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ZiprHead

ZiprHead

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I've got a client with a macbook that starts up fine, shows the apple logo then shows the prohibited symbol, the circle with the slash through it.

Obviously an OS issue. I've tried several combinations of key presses recommended by apple support to get into the repair console but nothing works.

I told the guy I've never worked on a mac before but I'd give it a shot.

Any help would be appreciated.

ETA: I have no idea which model this is or what OS it is running and neither does my client.
 
You did both Command-R while rebooting (to boot into recovery). And holding the Option while rebooting (to have the option to select the recovery partition of the drive)?

Might try a PRAM zap. Reboot holding Command-Option-P-R keys down and keep holding them down until the machine does its startup "ding!" 3 times, then let go the buttons and hope it boots up.

It's been a long time since I've advised on this sort of thing. My memories are of days when we had CD's with repair software like DiskWarrior. I haven't done that in years but the modern day equivalent is what you need, if you cannot reboot to the recovery disk in the MacBook -- an external hard drive with disk repair software.

Failing that, hopefully he's been backing up to Time Machine to reinstall everything. Not sure of the steps if you can't get to the recovery partition though so I'd have to look stuff up on the latest Mac repair strategies. I keep data backed up so if things get as bad as you describe, I can boot into a system on an external HD and wipe the MacBook's disk and start a fresh install.
 
abaddon said:
You did both Command-R while rebooting (to boot into recovery). And holding the Option while rebooting (to have the option to select the recovery partition of the drive)?

Might try a PRAM zap. Reboot holding Command-Option-P-R keys down and keep holding them down until the machine does its startup "ding!" 3 times, then let go the buttons and hope it boots up.

It's been a long time since I've advised on this sort of thing. My memories are of days when we had CD's with repair software like DiskWarrior. I haven't done that in years but the modern day equivalent is what you need, if you cannot reboot to the recovery disk in the MacBook -- an external hard drive with disk repair software.

Failing that, hopefully he's been backing up to Time Machine to reinstall everything. Not sure of the steps if you can't get to the recovery partition though so I'd have to look stuff up on the latest Mac repair strategies. I keep data backed up so if things get as bad as you describe, I can boot into a system on an external HD and wipe the MacBook's disk and start a fresh install.
Click to expand...

I tried those but from your description I might not have held them down long enough.

I have no idea of how to get it to boot from USB but it does have an optical disk drive.
 
Tried holding down longer this time.

Command R does absolutely nothing.

I tried command option P R and held down longer, through eight boot sounds. Let go of the keys, the logo comes up and then the prohibited symbol, same as before.

If I get diskwarrior, would I be able to put it on a cd or usb stick from a PC and have it work in a mac?
 
Diskwarrrior comes on a flash drive, and would boot to that: https://www.alsoft.com/ That'll rebuild the HD's directory if there's enough of one left.

If not then I would guess the only solution left is to reinstall the OS. There are a few options of how to go about that. Scroll down to "What to do if recovery mode isn't working?" here: https://www.macworld.co.uk/how-to/mac/recovery-mode-internet-3636668/


If the client's been backing up, then his Time Machine disk might be the solution to all this. To both starting with a freshly formatted HD and getting back the apps and files and settings from the time of the last backup.
 
abaddon said:
Diskwarrrior comes on a flash drive, and would boot to that: https://www.alsoft.com/ That'll rebuild the HD's directory if there's enough of one left.

If not then I would guess the only solution left is to reinstall the OS. There are a few options of how to go about that. Scroll down to "What to do if recovery mode isn't working?" here: https://www.macworld.co.uk/how-to/mac/recovery-mode-internet-3636668/


If the client's been backing up, then his Time Machine disk might be the solution to all this. To both starting with a freshly formatted HD and getting back the apps and files and settings from the time of the last backup.
Click to expand...

i get a 404 error on your link but I did find this earlier.: https://www.macworld.co.uk/how-to/mac/recovery-mode-internet-3636668/. Looks like the same as yours. A lot of options to try before I buy a tool that I will probably never use again.

And this is a new computer to my client. I think he thought I could get it going again for him cheaply.

ETA: Nope, nope, nope. I'm not spending $120 bucks for it.
 
Yeah that was the intended page.

If it's an older MacBook and you get hold a very new OS installer, then the installer should say "this machine is too old for this version of Mac OS" before doing the install.

So to avoid the time of downloading then making a bootable disk with it, only to see that message, I'd suggest you find a model number on the case and look up on the Net what's the latest Mac OS version that can be installed on that model number.
 
abaddon said:
Yeah that was the intended page.

If it's an older MacBook and you get hold a very new OS installer, then the installer should say "this machine is too old for this version of Mac OS" before doing the install.

So to avoid the time of downloading then making a bootable disk with it, only to see that message, I'd suggest you find a model number on the case and look up on the Net what's the latest Mac OS version that can be installed on that model number.
Click to expand...

Nothing on the case with a model number. May be underneath the battery?
 
Then there should be a serial number on the case. You can use the serial number to find the model it is: https://checkcoverage.apple.com/

You'll get info something like: MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2014)

Here's a mac compatibility guide that I found: https://eshop.macsales.com/guides/Mac_OS_X_Compatibility

It might have to be as old as 2011 or older to not run the latest Mac OS. (And it's an oldish Macbook if it has a removable battery on it.) But it'll be the reverse scenario with a newer Macbook, where they don't run old Mac OS versions. So I might be overstating how important this is. Though might not be, I don't know. I just considered it might save time to have all the info about that Mac, its year, what version of Mac OS was on it, especially if you have to download an OS and make a bootable disk to put it on.
 
