My MacBook pro is not recognizing my new hard drive.

[Woodyroby]

My hard drive crashed after about a year and a half. So I bought a new one and installed it myself. When I turn on my mac now and hold C with the install disk in the drive it just spins for a while below the apple and then goes to the gray please restart your computer screen. Can anyone tell me what to do?

 

[fehhkk]

Hold the option key while booting instead, and see if your bootable DVD is recognized.

 

[drew0020]

It should work if you hold the option key. You need to format the new drive from disk utility and then you should be good to go!

 

[electroshock]

My hard drive crashed after about a year and a half. So I bought a new one and installed it myself. When I turn on my mac now and hold C with the install disk in the drive it just spins for a while below the apple and then goes to the gray please restart your computer screen. Can anyone tell me what to do?

That's a kernel panic. What OS are you running? Leopard? Snow Leopard?

What model of MBP is it? I.e. is it an early 2008 MBP? 15", 17"?

One thing you can try is reset the PRAM by powering off the MBP, hold down cmd-option-p-r keys then power on while keeping the keys pressed until you hear the startup sound a second time at power-on. Then try another DVD boot.

If that doesn't help, you might be able to boot into diagnostics by holding down the 'd' key with the Install DVD (if 10.5.4 or earlier) or Applications Install #2 disc (if 10.5.5 or later) inserted then powering on.

Hopefully it's something minor like needing a PRAM reset, because if that doesn't do it, you may need to open up the MBP again as there may be a cable not making full contact somewhere. See what other folks thinks first before opening it up, though, to possibly save yourself some digging inside.

 

[Woodyroby]

That's awesome , it is working. The option key did it