All I see is an Apple logo with the 'thinking' wheel spinning...I can't take my MacbookPro into a store because I'm deployed to Afghanistan for the next four months! I've tried holding shift upon restart after the chime, Control-Option-Power, P-R, etc. Nothing works.

Try this: log in to single user mode by holding command-s when you power it on. You should see it boot into a command line screen, black with white letters.
type in the following:
/sbin/fsck -y
then enter... This will error check the hard drive and fix any errors if it finds them.
If it won't boot into single user mode, hold option when you start it and see if you have any choices of startup discs - if not, you might have a bad hard drive; on the other hand, if you hear the drive spinning, but it's not allowing you to boot from it, a re-install might be in order.
Best of Luck!
www.dfwsupergeek.com

If you are using a standard install of 10.6 (Lion) or later, you can also try holding down cmd + R at startup to launch the recovery image and use either Terminal.app or DiskUtility to repair your main boot volume. If you are certain of continuous power and a good internet connection for several hours, you can even re-install the OS over the internet.

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