early 2008 Macbook Pro doesn't turn on - but fans start

So, when I try to power it up the fans run but nothing comes on the screen. I've also tried connecting it through firewire and booting it up in target mode on 2 other macs, with no luck. It doesn't show up under networks of either computer.

It has Mountain Lion installed on it and has worked for the last month fine. One day, with no changes it just didn't start.

The screen itself has no damage, but the grey metal strip that holds the screen on is broken on the bottom left side.

2 years ago I fell asleep with it in my lap on the top of a bunkbed and it smashed pretty hard when it hit the ground, but for a year afterwards there was virtually no detectable damage. After that it was really hard to wake the screen up. *and the grey metal part mentioned above broke after this time.

So, right now I have no computer which is a pain in the butt. Please help?

G'day and welcome to the forums.

Any chance you made a bootable USB thumb drive of Mountain Lion rior to running the Installer? If so you may need to try from that as the drive may have gone feet up. Does it still chime?

If only the fans run, no chime, no brightness on the LCD or external, not seen in target firewire mode or on a network, then most likely the logic board has failed. All I would additionally do to confirm is to isolate the airport card, try it on one ram stick, then the other, and just to be sure pull the optical drive and hard drive connectors off the logic board. I see this from time to time at work.

Thanks for the responses,

There is no chime on startup. I'm not a computer expert, but it sounds like the logic board might be the problem.

I'm not sure I know what to do to confirm, techiesteve. How do I isolate the airport card? For the Ram, do you mean I should remove a stick of ram and try to reboot, then switch the ram and try again?

Is there a more layman's terms way of saying this or maybe an online guide if its more complex? I have taken my computer apart to change a hard drive successfully, but haven't messed with other stuff in the past.


- If this helps at all, there is a light that turns on, on the front of the laptop (the center button you press when you want to pop open your laptop - beside disc player).

- Also.. the caps lock light does not turn on when the fans power up; I was expecting it to light on or off when pressed if it was just a problem with the display. I tested another computer on which the caps lock light could be toggled on the log in screen before doing anything. It seems like this could indicate the problem is computer related rather than display.. logic board sounds likely

Your advice is extremely appreciated!!!

It could very well be a ram problem. reseat the ram , try to remove them one at a time to see if one is bad.