In dire need of help with macbook pro 2009 refusing to boot anything

[Elven]

Hi all.

Girlfriends 2010 unibody Macbook Pro.

Was running 10.6 SL just fine, until last night, went sluggish and then kernal panic. I did a reset and it worked just fine but Chrome was crashing out.

Today I went into safe mode and removed Chrome, and switched her back to Safari at her request, when i handed it back to her, it suddenly kernal panicked again and then refused to boot.

I tried to boot using the C key with the SL disc in the drive and the drive would spin UP then down and do this all the time.

I've also followed a guide on resetting the pvram? and done this to noavail

I tried to do an online restore, yet by owning ML for my iMac I am shoved into Mavericks which we don't own, so cannot complete!! thanks APPLE!

Soo using the CMD+R i was able to get into disk utilities and wipe her personal work data from the internal HD again at her request.

So to recap.

Tried the resets to no avail.

Tried to boot from the original SL dvd's no avail

Tired to use online restore, again no avail.

all I end up with is at a grey screen, with the Apple logo and a spinning wheel.

Any help anyone can give would be great, I want to avoid taking this into the shop.

 

[Weaselboy]

It sounds like her hard drive is dead. It could also be a bad drive cable or even a bad logic board, but those are far less likely.

Just get her a new laptop hard drive (something like this) and install it.

Then "purchase" the free Mavericks upgrade on your machine and let it download, but stop the installer when it begins. Then use this app with a 8GB USB key to make a Mavericks installer USB key. Use that to option key boot to the USB key on her machine. Once the installer launches start Disk Utility and erase the drive to Mac OS Extended (Journaled) format. Then quit Disk Util and install Mavericks.

That should fix you up.

Does she happen to have a Time Machine backup? You can also use that to option key boot to and install to a new drive.

 

[Elven]

It sounds like her hard drive is dead. It could also be a bad drive cable or even a bad logic board, but those are far less likely.

Just get her a new laptop hard drive (something like this) and install it.

Then "purchase" the free Mavericks upgrade on your machine and let it download, but stop the installer when it begins. Then use this app with a 8GB USB key to make a Mavericks installer USB key. Use that to option key boot to the USB key on her machine. Once the installer launches start Disk Utility and erase the drive to Mac OS Extended (Journaled) format. Then quit Disk Util and install Mavericks.

That should fix you up.

Does she happen to have a Time Machine backup? You can also use that to option key boot to and install to a new drive.

Free Mavericks upgrade? I run a Windows computer sadly, my iMac is out of warranty and in need of a logic board ( doing that when my bikes off road ) so more cost to fix her laptop just is not good news.

When I held Control + R and got into boot from server, it showed the drive just fine when I accessed it via drive utilties, and let me unmount and clear her work data from it. And the drive runs silent, however that could be deceptive.

Would be interested in knowing more about this Mavericks upgrade.

 

[Weaselboy]

Would be interested in knowing more about this Mavericks upgrade.

OS X 10.9 Mavericks is free, but you will need to access another Mac to use the App Store app to make the purchase and create an installer USB key to install it on the nee drive.

 

[Elven]

Ah... i live in middle of nowhere and don't know anyone with a locally....

I'll have to put feelers out, but thankyou for the information looks like my best course of action.