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Does start, no display image, only seems to boot dvd, why?

Hi all,

My 2008 Macbook Pro 17" has always worked great, but...

Now,

- It does start when I push the power button

- It starts booting from the superdrive

- The internal fans run

- Battery is all right and is being charged

But

- Display stays black, also when connected to an external display

- No boing, or any other sound

- It doesn't boot from harddisk, while it still should

It's weird. Makes lots of the right noises, but just doesn't work. It's also unpingable via ethernet.

I read a lot. I would expect, with a faulty logic board, it wouldn't start at all.

With a broken LCD or graphics unit, it should still boot from harddisk and give me sound.

Does anyone have a clue of what might be happening here?

Cheers, Bas.

Answered! View the answer I have this problem too

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Tell us about the DVD you are trying to boot from, please.

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No video on an external display is a sign that your Video Card is not working. That might be a corrupted or damaged HD issue (rare) because you claim it "apparently" boots to the Optical Drive... but not really since it doesn't finish booting. Some machines will not chime if the volume is set to 0 at shutdown. You could try holding the volume toggle down as you do a boot cycle - the chime may return.

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4 Comments:

I did turn up the volume via an external keyboard, but still, no chime. It does also finish booting, I just can't really 'see' it :) So it does seem to work to a certain level.....

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Dark display points to a bad inverter or backlight...that should not have any effect on an external monitor - recheck the connections and see if you can get an external monitor to work.

- For future reference you posted a comment in the place where only Answers belong. Please use the Add Comment link.

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machead3, I believe that one has to have a certain amount of feedback points, before one can leave a comment. Check with ifixit staff on that.

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If true that makes a lot more work for us. I'm going to ask over on meta.

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Bas van Schooten will be eternally grateful.
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