Mountain Lion will not boot to desktop, hard drive is locked

[Bloomsday1]

My issue begins in this order:

• I first boot computer
• It goes to gray screen and apple logo and spins to boot
• It prompts me to "Use English for the main language
• I choose English and it goes to OS X Utilities, from here I have tried the following:
  Reinstall OS X [I can't because "The disk is locked"]
  Disk Utility [the "Repair" scan tells me that there are no problems]
  Disk Erase [failed: Disk Erase failed with the error: Couldn't unmounts disk.]
  Get Help Online [I am able to go online, but cannot isolate this issue sufficiently to find any meaningful solution]

 

[Weaselboy]

It sounds like you may have a failing drive.

Try a command-option-r boot to Internet recovery and see what Disk Utility tells you about your disk from there.

 

[Bloomsday1]

tank you, I will try and report.

 

[Bloomsday1]

as an update, I was able to follow the above advice, I am currently reinstalling OS X remotely. I wil let you know if al is well once it finishes installing.

 

[dejo]

as an update, I was able to follow the above advice, I am currently reinstalling OS X remotely. I wil let you know if al is well once it finishes installing.

You didn't try to confirm or rule out that your drive was failing?