Cleaning my Mac

[nevergettoride]

Hi guys

I'm new here, so hello and forgive me if I'm in the wrong place, perhaps you can point me in the right direction if this is the case!

I have a 2011 MacBook Pro, that I was going to sell. I got into deep water by trying to clean it up, totally out of my depth! Anyway it's now got that little circle with a slash through it when I boot up.

Anwyway, I've decided to keep it, can't bear to part with it, but a computer guy told me I need a fresh install of Yosemite, and he would do it for £60. I'm a little nervous about sending it to him to do as it may have all my personal details on, and he is just over the road from me.

He said he would charge £60.

What would you guys do? Just go for it? Take it into Apple? Or get on You Tube and wing it!!!

Thank you in advance ! x

 

[Schranke]

If you just need to reinstall the OS and you have a backup of your date (doc, music, pictures and so on) I would use YouTube and some of the guides you can fined through Google.
Charging £60 to do a reinstall of a free OS is just a rip off in my eyes.

 

[nevergettoride]

Thank you, I did suspect that I had 'clueless' written all over me!

It won't let me go any further than the no entry sign though.

 

[Schranke]

Have you tried to start it up in recovery mode?
Command + R

(Startup commands can be seen here https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201255)

 

[nevergettoride]

Thank you. I Restarted it in recovery mode, and then it gave me OS X Utilites, and I chose Reinstall OS X. It then gives me the screen OS X Yosemite, and says 'to set up OSX10 .10, Click Continue... So I click continue.... then it says my computers eligibility will need to be verified by Apple. I press Continue, it say's it's loading the information and then....

An error occurred while preparing the installation. Please try again

 

[Schranke]

Hmm that's odd, not sure what makes it do that.
Maybe others on the forum knows, otherwise I will look into it some time tomorrow.

 

[Schranke]

@nevergettoride any chance you were on a public/school/work network when this error happened?
If so this could be a problem with the ports.

If this is not the case (try this any way), then it might be due to a date error.
These to links will help you solve it
http://osxdaily.com/2015/01/19/fix-...ant-be-verified-error-occurred-preparing-mac/
http://www.techgeekandmore.com/2014...-error-error-occurred-preparing-installation/

 

[Newtons Apple]

Thank you. I Restarted it in recovery mode, and then it gave me OS X Utilites, and I chose Reinstall OS X. It then gives me the screen OS X Yosemite, and says 'to set up OSX10 .10, Click Continue... So I click continue.... then it says my computers eligibility will need to be verified by Apple. I press Continue, it say's it's loading the information and then....

An error occurred while preparing the installation. Please try again

When you were cleaning your MacBook, how did you clean it. Is it possible the laptop got wet?