my 2008 MacBook pro is stuck on a white screen and none of the boot commands do anything.
I have tried everything I try doesn't work.
MacBook Pro 15″, macOS 10.13
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It helps if you actually list what you have already tried since we are not mind readers (at I'm not anyway).
Try an SMC Reset and PRAM reset (hold the PRAM reset for at least three chimes).
Try booting into Safe Mode. Try an Option Boot to see if the Apple boot picker menu is displayed. If the boot picker menu doesn't appear (even if there are no bootable volumes to select), then it means you have a hardware issue of some sort.
If you have a 15" or 17" model, then you may be suffering from the known GPU failure these models get. You can try using these instructions to force the laptop to use the Intel GPU instead:
http://dosdude1.com/gpudisable/
You can try connecting an external display to see if any video signal appears on the external, but it can be hard to do this sometimes even when using Clamshell mode. It may be possible to toggle display mirroring on/off on this model by pressing Command + F1.