My MBP has crashed and won't start up

Ugh, wife and I were watching a video and suddenly a short "zoop!" sound and then...nothing. Screen goes black. Will not restart--well, the fan will start up sometimes--but other than that, no boot up. We have to rescue the data because her thesis is on the HD and she's in big trouble if we can't get it back.

Relevant facts:

15" MPB (2.17 GHz, I think)
1.5 years old
1 Gig RAM
Nothing new installed recently, although she did the auto update for QT the other day.

It's no longer under warranty, unfortunately. Thanks in advance for any help you can offer, including suggestions for data recovery. A dead Mac I can replace, the thesis, however, not so much.

it seems to be a physical problem...sounds like something caused by a power surge (had happened to my tv once)

umm....i cant really suggest what to do...but since you aren't under warranty you could take it to a 3rd party repair specialist

if you google "repair macbook" you will find a load of relevant results

i wish you all the best...hope its nothing major

(as far a the HD goes...theres a greater possibility that its still ok...when you take it for repairs you can ask the guys to backup the data)

There probably isn't much hope on ever recovering the mac, but the hard drive is a possibility. I have heard of people bringing it into apple and having them recover it but if I remember correctly its like a thousand dollars just to go through that process. Some other third party mac repair place may be able to do something for a lot less.

rohan said:

it seems to be a physical problem...sounds like something caused by a power surge (had happened to my tv once)

umm....i cant really suggest what to do...but since you aren't under warranty you could take it to a 3rd party repair specialist

if you google "repair macbook" you will find a load of relevant results

i wish you all the best...hope its nothing major

(as far a the HD goes...theres a greater possibility that its still ok...when you take it for repairs you can ask the guys to backup the data)

Click to expand...

Thanks, Rohan; my thoughts in general, as well. Appreciate the response--going to hit all the mac repair shops within a 50 mile radius and see what I can do on a cloudy Sunday.

getuptogetdown said:

There probably isn't much hope on ever recovering the mac, but the hard drive is a possibility. I have heard of people bringing it into apple and having them recover it but if I remember correctly its like a thousand dollars just to go through that process. Some other third party mac repair place may be able to do something for a lot less.

Click to expand...

Yep, agreed; thanks GUTGD.

Follow up: took it to Genius Bar. Wouldn't start; couldn't diagnose. Had to send it in, but they were able to take the data from the HD and transfer it to an external drive, so that was the important thing, to be honest. Now AAPL has it, and it's costing 300 bucks (correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that the price of an extended warranty?)

Cheers.