OS X :: Macbook With Broken Screen Wont Boot - Using Option Key On Power Up
Jan 19, 2010
Long time lurker, first time I couldn't find a fix without asking so here it goes... I'll try not to leave anything out... Btw way the screen is broke but i use it with an lcd tv. Was working in final cut this morning when suddenly the app froze. No big deal I'll just force quit and restart... Hit enter on the force quit dialogue and the app disappears. Cool.BUT, its hanging in purgatory in the dock, thinking its still "active" or whatever with the little highlight, but clearly states that is "not responding" when right-clicked. Command-opt-esc doesnt show final cut in the applications list when pressed again... AND, Illustrator and photoshop are also now not responding, and begin acting the same way in the dock. Weird right? Ok whatever so I'll just shut down and fire her back up, I think. Apple menu/shutdown shows the yes/no dialogue to shutdown but when i hit okay it does not shutdown. the top apple menu bar disappears as does all files/folders/images on the desktop, but the desktop background remains. i figured it was just taking a sec longer than usual so i walked out of the room, but when i came back it was the same. after REALLY trying to NOT press the power button to shut it off, I finally broke down and did. Now the tv isnt getting the signal from the mac on restart. After much searching (probably here) I found that if I power up the mac and then immediately close the lid it forces the connected display into primary. Again, cool. BUT, I get the blinking question mark folder. I somehow managed to pull the above trick and hit the option key which brought me to what I thought would be an empty startup disk screen. Alas, Macintosh HD is right there. But, when I choose that drive, which is the only thing showing, it goes back to a blank grey screen and never boots. Any ideas? I can get all my data via target disk on my imac, and it appears the drive is functioning fine when i use disk utility when viewing as a firewire drive on the imac.
Recently I was unfortunate enough to witness the spilling of gin and tonic on my precious macbook pro. Luckily, having had spillage issues before, I reduced the damage and now have merely a few keys not working (including both option keys) and some dodgey letters.
After turning off my mac it restarted automatically in boot camp mode and with both option keys broken I can't get back into OS :/ What's more, my boot camp has no sound and the internet doesn't work so it's pretty much turned into an iphone charger.
I was wondering if anybody knew what I could do to rescue my files and what I should do about the broken key situation?
I have a 1.83 Ghz MBP with 512 mb of RAM (lame I know). The other day someone was using my computer to burn a CD on iTunes when all of my programs began failing. On instinct I rebooted my computer to solve the problem. Alas, now I cant boot past the grey apple screen, and the gear is spinning away. Saddest part of the story is that I had time set aside to back up my computer the day after this happened . Anyway what is the best thing to do from here? I haven't made any moves to fix it yet really, so what is the best thing that I can do to try and get my files back?
Information: MacBook Pro Mac OS X (10.4.10) Grey Screen, Spinning Gear
I'm asking this question for my brother. He has a 15-inch MacBook Pro (late 2011). He recently reinstalled OS X Lion but now every time he boots his computer he ALWAYS gets the option to chose Macintosh HD or Lion Recovery disk. I'm tech savy but I've tried resetting the PRAM and everything else I culd think of but he still gets that same screen. He is not pressing the option key when booting it just does it automaticlly. Should I do reinstall OS X Lion aain for him or just take it back to Apple and have them look at it?
Info: MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.7.3), 2.3GHz Core i5, iPhone 4S,new iPad
I just installed Snow Leopard and the Modifier Key option no longer works. i.e. I can't switch the CTRL and COMMAND keys. The option dialog still pops up, but the keys don't actually switch. Does anyone else have this problem? Is there a work around or a preference file I can change manually?
I'm in way over my head after promising to fix my father in laws power mac g5. When I press the power button everything seem normal. You hear the apple sound but after a short while the fans speed up the screen turns grey with a folder icon and a flashing question mark and then the apple logo appears. I have never been past this stage. I have paired the memory installed correctly and I have tried every memory combination possible. I have reset the Pmu and I have reset the pram. I also tried to remove the battery but that didn't help either. I also tried to boot from a system disc but nothing I hear the disc spinning but nothing happens.
I have a mirror door g4 power pc that had been having some issues with not turning on, and after testing the power supply, it failed miserably. We placed a refurbished power supply in it from a company in New York and the computer was working wonderfully. I went on a cruise last week and went to turn the computer on for the first time in a week and a few days. The CPU turns on, the unit chimes, the fan turns on and the computer starts to boot up, but it won't boot past the gray apple logo screen. Actually, the first few attempts to boot it resulted in a blue screen with gaint apple logo and spinner; it wouldn't advance further. After several restarts and resets, I got it to come up into the normal gray screen. On several attempts it wouldn't boot further than this. On two occasions now though, it has moved past the gray screen to normal operation (it takes about an hour for it to get to that point though) but with some kind of errors. I get the side bar, but the gray panel on to with "file" ect is gone and my HD icon never comes up. The icons on the sidebar do not respond when clicked. The computer will not boot from the OS X disc.
