iMac HD ruined after trying to install Windows, help.

[twentyoneclocks]

Hi, I was trying to install Windows 7 onto my machine and now it appears that the hard disk is ruined. Instead of the Apple logo during startup there is a question mark that flashes. I was told by the Apple people that it was a hard disk problem and that it now needs replacing.

The DVD drive in the iMac has not been working for a while now. I'm currently contemplating how to go about fixing this. I do have an external blu ray player from which I should be able to boot but I don't know how. Can someone please tell me how I can fix this problem? I currently have a non functional iMac.

If I open up the Imac and replace the HDD will the problem fix itself? Will the iMac want to re-install OS X?

 

[BlueRevolution]

I was told by the Apple people that it was a hard disk problem and that it now needs replacing.

Based on what you just told us? Or had they done some additional troubleshooting?

If I open up the Imac and replace the HDD will the problem fix itself?

No.

Will the iMac want to re-install OS X?

Yes.


What happens if you hold the option key on startup?

 

[Jason Beck]

Your install of Windows 7 didn't ruin your hard drive. You probably have/had/whatever an underlying issue with your hard drive.
And it's probably not ruined.

 

[Sun Baked]

Hold the option key down on reboot and see if you have any bootable volumes.

If the Mac OS shows up as a volume, select that.

If you erased the drive to install Windows 7, hopefully it wasn't the Mac OS X partition ... which would cause a flashing ? mark, meaning no Mac Boot partition.

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Even though you have an external, and the internal is dead, it'll boot from the external the same way ... hold c down.

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If you can get it to boot, would be a good idea to use System Preferences / startup disk to reselect the startup disk.

 

[Bill Gates]

Did you follow the Boot Camp instructions verbatim? It could be that you damaged the partitioning scheme, and therefore there is no longer any boot information that the computer can detect. If that's the case then it's a logical issue as opposed to a physical one.

 

[twentyoneclocks]

Did you follow the Boot Camp instructions verbatim? It could be that you damaged the partitioning scheme, and therefore there is no longer any boot information that the computer can detect. If that's the case then it's a logical issue as opposed to a physical one.

yeah, i just followed the bootcamp instructions so that the full retail windows 7 installed instead of the RC that was there before. I called Apple and they told me that it was a physical problem based on what I've already talked about. Holding option down during rebooting never gave me the option of booting to any particular drive, i always had to select that in system preferences before rebooting. Holding down 'option' and 'c' also didn't do anything. is there something i can try before paying the apple people to fix it?

 

[Sun Baked]

iFixit Launches Nearly 250 Repair Manuals for iMac and Mac Mini

If it is out of warranty, buy a new drive and use the ifixit repair guides to do swap it out.

If you formatted to wrong partition, people have had extremely hard times reformatting it back to an Apple GUID partition. Basically Apple swapped the drives for people under warranty.

Sticking the drive in cheap $10 external case might allow you to reformat it on a PC or Mac ... but if you do that, you might as well put in a new $75-100 drive anyhow.