Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Help...I stuffed up my Mac

S

SirDrew

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Dec 31, 2012
6
0
Brisbane Australia
My wife just gifted me a MacBook pro which unbeknown to her I quickly ruined and desperately need help to repair! Being a veteran PC user I thought I knew what I was doing...but apparently not.
The symptom is that when I try to boot up I just get the apple logo and an eternally spinning cog. I am sure that the problem was created by me when I was trying to set up user accounts. I recall unchecking a box (disable guest account rings a bell but could have been something else) which I thought at the time might have a regrettable outcome. If (like with safe mode on PC) I could get back to that screen I could back track and fix the problem but alas the Mac safe mode does not appear to allow me to do that.To compound the problem, in an effort to repair the OS I managed to get a Snow Leopard cd stock in the D drive which now beeps in tune with the spinning cog.....my wife is now starting to ask questions about the strange beeping noises and why I spend so much time in the shed with my new computer.....any help is appreciated.
 
I would try this:

(from http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1533)

As soon as you hear the chime after you power the system on:

Press Eject, F12, or hold the mouse or trackpad button - Ejects any removable media, such as an optical disc.

I prefer pressing on the bottom part of the trackpad (until you feel the "click") and hold it there.

That should hopefully get the DVD out of the drive.
 
^this also


Umm did it come with snow leopard? If so hold down option when starting up (with the disc in the drive) to see the disk, if that doesn't work you may have to take it to apple as you may have a broken dvd drive.
 
Cd is out!!!

Thanks duervo!!!!! the beeping is history!
The Snow Leopard Cd is my daughters. My Mac did not come with any instillation disks so I assume that the master software is stored in a separate partition on the HD
 
I followed your link to Apple support and decided that my best option would be to re install the OS by pressing control R (Recovery) and following the prompts, the OS turned out to be X Lion.It appears that this option downloads a new OS directly from Mac however the options for where I want to install the software are grayed out, as is the Install button and cannot be selected (the options are Recovery HD and Macintosh HD

By the way, thanks for the link...It will be very useful in the future I have no doubt.

----------

I have just noticed that it says "Disk Is Locked" can anyone tell me how to unlock the disk given that I cannot access the OS?
 
SirDrew said:
Thanks duervo!!!!! the beeping is history!
The Snow Leopard Cd is my daughters. My Mac did not come with any instillation disks so I assume that the master software is stored in a separate partition on the HD
Click to expand...

Is it a brand new MBP, if it is it will not boot from Snow Leopard.

Do you still have the problem, and do you already have Data like photo's Music and so on on it and you want to keep.

If not, restart and hold Command-R to get into recovery mode and reinstall OS X, it is already on the MBP.

Edit: See you just posted before me.
What do you mean by disk is locked, when does this show up.

And, you have to choose Macintosh HD
 
There are a couple possible solutions to your issue.

OPTION 1 - Repairing Disk Permissions:

1. Turn on computer and hold down the option key

2. Boot form the Recovery Drive

3. After it downloads Lion and prepares for the install, go to Utilities -> Disk Utility on the top bar menu

4. Find your hard drive on the left side and select the partition under it (Should be names "Macintosh HD" if you haven't changed it)

5. Under the "First Aid" tab, click "Repair Disk Permissions"

6. Look in the window and see if it fixes anything, if not, move to the next option.

OPTION 2 - Reinstalling/Formatting:

If you are fine with reinstalling, follow these steps:

(NOTE: Follow steps 1-3 above if you haven't already)

1. Find your hard drive on the left side and select it (note that this is the disk itself, not the partition)

2. Go to the "Erase" tab and erase the Hard Drive (Select Mac OS Extended Journaled as the format)

3. Go back to the main installation window and you should now be able to select the Hard Drive that was previously "locked"

Good luck!

EDIT: Thank you runebinder for pointing out that I forgot to say which format to put it in!
 
Last edited:
Pyromonkey83 said:
There are a couple possible solutions to your issue.

OPTION 1 - Repairing Disk Permissions:

1. Turn on computer and hold down the option key

2. Boot form the Recovery Drive

3. After it downloads Lion and prepares for the install, go to Utilities -> Disk Utility on the top bar menu

4. Find your hard drive on the left side and select the partition under it (Should be names "Macintosh HD" if you haven't changed it)

5. Under the "First Aid" tab, click "Repair Disk Permissions"

6. Look in the window and see if it fixes anything, if not, move to the next option.

OPTION 2 - Reinstalling/Formatting:

If you are fine with reinstalling, follow these steps:

(NOTE: Follow steps 1-3 above if you haven't already)

1. Find your hard drive on the left side and select it (note that this is the disk itself, not the partition)

2. Go to the "Erase" tab and erase the Hard Drive

3. Go back to the main installation window and you should now be able to select the Hard Drive that was previously "locked"

Good luck!
Click to expand...