I'm trying to repair a Powermac G5 (dual 2.0, the first model I believe, with a new Radeon 9800 graphics card) that won't boot and I'm having some problems that I can't seem to diagnose.
The machine will boot to the openfirmware prompt or target disc mode and will show the 'OS not found' icon if left to boot from the HD (which has been wiped). If I try to boot from either the included restore disc or a retail 10.4 DVD I've tried it will show the boot screen with the Apple logo on it but no spinning status indicator underneath. It just freezes on that screen. Once it showed the status indicator but it just continued to spin for about 30 mins, at which point I gave up. Same issue if I try to boot the hardware test (except it freezes on the hardware test loading icon rather than the Apple icon). The superdrive appears to work as it is accessible in target disc mode.
I've reset the SMU and reset the PRAM via the keyboard shortcut. The one thing that leads me to think it's a firmware fault is that when I run the 'reset-nvram' command it gives an OK, but when I then run 'reset-all' it freezes rather than rebooting. Any ideas anyone?
My daughter has dropped her ageing MBP, bent the screen lid and now the screen is no longer usable. We have other Macs available to access the data on the screen if we could turn on Screen Sharing on the damaged MBP running Snow Leopard.
I started this topic on the Garage Band forum because I was having trouble with Garage Band '08 when my computer crashed and will not restart afterwards. Garage Band was crashing 2 out of every 3 attempts at recording, and I would have to use Force Quit to escape and start over. Then, while I was in the middle of a very complex project involving Garage Band, iTunes, Finale (music notation program), and Microsoft Word, the computer froze up and I hit restart, thinking that would solve the problem. Big mistake - the computer has not been able to restart since then. I have a late 2005 G5 power mac with 1 GB of memory, 230 GB hard drive (or something like that) and no additional gizmos installed, running OS X 10.4.4. I had upgraded to iLife '08 a month or so ago and have had problems since with unusual crashes and freezes, especially involving Garage Band '08.
When I boot, I get to the gray opening screen with the gray apple logo and the spinning gear (is it really called an "intergalactic frisbee?"), and no further. The fans come on (and begin to ramp up to a huge noise after two minutes or so), the white LED light comes on steadily. I've disconnected all peripherals except my keyboard and mouse (Kensington USB keyboard and Logitech Mouse, both of which seem to work OK still). I can use the keyboard to open the CD/DVD player, and I can start the computer with both the Apple Installer disk and with Disk Warrior 4.0. I've repaired everything I can find with both programs, verified everything available, used Disk Warrior to examine corrupted files, and removed all the .plist files that it said were broken and could not be fixed. The only thing I can't find is that it says I am missing a "tmp" folder in my HD/private/ folder, which I can't seem to locate on the directory on Disk Warrior. Both programs say that all my hardware is fine, and that everything else is OK too. Puzzling. I removed the battery and tested it (it was OK), replaced it, and reset the PMU button on the motherboard even though I know all you have to do is unplug the back for a few minutes or so.............
My G4 recently will not boot. I get the chime, it starts to boot, but almost never completes before I get the "you must restart you Mac" screen.I have the correct hardware test disc. I started using that two days ago. It still has not completed testing the logic board and the system is unresponsive. I guess that means the board is fried?
Info: PowerMac, Mac OS X (10.4.11), G4 Quicksilver, 1Ghz dual processor
I've had problems with my Mac for a while now. First of all, it indicated ram problems with 2 beeps. I later fixed this by moving and changing around modules. It was solved, but now a new problem. The Mac seems to turn on, making its iconic sound for startup, but the screen remains black. After about a half to one minute, the fans go crazy and I have to shut it off. I've tried a few things like holding shift or alt, but that doesn't work as it doesn't even display a white screen.
I need to know what to do and I don't really have the time to buy new parts right now. I'm really a windows based pc fixer by the way so I'm new to fixing macs.
I had to cold boot my macbook after a freezeup. Everything runs fine except disk utility showed a verifying disk result of "needs repair." Unfortunately my dvd drive is broken. Is there anyway for me to boot it from the CD with a broken DVD drive? I have a iMac at home to if there is anyway to use its drive to bootup my macbook....
I have a 2.0 GHz early 2005 Power Mac G5 (7,3) that won't get past the light blue screen at start-up. I've tried everything - reset the PRAM, Apple Hardware Check (on overnight loops, everything came back OK), fsck (all OK), repaired my HD and permissions on it, and then erased the drive using Target Disk Mode and another Mac, and attempted to reinstall OSX from the install disk that came with it (with OSX Tiger). I've tried switching out the RAM with no luck.
