MBP suddenly not booting - see photo. What are my options?

[kdum8]

My MacBook Pro suddenly cut out suddenly due to a kernel panic. When I rebooted I was presented with this screen (see photo). The bar progresses with the loading symbol spinning but when it reaches 100% it just cuts out and switches itself back off again!

What are my options and what should I do? I have my data on a time machine drive so it should be safe if that is still working...

 

[vmachiel]

Hold option when booting: can you select the recovery partition?

 

[kdum8]

Hold option when booting: can you select the recovery partition?

Thanks for your advice. I tried this and managed to boot into some kind of safe mode with options to repair the disk. Tried that but it says the disk can't be repaired.

Then I tried to reinstall Mac OS but it says my disk is locked. How can I 'unlock' it?

 

[Fishrrman]

[[ Thanks for your advice. I tried this and managed to boot into some kind of safe mode with options to repair the disk. Tried that but it says the disk can't be repaired.
Then I tried to reinstall Mac OS but it says my disk is locked. How can I 'unlock' it? ]]

There could be a hardware problem with the internal drive. Something that can't be fixed via software.

What you need to do is get the computer fully-booted from an _external_ drive of some sort.

If you had a "cloned backup" made with CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper, you could be up and running in a couple of minutes.

It's probably time to start shopping for a new [internal] hard drive.

Might be time to consider an SSD....

 

[vmachiel]

Thanks for your advice. I tried this and managed to boot into some kind of safe mode with options to repair the disk. Tried that but it says the disk can't be repaired.

Then I tried to reinstall Mac OS but it says my disk is locked. How can I 'unlock' it?

I believe you can access a terminal on the recovery partition you are currently using right? If so, you can try what this person is doing in terminal to unlock his disk:
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4150625?start=0&tstart=0

If that doesn't work, since it a scenario where the user can boot the computer like normal, maybe reformatting the drive will help? This can be done with disk utility: make sure you choose Mac OS Extended (Journaled) (also know as HSF+) and under options, make sure to select the GUID partition scheme.

If you can't reformat from the recovery partition either, which I'm not sure of, you'll need a USB installer of the OS your are using. To make one, you'll need another Mac that is working properly.

 

[vmachiel]

Where you able to fix it?

 

[kdum8]

Where you able to fix it?

Not yet, bit because I didn't have time to try today because of work. I'll have another go and report back!