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15" MacBook Pro won't boot up

When I try to turn on my macbook pro, the gray screen comes up and the spinning icon is moving. However, it never leaves this screen. When I had a mac fanatic look at it, he stated that the bootstrapping has failed. Apparently this has to do with something not working correctly when the system is trying to boot. Anyway, I really need the information on my HD as it has not been backed up recently (my bad, big one). Is there a way to fix the bootstrap? And how can i get the data off the HD?

Thank you so much for any assistance....

Shirley

Answered! View the answer I have this problem too

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Ouch! It maybe more than the boot sectors that have become corrupted here.

The first thing is to try to get the system to start up on a different drive or the OS-X installer disk to see if the drive is even visible. If it is then you have a chance to back it up ASAP using what ever backup system you are currently using.

After backing things up and making sure your most important stuff is backed up on a second drive (just to be sure). You'll likely need to reformat the HD and test it out. Depending on what you find it maybe time for a new HD.

Also, please supply us the last four digits of your serial number so we can correctly identify your model in case there is other info we need to tell you.

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Gray screen and spinning icon is surely gray screen of death. Try disconnecting and reconnecting peripherals & re-start your Mac.

But you must also not rely on a failing hard drive if this is the case with you. I suggest you to image it rather than clone because image will skip all the bad sector of the drive while clone will copy everyting including the bad sectors. You can try feature of http://www.stellarinfo.com/mac-software/... to image your failing hard drive.

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Shirleyjovanc will be eternally grateful.
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