Chosen Solution
This morning I woke my wife’s Unibody MacBook Pro to find it warm with the fans running, a black screen and the sleep light on. Unable to wake it up, I powered down expecting to be able to recover it on restart. This has happened a handful of times before, and up until now we’ve been able to restart and move on. However, today we are unable to resurrect this computer. Most of the time the only thing I get on power-on is a black screen and a sleep light. No start-up chime or anything. SOMEtimes I get a startup chime and a white screen, but nothing else… no “clueless Mac”, no Apple logo, no pointer, nothing. Modifier keys (target disk mode, choose startup drive, recovery drive, etc) have no effect. I’ve tried all the usual troubleshooting steps: reset SMC, reset NVRAM, reseat RAM, disconnect HD… no joy. What am I missing? Is there any hope to recover this machine? I know the local Apple dealer will simply say “needs a new motherboard” without even looking at it, so that’s not an option. Any advice and/or help is appreciated.
This is most likely an issue with C7771 on the logic board, on the 1.05V line required to startup. This tantalum capacitor commonly goes bad on the 2008 15" models, which can make it completely dead, turn off during usage, or not pass POST and chime. If you have experience microsoldering, I can guide you on how to do this. If you have not got experience, I would recommend sending it to someone who is aware of this issue and have the tools/experience required :)
Could be a couple of things. The white screen indicates a failed hard drive. Try disconnecting the drive and booting from the original system installation disk or an external boot drive.
