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Help for an old MacBook Pro

dawix

dawix

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jun 22, 2020
5
0
TENNESSEE
I am going to try to keep this as simple and short as possible.
  • June 2019 I purchased two refurbished early 2011 MacBook Pros with 500GB/8GB/High Sierra
  • May 2020 the hard drive on one died. The company warrantied the drive and returned with High Sierra. Everything worked fine until I tried to install an update. Crashed and I have not been able to get it back to work. I thought it may be a bad sector in the drive, so I purchased a 512GB SSD and installed it.
  • I used Carbon Copy and cloned the good hard drive to an external drive. I then booted off the external drive, erased the internal, and copied the good disc to the SSD. Will not boot from the internal. Boots fine off the external USB.
  • I purchased a two drive cloning unit. Removed the good drive and the SSD and ran it through the cloning process. Still nothing but a grey/white screen with a circle and a line thru it. It will still boot from the external drive.
  • I am at my wit's end. I have worked on Windows machines since 1992.
  • Thanks for any ideas?
 
OP:

Try MJedi's suggest to boot to internet recovery.

Use this procedure (try it right now, or print this out and try it when you can):

1. I'd have it connected to the charger so the battery won't die on you
2. Press the power on button, and IMMEDIATELY hold down
Command-OPTION-R
3. You will need your wifi password (unless it can be plugged in via ethernet)
4. The OS utilities will take a while to load. Be patient.
5. Do you get to the utilties? Fine, on to the next step.
6. Open disk utility. Is there a view menu? If there is, choose "Show All Devices".
(If you DO NOT SEE this choice, DON'T WORRY ABOUT IT, and go to the next step.)
7. On the left, pick the TOPMOST item, which represents the physical drive inside.
8. Click the erase button.
a. If you're going to install Mojave or Catalina, choose APFS with GUID partition format.
b. If you're going to install High Sierra or earlier, choose Mac OS extended with journaling enabled, GUID partition format
9. When the erase is done, quit disk utility and open the OS installer
10. Begin "clicking through". The MacBook may restart one or more times, the screen may go dark for a few minutes, and then you may see one or more progress bars. BE PATIENT.
11. If successful, you should see the initial setup screen "choose your language".
12. Begin setup. When setup assistant asks if you wish to migrate data from another drive, connect the external drive and go from there...
 
Fishrrman said:
OP:

Try MJedi's suggest to boot to internet recovery.

Use this procedure (try it right now, or print this out and try it when you can):

1. I'd have it connected to the charger so the battery won't die on you
2. Press the power on button, and IMMEDIATELY hold down
Command-OPTION-R
3. You will need your wifi password (unless it can be plugged in via ethernet)
4. The OS utilities will take a while to load. Be patient.
5. Do you get to the utilties? Fine, on to the next step.
6. Open disk utility. Is there a view menu? If there is, choose "Show All Devices".
(If you DO NOT SEE this choice, DON'T WORRY ABOUT IT, and go to the next step.)
7. On the left, pick the TOPMOST item, which represents the physical drive inside.
8. Click the erase button.
a. If you're going to install Mojave or Catalina, choose APFS with GUID partition format.
b. If you're going to install High Sierra or earlier, choose Mac OS extended with journaling enabled, GUID partition format
9. When the erase is done, quit disk utility and open the OS installer
10. Begin "clicking through". The MacBook may restart one or more times, the screen may go dark for a few minutes, and then you may see one or more progress bars. BE PATIENT.
11. If successful, you should see the initial setup screen "choose your language".
12. Begin setup. When setup assistant asks if you wish to migrate data from another drive, connect the external drive and go from there...
Click to expand...

I followed your instructions and this is what I got. Anything else you can think of?
 

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I'm with Audit13, replace the SATA cable. If your MBP boots and runs fine using an external USB drive but doesn't boot up with the same drive installed internally, the first thing I would do is replace the SATA cable. They are known for going bad and are only about $20. I know Other World Computing carries them, probably get them on ebay too. I have replaced the SATA cable on my 2012 MBP 13 twice.
 
I got my new cable today, and that fixed it. Booted just fine.

Thanks for everyone's comments.
 
Well, I am back. Laptop worked good for about 2 weeks. It rebooted and now all I get is the Apple and status bar. Then it shuts down.

Asking for help again, please!!!
 
> Have you checked that the new cable coneections are still seated to the logic board? Also reseat the ram modules, they have been known to pop loose.
> If that is not it I would take the drive/ssd out, put it into an extrnal usb case and try to boot from that. If it boots fine from the external USB drive it is possible the new cable is bad, or the connectors to the logic board are bad.

I am sure there are other possibilities but that is where I would start.
 
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