When the MacBook does not turn on

Although Apple's operating system and its components tend to be quite robust, nothing is infallible, and any computer can give us the scare of not starting up and leaving us without all our valuable digital material. Before getting into what to do when you have had this problem with your MacBook, just like the one we talked about earlier «What to do if our MacBook gets wet» it is a sudden failure but one whose damage we can minimize with some prevention.

Prevention

For this Apple offers us a multitude of solutions, the main one being backups (such as Time Machine), saving information in the cloud and the warranty. The first two only protect the data, which is what the warranty does not protect and, which is usually the most valuable. Once the warranty period has passed, for any hardware failure you will have to take it to a MacBook repair shop or Mac technical service, or to other less specialized ones. There are those who risk taking their MacBook to just anyone; cheap usually ends up being expensive. We do not accept equipment previously handled by poorly qualified people.

Keeping the system updated and clean without shutting down recklessly can avoid problems, and if you have a mechanical hard drive and move the computer abruptly you can have problems and cause the system to “hang” when starting up.

When the computer does not start up

First of all we should identify the problem that has caused it not to start up by means of the symptoms. In addition, the better we know the causes the better, like if it got wet we already know what the cause is; we would have to identify the problems it has caused and their scope.

Broadly speaking it can show 3 behaviors:

1. The computer gives no sign, we press the button and it does not react, no light turns on, there is no sound of fans nor anything.
2. The computer makes sound, the fans move and the startup sound plays, but the screen does not turn on
3. The computer starts up but the operating system keeps thinking and/or the question mark sign appears

In the first case the only thing you can do, without hardware knowledge, is to check that there are no power errors, make sure the battery is charged, try turning it on with, and without, the charger (see MagSafe connection problems), disconnect all accessories and hold down the power button, an electrical discharge of the equipment; for this we disconnect all the peripherals and the power input of our Apple computer, and hold down the power button for 30 seconds, we let it rest for 5 minutes, and we try again. Otherwise you probably have a battery or motherboard problem. The best thing is for you to send it to us to receive an accurate diagnosis.

In case the welcome sound plays without showing the screen it probably has a problem in the graphics card or in the motherboard; sometimes the inverter fails and we can see some movement on the screen without illumination… In these cases it is also beyond the ordinary user, since it usually requires a screen replacement or motherboard repair or graphics card repair. If you have made changes to the hardware or handled the RAM, check that you have left everything well connected and that there are no “unforced” errors.

If the screen starts to give errors check our entry «Graphics card failures» to see whether any symptom matches that the error it is going to develop is related to the MacBook's graphics card. We also leave you a video that illustrates what a MacBook Retina screen replacement is like:

My MacBook starts up but does not load macOS

And, finally, in case the computer starts up but keeps thinking, the most likely reason is that the operating system is repairing itself or the hard drive is damaged, so you should recover all the data from the MacBook so as not to lose anything. There can be other kinds of failures, but only with diagnosis and testing will we be able to isolate the faults and repair them without fear of relapses or other types of failures that were related from the beginning.

In case it is not a physical error of the hard drive we will be able to interact with the device a little more, and we will have several options to recover the system intact or restore it without losing the data, although it is possible that you cannot recover it without losing some data; for this we emphasized the option of preventive backups that will save us from this type of problem in case of this type of problem.

In case you find yourself in this situation it means that our computer does not access the system (it stays on the apple), or else we have a folder with the ? symbol. At this point we have several recovery options:

1. The first and most effective, run a reset to the PRAM and NVRAM, start the computer (you will hear the “chime”) and before the gray screen appears hold down the keysCommand + Option + P + R. It is important to keep the keys pressed until you hear the “chime” sound again and confirm that the Mac has restarted.
2. Disconnect all devices, including keyboard and mouse. This way we will be ruling out that there is some conflict between the system and devices
3. Space on the local disk, can be the reason why our system does not start; to recover the space on the disk it is accessible through “Target Mode”, or also through an external system.

Repair with FSCK

You also have the option of using the diagnostic and repair utility called fsck, which is somewhat less simple but affordable for the user level; this checks and repairs your Mac's boot partition. To do this we follow the following steps:

1. Turn off your Mac, press the button to turn it on and as soon as you release it press on the keyboard CMD and the S key at the same time, holding them down, this way you will enter the Single User mode of OSx. The Superdrive system to force entry to the hard drive.
2. When you reach a screen that allows you to type enter: /sbin/fsck -fy (It usually starts with the language in English so the keyboard may change the keyboard layout)
3. In case of success it would only remain to wait, and if it makes any modification a text similar to “FILE SYSTEM WAS MODIFIED” will appear, otherwise it will display “HD appears to be OK”. We restart with the reboot command and, in case everything is correct, it will restart working perfectly.

This is applicable to MacBook, MacBook Pro and MacBook Air. As you know, we will gladly handle any query in the contact section and if you want more information on how to repair your MacBook visit the section of the website.