# Macbook Pro stuck at loading screen



## Kjølen (Oct 7, 2008)

So, last night I found that my Macbook Pro (Late 2007, Santa Rosa) wouldn't output to the screen or an external. I thought I had the dreaded video chipset failure that Apple reported more common for my model. However, when I started up today, after leaving the battery out for awhile, the screen started working again... but Mac OS X did not. I'm currently stuck at the Apple logo with the spinning loading thing. I've left it on for over 3 hours and it still stayed there. The laptop gets hot and the fans spin up to ludicrous speed. When I hold option down at boot, it shows my Windows partition and my Mac OS X partition, but instead, it's called "EFI Boot." Did my Mac OS X get corrupted somehow? Should I backup the contents of my drive and reinstall Snow Leopard? I've tried resetting my PRAM, already.

Thanks for the help!


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## sinclair_tm (Mar 11, 2005)

Will it boot into Windows?


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## Kjølen (Oct 7, 2008)

Didn't try. Unfortunately, NOW it's ignoring all my key strokes at boot. No safe mode, no PRAM reset, no boot drive selection, no booting to Firewire. Yikes.


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## sinclair_tm (Mar 11, 2005)

Sounds like a hardware issue now. You'll probably have to take it to Apple and let them see it. Have you reset the SMU?


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## Kjølen (Oct 7, 2008)

I have not. Does that require pressing keys?  Either way, if you could explain that process and how it might help, I'd be extremely grateful for it. Maybe I should explain my situation a bit more in depth.

Right now, when I push the power button, it plays the Apple chime and the screen goes whitish-grey. The Apple logo appears, then a progress bar at the bottom. The progress bar goes up to about perhaps 10% then disappears, and the spinning loading icon appears and spins indefinitely. The fans eventually spin up even though the laptop isn't hot and it sits like that for hours, never getting to the login screen. When I COULD hold down the Option key, I had "EFI Boot" with the icon I had been using for my Mac OS X boot drive, and "Windows." I wish now I had tried booting into Windows, but not it doesn't respond to my keystrokes at boot. I know the keyboard is at least partially working, because I can turn Caps Lock on and off, as the light indicates.

As far as bringing it in to fix, if it IS a hardware problem, it likely wouldn't be worth the money it would cost to put into it. I have no Apple Care, and with all the problems this model has, and has developed, it seems like I might as well just get a new Macbook (of which there are rumors of a new line coming out very soon). Also, the nearest Apple Store is over 150 miles away.


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## sinclair_tm (Mar 11, 2005)

Where you the last one to turn the Macbook off? Did you run any updates before shutting it down the last time it worked correctly? The fact that a progress bar showed up at the grey screen and not the normal Welcome to Mac screen, says that the Mac was trying to do a firmware update of some kind, which also explains the EFI boot thing. And if it was interrupted, or failed at the update, it basically bricks the Mac, and Apple has to hook it up to some equipment to bring it back to life.


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## Kjølen (Oct 7, 2008)

Yes, I am the laptop's only user. Actually, the laptop was ON when the screen stopped working. I usually just shut the lid and put it to sleep when I'm not using it. When I opened it back up one day, it didn't respond. I had to do a hard shut down since there was no way I could know what was going on. Hopefully it wasn't in the middle of firmware updates while I shut it off. It shouldn't have been, though. Usually it asks for my password first, and there weren't any updates going on at the time it was working.


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## sinclair_tm (Mar 11, 2005)

My Macbook has done that twice to me (not come back from sleep), and in the end, the second time around, Apple replace the motherboard, you may have to have the same service.


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## Kjølen (Oct 7, 2008)

Yeah, Apple even offers to replace the logic board for free with my model, because it's a known defect, but only within 2 years of the purchase date. 2 years would have been September for me, so I'm just outside. Still, I'm bringing it in to a local repair shop to get an estimate. Thanks for the help, I'll let you know how it goes.


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