Mavericks problem install - looking for solution confirmation

[Jester888]

Hi I am kind of a noob, as fortunately I have not had many problems in the past.

I have a MBP 2.53Ghz mid-2009 machine. I am experiencing the install problem with the hard drive. I cannot get past the grey screen on re-boot up - it either goes on endlessly spinning or goes to the "no entry sign". Occasionally it goes to grey screen briefly before crashing out and switching itself off, which is kind of a worry.

I have tried booting from recovery and repairing the hard drive (no problems with the HD before install) then restarting. It let me in the first time to Mavericks, but since then if I restart the machine I cannot boot up again.

I am able to re-boot from an external cloned (SuperDuper) drive into my old configuration - Lion 10.7.5 with all data. Once booted up I can still access the internal HD on my machine. It is not a massive issue, but the back up is a couple of weeks old. What I would like to do is:
- update some user files from the internal HD onto the clone drive (documents, downloads, spreadsheets etc) - by draggin and dropping folders between Finder windows.
- then I want to copy the "updated" external clone drive back onto my HD, together with Lion 10.7.5
- I then want to continue using my old configuration until I figure out exactly what is causing my Maverick installation issue.

Is this the right way to do this? I do not want to do anything to compromise the back-up data though, and I can live with it being a couple of weeks old, I just want to get back to a situation where I can boot up off my internal HD as I did before I tried to install Mavericks.

Thank you in advance for any help, and apologies if this is already covered - although I have searched for a similar question on the forums.

 

[macproalex]

Tried everything to solve the problem

The problem seems to be in relation to the MacBookPro Mid 2009 2,53 Ghz. I have exactly the same problem as you described.
I already tried everything such as starting in Safe Mode, Repairing permissions, starting in single mode, repairing via fsck -fy.
In the past I could always update but since 10.8.5 and now 10.9 it is impossible to update and boot up again. I cannot get past the grey screen on re-boot up too.
When I start with CMD + SHIFT + V I get some messages which describe the problem: It seems that the media is not present anymore during boot up. It seems the signal to harddisk is lost.
But the weired thing is that if I install my backup from version 10.8 everything is fine.

Can somebody please help?

 

[Rj.]

Hey guys,

I seem to have the same problem too and I also have the MBP 2.53Ghz mid-2009 machine. I pretty much tried everything and now i'm not sure what to do. Any of you had any luck in sorting this issue out?

Thanks.

 

[lovelldr]

Hey guys,

I seem to have the same problem too and I also have the MBP 2.53Ghz mid-2009 machine. I pretty much tried everything and now i'm not sure what to do. Any of you had any luck in sorting this issue out?

Thanks.

Looks like there are definitely issues with the MBP Mid-2009 2.53GHz... I posted a thread about this earlier too:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1663988/

Hadn't seen this thread until the OP posted in my thread...

I will try re-installing and running verbose startup on the first startup. But, its weird how on the first startup, it seems to see the disk. Pressing the option button on startup shows the hdd as an option, but booting to the hdd gives the No Entry symbol. But, going in through the usb does not show the hdd in disk utility...

Just gonna re-install and see what happens...

----------

Well, this time, on booting to the USB, and starting the install, it asked me to provide the language. Previously, it never asked me for the language...

So, maybe resetting the PRAM and NVRAM might have done something...

Will let you know what happens in about half an hour

 

[Rj.]

----------
Well, this time, on booting to the USB, and starting the install, it asked me to provide the language. Previously, it never asked me for the language...

So, maybe resetting the PRAM and NVRAM might have done something...

Will let you know what happens in about half an hour

Cool! I hope it's sorted for you now. I remember last week when I was able to get to the language section install/setup menu for Mavericks and briefly check Mavericks features out, I then restarted my Macbook to make sure these issues had stopped but unfortunately I was back to the start stuck with the same issues again.

 

[Jester888]

Rj and others,

I have not had any joy sorting this out, I am currently running my machine from the external SuperDuper cloned drive. I haven't seen any other appropriate fixes, solutions or comments on the issue.

I am just waiting for when I have time, and I will probably copy my clone back onto the the HDD with the old OS and hope this keeps me going for the time being until there is more information on a Mavericks solution that allows me to install it again.

Unless anyone out there has other suggestions or advice?

Thanks.

----------

By the way, can someone tell me: if I want to copy my cloned drive to the HDD with the old Lion OS, do I need to delete the HDD first using Disk Utilities or can I just go ahead and overwrite it?

 

[lovelldr]

Cool! I hope it's sorted for you now. I remember last week when I was able to get to the language section install/setup menu for Mavericks and briefly check Mavericks features out, I then restarted my Macbook to make sure these issues had stopped but unfortunately I was back to the start stuck with the same issues again.

Nope, nothing here!

I tried the above, when it first booted up, I put it in to verbose mode for startup, just to see what it was saying, and this is the output on screen and kept repeating the errtype message:

So, I hard powered down, and did verbose logging again this time, and ended up with the following message:

At which point, I just shut the machine down and went to bed!!!

Does anyone know of anyone who has a 2.53GHz, 15", Mid-2009 MBP who have successfully managed to upgrade to Mavericks?! As it's seeming to be just us who are having this problem...

