My 17” MacBook Pro is a paperweight 
I turned my laptop off after a day’s work and brought it home, went out for a few hours, and when I turned my macbook on later there was no screen. The hard drive was running and the keyboard was active. I had experienced a few funky things with the macbook, where it wouldn’t wake up from sleep and stayed on a blank screen before, so I held down the power button to turn it off, and tried it again. Still just a blank screen. I eventually gave up and left it for the night. The next day the same thing, no screen.
So I did some research and came across a surprising number of fellow macbook users with the same or similar symptoms, such as a thread on the apple forum: MacBook Pro Blank Screen.
I tried all of the suggestions in the thread and actually got it to work again by using another mac to delete my sleep image (see my comment here for instructions: how to delete my sleep image). But alas, the joy was short lived. The next day, blank screen again and this time the same fix did not work again because there was no sleep image to delete.
Now of course I was 1 month out of the 12 month warranty and the only “official” fix left was to replace the most expensive part, the logic board (i.e. the motherboard). I was quoted $1200 AUD for the logic board, not including installation. But after doing more reading it seems that some people had the same problem again even after getting a brand new logic board. Now it seems that this could all be the fault of a dodgy nvidia chip.
Luckily I can still get to my files, by connecting another mac via firewire and using target disc mode (hold down T while your mac is booting and the other connected mac will be able to see it as an external drive).
So I’ve been working on my trusty Asus F3 which is about 2 years old now. It’s been handling things quite well, but I miss my 1920 resolution and 4gb of ram. I’m not a rabid mac fan, but I did like my MacBook Pro and it suited me and my work well. So now I am waiting to see if/when there are new Macbook Pros coming (the rumour is for October 14) and that hopefully they will have improved nvidia chips in them.
UPDATE: Update to my MacBook Pro blank screen problems
UPDATE 2: My MacBook Pro is back and working
October 23rd, 2008 at 6:13 pm
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