blank screen on boot

Ok, i'm freaking out right now so bear with me. I wen to go bring my MBP out of standby not too long ago, and i noticed that nothing showed up the on the screen. I thought that the logon screen might have switched over to my 2nd monitor, it does that from time to time, but nothing was no that screen either. SO i held the power button in until it turned off. Well, i turned it back on again, still nothing on the screen. Waited about 5-10 mins, still nothing. Did the cycle 5 mroe times, still nothing on the screen, or my external screen. You can hear the computer loading, but it stops after 1 minute. I don't know what to do, all my data is on there, i do do periodic backups, but i have new stuff on there i haven't gotten to yet. My warranty is out, so i don't know what to do. Earlier today it was running fine, even the XP side booted fine. I did a virus scan and disk defrag on that partition, then switched back over, checked my email, and updated WMV player Anyways, it has been running OSX 10.6 for about a week now, and i desperately need help. What can i do?

So what are u using to write this - do u have access to another Mac - is your MBP HD partitioned - do you have the instal disks for MBP - what is your back up scene. Would help folk trying to provide advice to have that info. The fact that you are freaking out probably means you have no back up system.

Well that MBP is the only Mac in my house, we have all PCs, so i am writing this on my desktop. I do have a backup Dell laptop, but i consider it a monster compared to the Mac because of how old it is. Yes, the MBP is partitioned, 120 GB for Mac, 80GB for XP. Yes i have the install discs for the computer.

Since you say it seems like it's booting up, have you tried increasing the brightness?

Have had mine come out of sleep and reboot with it turned all the way down.

Yes of course i have tried that, and it did nothing. I tried the command, option, p, and r combo, and that rebooted it, but the screen still showed nothing.

Think it may be time to call Apple - I believe that is one of the NVidia cards that have been causing problems. They've extended the warranty for that issue, so give 'em a call even if your Applecare has expired.

If nothing else, either call Apple (like bobtomay said) or boot up and hold X, which will force a startup in OS X even if your hard drive is 100% Windows (or any other OS)

bobtomay said:

Think it may be time to call Apple - I believe that is one of the NVidia cards that have been causing problems. They've extended the warranty for that issue, so give 'em a call even if your Applecare has expired.

Click to expand...

sounds right, if your not getting the gray screen at boot up then your GPU is gone bye bye, if it was the lcd or inverter it should still display on the ext monitor..

Well i have an appointment with the Genius bar tomorrow, so hopefully they'll honor that article. I do appreciate your opinions on this. I'll keep you posted what they say tomorrow.

Hey everyone, like i said i would report back about my Mac. They took care of it, it was that GPU problem. It actually didn't take too long surprisingly within 3-5 days. But everything is back up an running, for now.

cool, glade your up and running again..

Glad they got you taken care of.

(Makes me wonder now if the other individual I had to suggest calling Apple during this past week ever did. That one was mad at a me for making such a suggestion instead of providing a bunch of troubleshooting steps.)