Just make sure you choose Mac OS Extended Journaled as the format if you do an erase.
 
Pyromonkey83 said:
There are a couple possible solutions to your issue.

..........
..........
EDITED

EDIT: Thank you runebinder for pointing out that I forgot to say which format to put it in!
Click to expand...


One way or another he can't do all of the above, if you read his last Post he says it is locked.


runebinder said:
Just make sure you choose Mac OS Extended Journaled as the format if you do an erase.
Click to expand...

And GUID.

But, he can't the disk is locked.
 
justperry said:
One way or another he can't do all of the above, if you read his last Post he says it is locked.




And GUID.

But, he can't the disk is locked.
Click to expand...

The locked disk should be able to be fixed through Disk Utility by formatting the drive itself. There is no way to lock a hard drive through hardware, only through software. The drive erasure and formatting should take care of the problem if it isn't a disk permission issue.
 
This happened to me, for some reason the disk is mounted read-only.

Try doing:
Code: 
mount -o update /
Then you should be able to fsck_hfs it.
 
Probably just clicking on the wrong thing in Disk Utility (i.e.: Clicking on the whole drive, instead of the partition that they want to erase.)

The Installer will tell you the disk is locked if you're selecting the whole drive that includes the partition you want to erase, as well as the Recovery partition. Since they have booted into Recovery mode, I suspect that the system is booting off of the Recovery partition, which would place a lock on the physical drive (and the Recovery partition itself.)

Here is a screenshot to help.
 

Attachments

  • diskutil.jpeg
    diskutil.jpeg
    149.1 KB · Views: 108
So Far So Good

I was amazed at the amount of quality responses I received to my post overnight......my sincere thanks to all.
As it is a relativity new MacBook, and there are no files of any significance on the HD, I followed the instructions for reformatting. The screenshots were fantastic and made the whole job a piece of cake (as we say in Australia)....the drive was unlocked and I am now in the process of downloading a fresh copy of OS X Lion with 1.5 hours to go. I will let you know when it is all done and working (please don't leave me until it is all working!).

Thanks again to all
 
SirDrew said:
I was amazed at the amount of quality responses I received to my post overnight......my sincere thanks to all.
As it is a relativity new MacBook, and there are no files of any significance on the HD, I followed the instructions for reformatting. The screenshots were fantastic and made the whole job a piece of cake (as we say in Australia)....the drive was unlocked and I am now in the process of downloading a fresh copy of OS X Lion with 1.5 hours to go. I will let you know when it is all done and working (please don't leave me until it is all working!).

Thanks again to all
Click to expand...

After the installer is done it will restart from new, then follow all the onscreen instructions and it will log you into your User Account, from there you can make new Accounts in Users and Groups, you are the Admin of the Computer and can easily make new Accounts, it should not go wrong this time.

If there are any questions, just get back here on MR, there are plenty of knowledgeable Users here.
 
Eureka !!!!!!

We are back up and running! It took 3 hours to download the OS but we got there in the end :0)
Thanks again to everyone who took the time and had the patience to help, it's people like you that that make MR rock! You have turned a bad experience into an enjoyable learning exercise and if you all lived a little closer I would take you down the pub for cool ale on me

Many thanks.....
 
SirDrew said:
We are back up and running! It took 3 hours to download the OS but we got there in the end :0)
Thanks again to everyone who took the time and had the patience to help, it's people like you that that make MR rock! You have turned a bad experience into an enjoyable learning exercise and if you all lived a little closer I would take you down the pub for cool ale on me

Many thanks.....
Click to expand...

Excellent news :)
 
SirDrew said:
We are back up and running! It took 3 hours to download the OS but we got there in the end :0)
Thanks again to everyone who took the time and had the patience to help, it's people like you that that make MR rock! You have turned a bad experience into an enjoyable learning exercise and if you all lived a little closer I would take you down the pub for cool ale on me

Many thanks.....
Click to expand...

Dammit;)

Good it's solved, enjoy your Mac.
 
SirDrew said:
We are back up and running! It took 3 hours to download the OS but we got there in the end :0)
Thanks again to everyone who took the time and had the patience to help, it's people like you that that make MR rock! You have turned a bad experience into an enjoyable learning exercise and if you all lived a little closer I would take you down the pub for cool ale on me

Many thanks.....
Click to expand...

...and as for why you're spending so much time in the shed, just tell the trouble and strife that you were watching porn. She'll understand. :)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back