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I have an older Macbook pro that will not boot up. The Symptoms are listed below:

  1. When power button is pressed the button on the front turns on and I can hear it begin to power up (Fans spin, HD starts although possibly sounds strange)
  2. Screen remains black. No grey screen no apple logo.
  3. I have tried to plug a monitor in to the DVI port to see if it was perhaps a bad screen.

Is there anything else I should try?
How can I hook-up the hard-drive to another Mac to pull the files off the HD?
(I'm a PC guy so I'm not too familial with Mac hardware)

2 Answers 2

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Start the macbook up in target disk mode by holding down the T key immediately after pressing the power button.

Then, using a firewire cable, connect to another mac; the problem macbook HD will show up as an external disk and you can access the data and then attempt any file volume repairs.

However it does sound like either a backlight problem or a graphic card issue.

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  • Using a firewire cable and connecting it to a PC other than a mac should also work, just as long as that PC understand the filesystem on the mac disk.
    – Hennes
    Sep 9, 2013 at 9:51
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If the external monitor did not work either, it's likely a problem with the graphics processor.

In any case, if you do wish to get the files off the HD and can't boot it up, you could just get a 2.5" hard drive enclosure that supports USB, take the drive from the MacBook Pro and install it. You'll be able to access the drive like any other external drives. NOTE: Only do this if you're very sure that the MacBook Pro is really dead, and warranty has expired.

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