1st Mac & Struggling To Reinstall OS X

[dropdeadhippie]

Never used a mac and just got a MacBook pro 2.4ghz core 2 duo given to me for free. Was told it worked great until the prev owner "wiped" the hard drive. I know PCs so figured this should be an easy fix, I was wrong..

Every time I boot I get an OS X Utilities menu (no matter if I press cmd +r or option+cmd+r). Same menu always comes up. I select Reinstall OS X and connect to wifi. Every time it wants to reinstall mavericks and when it tries to download it I get "this item is temporarily unavailable". I saw some posts about making a bootable usb but I do not have access to any other mac and this one does not boot at all. So what's a new mac user to do?? Thanks for any advice folks!!

 

[snaky69]

Never used a mac and just got a MacBook pro 2.4ghz core 2 duo given to me for free. Was told it worked great until the prev owner "wiped" the hard drive. I know PCs so figured this should be an easy fix, I was wrong..

Every time I boot I get an OS X Utilities menu (no matter if I press cmd +r or option+cmd+r). Same menu always comes up. I select Reinstall OS X and connect to wifi. Every time it wants to reinstall mavericks and when it tries to download it I get "this item is temporarily unavailable". I saw some posts about making a bootable usb but I do not have access to any other mac and this one does not boot at all. So what's a new mac user to do?? Thanks for any advice folks!!

A MBP that old should come with a set of restore discs. You could try and get a hold of that.

 

[poiihy]

if there's still a recovery partition then the disk was not fully wiped; the recovery partition is still there. You should erase entire disk (not just the partiton) and do a fresh install. For a fresh install you need an OS install disk/stick.

 

[CarreraGuy]

You should have the recovery partition to re-install the OS. If you're new to Mac's you can bring it in to an Apple store and explain the situation. I don't think they charge for simple consultation but you may have to make an appointment.

I haven't been on Windows for a while but I *believe* you can download an image of Mavericks, Yosemite, etc. to a USB and boot/install from there. This is assuming you have access to a PC.

 

[leman]

You will need access to another Mac, then you can download the Yosemite installer and create the USB media with the createinstallmedia tool (Google). That's the easiest way.