If it is an old Mac, it might have a bad hard disk. A few bad sectors in the wrong place can make a system unbootable. I do not know what utilities there are for Macs to check the hard disks out for such. But Linux has systems to check for bad blocks and lock them out. Of course any OS that has problems with bad blocks will not run trying to use bad blocks on a hard disk. And reloading an OS on a bad hard disk won't work.

https://setapp.com/how-to/how-to-check-your-mac-hard-drive-health
Try this for starters.

Sometimes, memory goes bad. If all else fails, look up how to do a memory check. Sometimes systems need a remove and reseat memory to resolves such problems.
 
fromderinside said:
Just for curiosity sake is the screen 12, 13,15, or 16 inch? I found that 13 inch were introduced as early as 2009.
Click to expand...

I'll get back to you on that.

abaddon said:
Then there should be a serial number on the case. You can use the serial number to find the model it is: https://checkcoverage.apple.com/

You'll get info something like: MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2014)

Here's a mac compatibility guide that I found: https://eshop.macsales.com/guides/Mac_OS_X_Compatibility

It might have to be as old as 2011 or older to not run the latest Mac OS. (And it's an oldish Macbook if it has a removable battery on it.) But it'll be the reverse scenario with a newer Macbook, where they don't run old Mac OS versions. So I might be overstating how important this is. Though might not be, I don't know. I just considered it might save time to have all the info about that Mac, its year, what version of Mac OS was on it, especially if you have to download an OS and make a bootable disk to put it on.
Click to expand...

Not a thing on the case other than where it says macbook below the screen. I think it may have worn off. I can post some photos to help with identification.
 
Cheerful Charlie said:
If it is an old Mac, it might have a bad hard disk. A few bad sectors in the wrong place can make a system unbootable. I do not know what utilities there are for Macs to check the hard disks out for such. But Linux has systems to check for bad blocks and lock them out. Of course any OS that has problems with bad blocks will not run trying to use bad blocks on a hard disk. And reloading an OS on a bad hard disk won't work.

https://setapp.com/how-to/how-to-check-your-mac-hard-drive-health
Try this for starters.

Sometimes, memory goes bad. If all else fails, look up how to do a memory check. Sometimes systems need a remove and reseat memory to resolves such problems.
Click to expand...

I'm beginning to suspect this is the case. I held the option key down during boot and got an image of a hard drive, clicked on it and again ended up at the prohibited symbol.

Shouldn't there be some sort of error message if the HDD is bad?

I also suspect it's a very old macbook so no recovery partition.
 
I'm going to pull the HDD tomorrow and check it out. anyone have any idea on how I can check a mac formatted drive on a windows system?

ETA: thanks for the assistance. I really appreciate it.
 
Long ago, when hard disks were not that reliable, I occasionally did bad block checks that solved a lot of problems. This command was fsck -c -c -y dev/sdx. This is a Linux command. Since it cannot be run on a mounted partition, I used to run it from Knoppix, a live CD Linux system. Apparently today's hard drives don't work quite the same. So Linux rescue disks that check any hard disk for bad blocks does things different now, but they do check bad blocks and mark them as do not use. I am willing to be there are similar live CD system repair disks for Macs. Running fsck -c -c -y was very, very slow, but very, very thorough.
 
Older, and 13 inch. Probably a 2009. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201608

The 2009's will let you install OS X El Capitan.

Grabbing an Install Disk off eBay or even a whole hard drive with the OS pre-installed is an option. https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_fr...0.l1313&_nkw=OS+X+El+Capitan+10.11.6&_sacat=0

If you're going to take it apart, then iFixit has step-by-step directions to help with that. https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/MacBook+Pro+13-Inch+Unibody+Mid+2009+Hard+Drive+Replacement/1337

If you want to try to look at the drive from your Windows machine, I don't know that you can do more than accept its offer to reformat it. Maybe pull off files but you indicated it's new to the client so nothing to recover. Something like MacDrive (https://www.macdrive.com/macdrive/standard-vs-pro/ ... I saw a "5 day full feature trial" offer there) will try to fix it, and failing that then reformat it but you still need an installer on some variety of disk.
 
Cheerful Charlie said:
Long ago, when hard disks were not that reliable, I occasionally did bad block checks that solved a lot of problems. This command was fsck -c -c -y dev/sdx. This is a Linux command. Since it cannot be run on a mounted partition, I used to run it from Knoppix, a live CD Linux system. Apparently today's hard drives don't work quite the same. So Linux rescue disks that check any hard disk for bad blocks does things different now, but they do check bad blocks and mark them as do not use. I am willing to be there are similar live CD system repair disks for Macs. Running fsck -c -c -y was very, very slow, but very, very thorough.
Click to expand...
Yeah, Macs do fsck in Terminal and in Disk Utility's "First Aid" GUI version of the same. But... bootable disk with Mac OS X on it is needed.

There's more powerful software to repair the corrupt file system like DiskWarrior and TechTool Pro but they're expensive.
 
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