 

[Rj.]

Unlucky guys, i'm checking google daily to see if we can sort this issue out. I think it must be something to do with our Macbook Pro models.

 

[lovelldr]

Unlucky guys, i'm checking google daily to see if we can sort this issue out. I think it must be something to do with our Macbook Pro models.

Well, I tried to install using a Lion Mountain DVD I've used previously on the same MBP, just with different HDD... No luck. Doesn't recognise the drive. So, I'm starting to wonder if it's the HDD...

 

[Rj.]

Well, I tried to install using a Lion Mountain DVD I've used previously on the same MBP, just with different HDD... No luck. Doesn't recognise the drive. So, I'm starting to wonder if it's the HDD...

Did you mean that you tried to go back to Mountain Lion but you still have the same start up issues?

 

[lovelldr]

Did you mean that you tried to go back to Mountain Lion but you still have the same start up issues?

I meant, I tried using my DVD to re-install Mountain Lion on to my MBP, and it doesn't even see the HDD...

Previously, I had a 500gb Seagate HDD, and I managed to install perfectly fine on to it. But, with this 750gb WD HDD, it didn't detect it ...

 

[Rj.]

I meant, I tried using my DVD to re-install Mountain Lion on to my MBP, and it doesn't even see the HDD...

Previously, I had a 500gb Seagate HDD, and I managed to install perfectly fine on to it. But, with this 750gb WD HDD, it didn't detect it ...

Ah, that's odd, I have a 500gb WD HDD installed. When I was experiencing the boot up issues with Mavericks, after going through various solutions posted on Apples website and other forums, I couldn't find a fix for these issues. I just ended up reinstalling Snow Leopard via the Snow Leopard Installation DVD, after completing software updates for SL, I started experiencing login issues, no luck in sorting this out, so I once again inserted the SL DVD and did another reinstall of SL, I managed to login and then I backed up all of my files, after that I inserted my SL DVD and restarted my MBP, I then erased my HDD and did a fresh install of Snow Leopard, everything is all good now. I'm just kind of disappointed that Mavericks refused to start. Maybe some sort of Mavericks compatibility issues with Western Digital Drives?

 

[Jester888]

Just to add in my 2 cents worth - I replaced the original 250gb HDD in my mid 2009 MBP with a WD 750gb drive.

This is the configuration I am having trouble installing Mavericks onto.

 

[lovelldr]

Only other drive I have to test with is a 2tb Toshiba from an external usb enclosure... Just moving all my files off from it, and gonna try installing to that, and see how it goes. I suppose I could try copying them to the original 250gb hdd, but that won't be big enough overall...

I will update on Monday after it's finished copying (left it at work backing up to my other external hdd of same model)...

 

[danson79]

Just throwing my hat in as i've been experiencing exactly the same issue on my mid '09 MBP.

After my first Mavericks install (upgrading from Lion) I couldn't boot up and would just end up with the 'prohibited' sign. Recovery mode booted, Disk Utility found no errors on the hard disk. PRAM reset made no difference. Verbose Mode kept repeating the 'cannot mount' message.

I assumed I had a hard disk failure so bought a replacement drive (1TB Toshiba). I used my old drive mounted externally, accessed the recovery partition and used that to download mavericks to the new drive (a clean install).

Once installed, I can boot up - but i've experienced issues rebooting the machine (I now have to reboot three or four times to get into mavericks, sometimes with a recovery mode permission repair, sometimes with a PRAM reset). My MBP will never boot without issue, but is fine once booted.

I've also had issues waking from sleep - the grey dial that you usually see under the apple logo at startup randomly appears in the centre of the screen and everything freezes. The only way out of this is a hard reset.

Will be keeping a close eye on your thread to see if a solution appears and if I find a fix i'll post again.

 

[Jester888]

Re: MBP mid-2009 issues with Mavericks

So looking into things further this is my summary of the issues and the POSSIBLE reasons for them that some of us have had with Mavericks...would be interested in other thoughts / comments, and also if anyone agrees that changing the SATA HDD cable may be a solution long term?

- Macbook Pro, mid-2009, 2.53. I upgraded the HDD to a WD 750gb black, 7200, SATA II, 3 gb/s. Running OSX 10.7.5
- I encountered the known issues with mid-2009 machines, SATA II and EFI firmware 1.7. Rolled back firmware to EFI 1.6, which I believe chokes the WD HDD down to 1.5 gb/s. Everything has worked fine since.
- Then I upgraded OS to Mavericks, and had the problems that I documented at the start of the thread.
- Ended up copying my external HDD SuperDuper back-up clone (from pre-Mavericks upgrade) back to my Mac HDD...now running 10.7.5 again.

I am guessing that the upgrade to Mavericks somehow upgraded the EFI firmware automatically, causing my disk problems to come back?

It does not look like Apple will acknowledge or patch any MBP mid-2009 solution re SATA II (which I understand). So...

...This means in theory I could be stuck on 10.7.5 for the future....BUT I have read that upgrading the SATA HDD cable in the machine (some of which were problematic in mid 2009 15" MBPs) can solve the problem with my WD HDD....any thoughts or confirmation on this please????