MBP 15" won't boot..... really worried

Hi,

About three hours ago my MBP came up with a black screen saying that I needed to restart my computer. I did this by holding the power button. Ever since it just has the apple boot screen with that picture of an apple and the little circle underneath it going round and round and round for the last three hours.

It happened just after I plugged my memory stick in. I was just doing the normal stuff e.g. checking email in FF and running XP SP2 on Q.

Thanks very much in advance!

Matt. Ireland

P.S. I do all my programming on the virtual machine and would really, really like the problem fixed by then if possible. Thanks very much!

I'm going to follow this guide first thing in the morning:

http://creativetechs.com/tips/tip_resources/PocketMod/MyMacWontStart.pdf

I hope it has some effect!

errr ok so is there any way that i can copy my internal hard disk to an external through the terminal?

It would depend on if the kernel was fully booted and what was installed into it. Basically if the modules exist for the ability to mount an external hard-drive, then absolutely, yes.

Plug in your external and run: df -h

This will show you if your external drive is mounted and where it is mounted.

Once the external was mounted it would be simple:

Thanks! That's a real help! Thanks very much!

ummm just one thing? would internal hard disk be c ??? thanks!!!

Just as an example on my Macbook Pro the internal disk is /dev/disk0s2

Thanks. I got the Ubuntu Live CD and am currently copying over all my data from my internal HD to and external using that. Thanks very much!

No problem. It pays to know Unix and Linux!