The only thing I haven't tried is a new video card (the installed one is an ATI Radeon 9600). Here's what it does: powers on with the usual chime, then moves on to the white Apple screen, the wheel spins, then it moves on to a darker blue screen, then it finally moves on to a lighter blue screen with an arrow, and it just stays there. It will boot into safe mode (pressing shift), but I can't even upgrade to Leopard in safe mode, much less figure out what's wrong.
Last week I finally upgraded from 10.6 to 10.7, but now my Mac Pro (2008) won't boot properly. It'll start to boot with the gray screen and the Apple logo, but then the entire screen goes gray and it just locks up there. However, if I reboot and hold down the Option key to bring up the list of bootable drives that works fine. I've checked my Startup Drive settings and the proper drive is selected. why it won't boot on it's own anymore? Holding down the Option key is getting old.
In energy prefs on my MBP there's something about graphics at the top where you can select better performance or better battery life. But surely, when on mains power, surely it doesn't use battery?
i have the new unibody white macbook. And sometimes when i am viewing pictures, there is a spot on the pic that looks like the screen would be broken (sorry i dont know how to explain this). This happens alot on almost every site sometimes though. Here is an example If you guys could please help me on this it would be great. You can see in the bottom pic what is wrong and it can look much worse on other pics like a bunch of little squares too.
Alright I was going to load Windows on a partition thru Boot Camp. However I decided not to and then used the Boot Camp assistant to remove the Windows partition.
Ever since I got rid of the Windows partition, I've have to hold the OPTION key just to get my MBP to boot even though there is NO other operating system installed on the old partition. If I don't hold the OPTION key it won't boot, it just goes to a black screen.
just a couple of minutes ago my screen did thiswhile I was switching around in Spaces. Also, it is not image problem because i took a screenshot and nothing was wrong on that. Anyone care to give me any information on what this is or how to fix it before I goto the Genius Bar?
so I was doing the ironing and watching a movie on my macbook and when I was done and clearing stuff up the ironing board thing kinda folded in half and my laptop dropped to the floor with a loud thud (onto a wooden floorboard)Basically the screen looks like when you break a glass window but it hasn't fallen apart, you just see loads of cracks at the point of impact...I have an apple care thing, but will this be covered under the guarantee or something? The laptop is over 1 year old and otherwise any idea how much it will cost, etc?Furthermore, will I be able to recover all my documents and stuff on it?
I have found a cheap, broken Power Mac G5 for sale on the internet. It is a 2.5 GHz dual model. The owner says that one of the G5 processors is damaged.
Will the Power Mac work with only one processor? If I bought another processor will it have to be the same speed?
I just recently dropped my Macbook and broke the screen. Instead of having apple replace it I was going to try to save a lot of money and do it myself. I have a few questions that maybe someone could help me out with.
I sold my macbook pro 2.2ghz (still in my possession) and am trying to get my photos and stuff off of it before i restore it. I have connected it to an external monitor before with success (the computer works perfectly minus the broken screen) but for some reason i can't get it to hook up again. I know it's due to my incompetence that I can't get it to connect so some help/ tips would be appreciated.
Should I already have the monitor plugged in before i turn the computer or plug it in after it's on?Is the f7 button the button to push to switch which monitor is being used?I just can't figure it out since the screen is broken. Thanks
I just found a working macbook with a broken screen being sold for $60 on craigslist. I asked the seller for specs and she said she doesn't know the details except for the model # (which is A1181). It comes with no power adapter or software.Is there any way I can I test the computer to know if it is worth buying when I get there? I want to make sure it is able to run properly before investing in a screen. I have a 13" macbook. When I was at the apple store today, the employee was able to run diagnostics on my computer with his MBP without having to touch my computer. (Edit: There was a cord running between both computers, and my comp. was running, but everything was being done through his OS). Is there an easy way for me to do the same thing?
When I try turning the computer on, I get the option to choose the startup disk, but only Recovery is visible. When i check in Recovery, it still shows my original start up disk, but I cannot restart off that. What do I do?
Info: MacBook Pro (13-inch Early 2011), OS X Mavericks (10.9.3)
So first my disc drive broke on it's own. This is a completely different story apart from the broken macbook. Note that it's the same macbook though. So it broke on it's own. Do guys think apple will fix that?
Moving onto the Broken Macbook LCD. Some guy decided it would be funny to kick my back with my macbook in it. And you can probably guess what happened there. I know my warranty does not cover it, but how much will the screen itself cost? I am going to be fixing it on my own.
a mate found a laptop on the road, no kidding, its been driven over, screen is less than happy. I wanted to plug it in to my bubble emac, but what cable am i looking for? and is it cheap? I have sound comming from it when you turn it on, and when u use the volume keys but thats it. Oh and when you use the mouse pad it leaves light trails on the screen.
