MacBook Pro 15"

[dksob81]

I just got a MacBook Pro used. The person said the harddrive crashed and they replaced it but had not installed the OS yet, but had the disc. so I bought it on good faith. Well I tried to installed the OS, by pressing'holding C key at startup with the disc in. it does nothing except spin the disc for a few seconds then you can hear the disc drive clicking, like it's not reading the disc. Then the folder (?) starts flashing on the screen. I tried to open the Disc Manager by pressing OPTION at startup but all it does is bring up the Open Firmware Lockscreen, same thing happens when I push Command R at startup.
I have tried to reset this password via information that I found on here with resetting the PRAM (holding CMD, OPT, P R for 3 full restarts) and that did nothing.
Right not I have no clue what else to do to get the OS X Installed.
Any suggestions?

 

[McGiord]

Try running hardware test.
Do you have another Mac you can use ?
If yes, try connecting to the one you bought via FireWire in Target Disk mode.
Check the disc in you other Mac and be sure it is the right OS X disc and that it actually works.
Another thing you can try is removing the HDD and using a case connect to it in another Mac and check it.
Maybe the optical drive is also busted?

 

[kfmfe04]

Sounds like you might have a failed DVD drive or a bad OS disc.

Here's my experience (which may/may not help with your case).

A couple years back I dropped a 2009 mbp 13" which caused the HDD to crash. I replaced the HDD with a SSD and reinstalled OSX. During the reinstall, I had strange clicking issues with the DVD drive, too. Sometimes it wouldn't work, but when it did work, it was reading very slowly (like there were read errors). Luckily, the drive was alive long enough to get the OSX install done.

Ever since then, the DVD drive has been flaky.

 

[McGiord]

Hopefully you can use an external optical drive.
And by the way you could take the opportunity to replace the optical drive with another HDD, and have it external.
I removed the optical drive in mine and installed a SSD. And instead of the optical drive I have an external Blu-Ray unit.
Anyway your main goal is to determine what works and what doesn't work in that purchase, next time do it before you buy it.

Good luck and let us know if you need more help we could offer.