us know what you think about that.

- Nick

03-21-2012, 09:49 PM

Originally Posted by pigoo3

Usually I hate to resort to such drastic measures...but with everything tried already (without success) an OS reinstall may be the next thing to try.

This isn't necessarily such a big deal...except if someone has lots of files & applications that are not backed up. Since we can't seem to get access to your Mac OS partition...if there are items you need...we may not be able to get access to them to back them up first. And if we reinstall the OS...some stuff may be lost. Or if we had to reformat the HD...and do an OS reinstall...then everything on the HD will be lost.

Let us know what you think about that.

- Nick

Um, not sure what just happened, but I was using Windows and I shut the lid as a bit of a test just to see if I'd get stuck with a black screen, then when I opened the lid back up the screen was fine and the fan wasn't running. I found that interesting, so I restarted and booted up with the Apple OS, and now everything is running perfectly fine. I really don't know what happened, or how this just got corrected. But I thank you for the help today, it's much appreciated.