Need to completely restore MBP, can someone tell me how to?

[SephirothXR]

When I start up my MBP (13" uMBP July 2009), the Apple logo and the rotating symbol at the bottom stay there forever (even for 12 hours). It is essentially broken. I have my old installation DVD (I think 10.5.7). I can boot the computer from the DVD Disk. At this point, I don't care if I lose my data on my harddrive. I just want a functioning MBP. What can I do? What if I just want to erase everything on the harddrive and completely restore the MBP from the Installation DVD. How do I do that? This is particularly complicated b/c when I boot it and it asks me for a "Destination" to install MAC OSX, there is no option.

I see something called Disk Utility, and options for "New Image", "Convert", etc. I don't know what to do with this all, especially since it won't give me an option to install MAC OSX to a certain location. Is there a way for me to completely erase my harddrive and install MAC OSX through Disk Utility?

 

[snaky69]

When I start up my MBP (13" uMBP July 2009), the Apple logo and the rotating symbol at the bottom stay there forever (even for 12 hours). It is essentially broken. I have my old installation DVD (I think 10.5.7). I can boot the computer from the DVD Disk. At this point, I don't care if I lose my data on my harddrive. I just want a functioning MBP. What can I do? What if I just want to erase everything on the harddrive and completely restore the MBP from the Installation DVD. How do I do that? This is particularly complicated b/c when I boot it and it asks me for a "Destination" to install MAC OSX, there is no option.

I see something called Disk Utility, and options for "New Image", "Convert", etc. I don't know what to do with this all, especially since it won't give me an option to install MAC OSX to a certain location. Is there a way for me to completely erase my harddrive and install MAC OSX through Disk Utility?

In disk utility, you should see a list of drives on the left hand side

Select the one with a capacity in front of it, an example would be 465.8GB ST3500641 in that screen shot.

Once that is done, go to the erase tab, select Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and give the drive a name(anything will do, really). Click erase.

This should give you a suitable destination for the install of OS X. If no drive is available, either the ribbon cable connecting it to the motherboard inside the machine is dead(this is somewhat more common in the 13" models) or the hard drive itself is defective.

 

[SephirothXR]

Thank you, I appreciate the help. When I tried that, I get: "Disk Erase failed with the error: Input/output error". Do you think this is the motherboard issue you alluded to?

 

[snaky69]

Thank you, I appreciate the help. When I tried that, I get: "Disk Erase failed with the error: Input/output error". Do you think this is the motherboard issue you alluded to?

It could be either the cable(quite cheap to replace) or the drive itself.