Need help with MacBook pro - won't boot from hard drive or cd

MacBook pro
Model: MacBookPro5,5
It was running leopard and was around osx 10.5 when it froze, shut off and stopped booting. Geek squad took it and after a week or two i got it back in the same condition. The manager told me it had "one of the few mac viruses" and my warranty didn't cover that. He told me it was $100 for a year of service, which as a broke college student i politely declined. He also said that it could be booted from the original startup disc, and considering I had that and I somewhat know my way about computers I figured I'd be able to fix the issue easily.

Needless to say I've had no success. Holding option on startup to go to the startup manager reveals only the hard drive, which doesnt work. Booting from the cd leads to the cd drive running with a white screen. The apple logo appears and a loading gear soon after that. At this point either the gear spins forever or it goes to a faint blue screen and stays there forever. I tried putting the cd in while in the startup manager, and Then the cd icon appeared. This excited me but it was to no avail, the same thing happened as holding c on startup.

Safe mode didn't work, in fact nothing works besides single-user mode. I'll post the picture when my roommate gets off his pc, til then I'm stuck typing this on my iPhone. The last line says:

Failed to issue COM RESET successfully after 3 attempts. Failing...
Underneath that sentence is a white square as if a prompt for me to type, but typing does nothing.

Any help please? My parents bought this new when I graduated and As I'm sure you know it was very expensive at the time. I really don't want their money to go to waste.

good luck.. im having the same problem and troubleshooted everything

- memory, cpu, replaced logic board, graphic card, hard drive. i cant find the problem.
did you figure it out yet?

no luck

No luck at all, sadly. I'm taking it in to Apple today to see if I can get a diagnosis. I'll post what they tell me.

Also, the picture at the bottom is the farthest the computer gets in single-user mode.

Before you take it on in to the Apple store, try removing the hard drive from the machine and then use your DVD to boot from. Let's see if that allows the machine to boot up to the DVD.

too late haha. I brought it to the apple store, they got it to boot from their external hard drive flawlessly. they wrote down that the following things needed to be repaired/replaced:
hard drive cable/bracket connecting it to the logic board
hard drive if necessary
optical drive if necessary

I then brought this paper to geek squad and they are now sending it out. There is a a possibility I might get a new/refurbished computer, but I won't keep my hopes up.

anyways, to the poster above, wouldn't opening the computer and taking out the hard drive ruin the warranty?

anyways, to the poster above, wouldn't opening the computer and taking out the hard drive ruin the warranty?

Click to expand...

No. Hard drive removal and replacement is a user do it yourself job and does not void your warranty. And, if you had removed the drive as I suggested, the machine likely would have booted up OK from the DVD. Anyway, I'm glad to hear that the "Geekers" are going to repair for you. When you get your machine back (refurbished or original) check it over real good. Make sure you're satisfied with the work before accepting it back from the "Geeks" at Best Buy.

chscag said:

No. Hard drive removal and replacement is a user do it yourself job and does not void your warranty. And, if you had removed the drive as I suggested, the machine likely would have booted up OK from the DVD. Anyway, I'm glad to hear that the "Geekers" are going to repair for you. When you get your machine back (refurbished or original) check it over real good. Make sure you're satisfied with the work before accepting it back from the "Geeks" at Best Buy.

Click to expand...

Sorry I miss read the thread.

I have a Mac pro desktop. Wig the same problem

I know it's not the hard drug cause it won't boot from disk or external drive.
I just change the logic board and no change .. I troubleshoot the ram, CPU, and the system test said they'll hardware is running fine. I'm lost!!!!!!

This is a puzzle I hope someone can help me with.
Ooh and I don't havE apple care

I am having this same issue. My Macbook Pro hangs at the grey screen. It won't boot from the hard drive or the install disc. I tried removing the hard drive and it still won't boot from the cd.

I'm reviving this thread as I have pretty much the same problem as smdeconto:

My aging Mac (running Leopard) has much trouble booting from ANY drive or CD. It only boots if I turn it off and let it sit for at least ten minutes.

I assume this has something to do with the pram, and a month ago I WAS able to fix the problem by clearing the NVram. Unfortunately, now that it's bad again, neither the pram zap nor the nvram zap routines even function. I can't get those screens to appear, even if the Mac stays off for a while. For instance, when starting & holding the power button, to attempt to clear the NVram, I hear that tone, but the screen with the "clear' commend never comes up, once I let go, the Mac just boots.

Any ideas?