Chosen Solution
I have a mid-2009 15" MBP that will not progress past the gray screen at startup. When I press the power button I hear a normal chime, then nothing. No apple, no progress bar. The hard drive is an SSD I installed a couple years ago, so there’s no spinning to listen for. I have tried every keyboard combination I could find on the internet, but still nothing (recovery, single user, safe, etc). I was able to reset the PRAM (got a double boot/chime) and the SMC controller. No effect. I plugged in a bootable USB drive, dug up old install disks, and tried an external keyboard as well. Nothing! On startup the CapsLock button lights momentarily on the external keyboard then goes out. Pressing it afterward does nothing. I can hear the CD/DVD spinning but it won’t mount or eject. I do have a genius bar appointment later this week, but is there anything else I can try before I take it in? I’m assuming it’s some kind of hardware issue, but I don’t know where to start. Thanks for any advice!!
I agree with Justin on what you are going to get from Apple - Nada! It’s now considered a legacy machine and Apple will try to sell you something new. If you have a means to attempt a boot from an external device, that’s the way to start. You need to be able to confirm that it’s not your internal hard drive or cable or system corruption. If you have another mac with a Firewire 800 port, hook the two up via an ethernet cable, boot the working machine then boot the suspect machine holding down the T key to get into Target mode. If this works the hard drive icon will appear on your desktop and you can then run Disk Utilities.
Are you able to plug it into an external monitor? If we follow the boot process it sounds like a graphics card issue, but plugging it into an external display will give you a definitive answer on whether it is the GPU or just an LCD issue. The Apple store will unfortunately tell you to buy a new computer, because they only support models that are 5 years old and earlier. I would suggest a local reputable repair shop.
