gray screen with apple logo and then instructions to restart computer?

Last night my MacBook Pro had the "spinning wheel" going for over an hour. I decided to close it up for the night. Today I opened the laptop and the wheel was still spinning. I held the power button down until it turned off and then when I tried to restart it the screen was gray with a flashing folder with a question mark in it. This persisted for a few minutes and then the laptop shutdown. I inserted the OS X Snow Leopard disc (as per the apple support site instructions) and now it comes up with a gray screen with the apple logo on it, tries to read the disc and then eventually the apple logo becomes the power button logo with a message box over it saying I need to restart the computer. I have restarted several times with the same result. Any ideas of how to fix this problem?

Thanks.

Try this: Remove the hard drive from your MBP, close it up and then try to boot from the install DVD. Let's see if it'll start from the DVD that way. If it does, it may mean your hard drive has failed. Post back results.

So I know an awesome guy that lives across from me and spent the afternoon with him trying to identify the issues, this is what we did:

-attempted to launch my MBP in target mode, however couldn't get it to show up on the host computer

-launched my MBP into Single User Mode and ran fsck -y (no change)

-removed the harddrive from my MBP and, using a harddrive enclosure, was able to access it from my friend's computer. The harddrive seemed to be in operational order

-physically installed my harddrive in my friend's MBP and reinstalled Snow Leopard OS. Harddrive works fine in my friend's MBP.

-reinstalled harddrive into my MBP however problem continues unchanged

-my friend believes that the issue is a problem with my logic board

Any further ideas?

-my friend believes that the issue is a problem with my logic board

Any further ideas?

Click to expand...

Your friend seems to know good trouble shooting methods. I agree with him that it could be the logic board but let's check one more thing that you and he didn't do. Check the ribbon cable from the hard drive connector to the logic board. If that cable is broken internally or loose, the drive will never be seen by the system. Those ribbon cables are very fragile and get brittle over time from the heat generated by the machine.

With some good luck, replacing the cable will solve your problem. If not, you're probably looking at an expensive repair.

I'm actually the friend that looked at his computer with him, and we did check the cables, they were fine. The computer is actually less than one year old and is lightly used(non-gaming)for school work, etc.

His computer is under warranty, just a pain in the hind-end to send to apple as we are located in the Canadian Arctic.

jbonthelake said:

-physically installed my harddrive in my friend's MBP and reinstalled Snow Leopard OS. Harddrive works fine in my friend's MBP.

-reinstalled harddrive into my MBP however problem continues unchanged

Click to expand...

I'm seeing one possible problem. You say that:

- you removed the HD from your MBP
- installed it into your friends MBP
- then installed Snow Leopard while your HD was in your friends computer
- removed the your HD from your friends computer
- and reinstalled your HD back into your MBP

The possible problem is...unless your MBP is the same model as your friends MBP...I believe that the Snow Leopard install optimizes the OS install for the model computer the HD is installed in.

What I'm saying is...you can't necessarily install the OS on a HD while in one model Macintosh computer...then remove & install it into a different model Mac...and expect it to work correctly. Just because both computers in this case are MBP's...because they may be different models and vintages (different model years)...this sort of OS install & HD swapping may not work.

Did you try what "chscag" suggested?...which was to try & boot your MBP from an OS install DVD. If you can & since your HD worked properly in your friends MBP...just reinstall Snow Leopard onto your HD while it is installed in your MBP.

HTH,

- Nick

Ya, we couldn't boot from the OS install DVD on the problem MBP. Holding 'c' did nothing, an error just comes up advising to restart the computer. My only alternative was to put the harddrive into my MBP(the harddrive worked perfectly in mine), and re-install the OS, then put the harddrive back into the problem MBP. I researched how to install the OS onto the harddrive while the harddrive was in a harddrive enclosure connected to my computer via USB but didn't see a way to do that.