# Mac Book Pro won't boot to HD or Installation Disk



## Duende (Jun 5, 2010)

My Mac Book Pro won't boot from the install Disk or from the Hard drive. Booting to hard drive in SIngle user mode gets to that it's loading drivers..goes 1 1/16 rows of dots. Waits a while spurts a few more.. continues to wait and spurt for about 10 minutes  and the reboots. When not in single user mode I never get the initializing symbol. When booting from Installation Disk it starts to read from the disk, I get the initializing icon and then nothing.. once in a while I can hear the DVD drive read/search and then nothing. I've reset NVRAM/PRAM doing the Command/Option P-R thing. Safe Mode of course isn't relevant. I've been looking for instruction on how to l load firmware to a downed machine but haven't been able to find anything on it yet but figured I'd RTfM'd enough to pose my dilemma to this forum.

I was reinstalling OS yesterday due to some flaky problems. Now the flakes became a blizzard.


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## MisterMe (Jun 5, 2010)

What do you mean by _Installation Disk_? Every Mac ships with a _System Restore_ disc, which is intended to return your Mac to its as-shipped state. You may also boot your Mac from a retail version of MacOS X that is newer than the system on your _System Restore_ disc.

Assuming that you are using the proper disc, then it sounds like your hard drive has taken a crap. If this is the case, then the only solution is to replace it.


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## Duende (Jun 5, 2010)

Well..it's a friends computer and he gave me the DVD's. It looks like the DVD I have with mine other than his is 10.6 and mine 10.4.5. His is Titled exactly as follow:
_15-inch
MacBook Pro
Mac OS X Install DVD_

There's also an Applications Install DVD.

When he gave it to me it wouldn't boot.. in single user mode it got to the point of initializing the journals and crapped out. Disk Repair wouldn't touch it. I didn't have a copy of Disk Warrior to boot from so I figured nothing lost if I reinstall the OS... same results after a reinstall of the OS so I re-partitioned the drive, installed OS and it worked fine. I did a restore from a time machine back up he had made. He had a copy of disk warrior so I checked the drive and it was fine. However it seemed a bit sluggish at times... leaving the beach ball on for what at first seemed just a second. then incrementally got worse until finally it hung after a few hours of this. I checked the disk a few times and it was always fine. I'd like to think it is a firmware issue since I'm in Guatemala and service isn't an easy or cheap thing and my buddy's a Guatemalan musician. No ay mucho denero. SO that's why I was asking what I asked in my original post. It does start to read from the CD ROM when trying to boot of the Installation Disk.. and I guess it's looking at the disk drive since the boot file path is being recognized and it does appear as if it's trying to load some of the drivers.


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## Giaguara (Jun 7, 2010)

If it's a different generation of MacBook Pro than yours, or was shipped even just a few weeks earlier or later than yours, it will not work. It doesn't matter whether you format or partition the hard drive separately, it still will not work. 
Your Mac was shipped with 10.4.5 or ealier, so there is _no way_ that the install discs of a Mac that was shipped with 10.6. will work in it.

You need either 1) the discs that were shipped with _your_ Mac, or 
2) a _retail_ copy of Mac OS X that is _later than what was shipped with your Mac._ You could use 10.5 or 10.6 for this. Even if no hay dinero, the good news is that 10.6 disc set is cheap, only around $ 30. If you don't have your original install discs available, buy the 10.6 disc set - not only will it allow you to install the system or repair it, but also will be worth it when/if you'll eventually will sell your Mac while upgrading it to a newer one (even if it would happen only in 4-5 years from now on).


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## Duende (Jun 10, 2010)

Hi Giaguara

I shouldn't have said in my post that it was "mine" that I was working on. It was my friends all along with a new MacBook Pro and Snow Leopard. I say that in another post but by then I've muddled things up by my intro.

What threw me off in this whole problem was that when I tried the OS install from DVD (by holding down the "c" key on boot) I got the apple logo and the initializing symbol spinning and it just stayed in that state. I'd assumed that at this point the OS install would come up regardless of the status of the disk drive (after all we need to get to disk utility). 

However if I held down the alt/option key when booting to select my boot device, and waited a few moments, the Install CD appeared and became an option to boot from. Then it worked fine. It appears that when holding down the "c" key to boot from the DVD it expected a usable harddisk.

Thanks all for your help.


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## Giaguara (Jun 11, 2010)

Aah sorry for confusion  and glad that the alt/option worked -- it will be useful for the others who might be running to a similar situation later on.


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## th3elf (Oct 20, 2010)

Duende said:


> Hi Giaguara
> 
> I shouldn't have said in my post that it was "mine" that I was working on. It was my friends all along with a new MacBook Pro and Snow Leopard. I say that in another post but by then I've muddled things up by my intro.
> 
> ...


That worked for me too! I had gotten to the alt+option screen before but was never patient enough for the CD to show up.


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## Scrimm (Dec 18, 2010)

im workin on a 15" macbook pro. i cant boot from hd or optical drives.

i git the apple onscreen, but no pinwheel.

i can access the optical drive and install to the hd in target mode.

resettin pram no good either.

replaced hd. original drive gave me an error and toold me to backup my data.


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