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Macbook Pro grey screen, status bar on boot

Well my housemate came to me this evening, freaking out about his macbook pro.  It's been on this screen for 4 hours now:

 

BUu8gYT.jpg

 

Of course he has a 10 page paper (which -of course- isn't backed up anywhere) due tomorrow morning, so I told him I'd take a look at it because I'm up all night tonight anyways (gotta love circuits assignments).

 

I should also mention I don't know what year this mbp is, or what version of OS X it is.    

 

Anyone with an OS X machine ever experience this?  I read somewhere else that this screen is usually because it's "repair the startup disk." http://support.apple.com/kb/ts3148

 

He did tell me that he "dropped it" this morning, so my money's on that having killed the hard drive and he's going to be SOL.

 

Thoughts?

 

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Anyone with an OS X machine ever experience this?  I read somewhere else that this screen is usually because it's "repair the startup disk." http://support.apple.com/kb/ts3148

 

He did tell me that he "dropped it" this morning, so my money's on that having killed the hard drive and he's going to be SOL.

 

Pretty much, he's out of luck. You could try rebooting it while holding Option and making sure it's booting off the startup disk, but that's about it.

Normandy - Intel Core i5 3470, 8 GB Corsair Vengenace LP, EVGA GTX 960 SSC, Gigabyte GA-Z77M-D3H-MVP, WD Blue 1 TB, Seagate 320 GB (steam), Seagate 320 GB (experimental, second OS, etc), Windows 8.1 + Ubuntu 14.10

Garrus - HP Stream 11

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Your first move would be to follow the steps listed here:  http://support.apple.com/kb/ts2570

 

Find out if he has a boot disk, you'll probably need it.

 

If the comp isn't completely dead, you should see something and then maybe someone can help you work from there.  Otherwise, your housemate is probably looking at taking it to an Apple store to see what they have to say.  I know they have some diagnostic tools that aren't readily available for normal users. So, if you can't get some progress, he better forget about turning the paper in.

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