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New macbook pro problem

T

Theclamshell

macrumors 68030
Original poster
Mar 2, 2009
2,741
3
Hey everyone,

I just received my new macbook pro. I don't want Lion and I needed to wipe the hard drive. I put it into target disk mode and wiped the drive clean - all went fine. I tried to boot it with the Snow leopard CD and it won't work. The apple logo comes up and it beeps 3 times continuously with a 5 or so second interval in between beeps. I know this indicates a RAM issue but I find it highly unlikely that after wiping the HD the ram would go bad.

I really don't want to rip it open and play with it. I tried restoring it from my old MBP hard drive but that failed. I tried a macbook air usb restore stick and that did not work either. Any suggestions before I rip it open and use a drive wire to (hopefully) install SL and transfer all my data over.
 
fun173 said:
Hey everyone,

I just received my new macbook pro. I don't want Lion and I needed to wipe the hard drive. I put it into target disk mode and wiped the drive clean - all went fine. I tried to boot it with the Snow leopard CD and it won't work. The apple logo comes up and it beeps 3 times continuously with a 5 or so second interval in between beeps. I know this indicates a RAM issue but I find it highly unlikely that after wiping the HD the ram would go bad.

I really don't want to rip it open and play with it. I tried restoring it from my old MBP hard drive but that failed. I tried a macbook air usb restore stick and that did not work either. Any suggestions before I rip it open and use a drive wire to (hopefully) install SL and transfer all my data over.
Click to expand...
I assume it came with lion preinstalled? Where did you get the copy of snow leopard and what version is it?
 
it did come with lion pre-installed. It is SL install DVD v 10.6 and it's legit. I tried it with a 10.5.4 disk and no go. Looks like i'm going to be opening it up :rolleyes:

Edit: Now it's just giving me the blinking folder when there is no cd in it. No beeps without a cd in it, just the blinking folder. This gives me hope to not have to open it up.
 
Apple locks the efi so machines are unable to boot an os older than what it ships with. At this point your option is reinstall lion. Since you blew away the recovery partition, I assume you did not make the backup USB drive, you will either need to go to the apple store or buy a lion restore disk.

Stupid limitation of a ridiculous decision to stop shipping recovery media.
 
h00ligan said:
Apple locks the efi so machines are unable to boot an os older than what it ships with. At this point your option is reinstall lion. Since you blew away the recovery partition, I assume you did not make the backup USB drive, you will either need to go to the apple store or buy a lion restore disk.

Stupid limitation of a ridiculous decision to stop shipping recovery media.
Click to expand...

If I throw in another hard drive will it still be limited?

I hate how apple pulls this ****.
 
What can I do now, I just want to get lion back, i've tried a ton of things to get SL on and nothing works. Internet recovery won't work and I don't know what the hell to do. if i bring it to apple will they put lion back on it for me free of charge?
 
fun173 said:
What can I do now, I just want to get lion back, i've tried a ton of things to get SL on and nothing works. Internet recovery won't work and I don't know what the hell to do. if i bring it to apple will they put lion back on it for me free of charge?
Click to expand...

If you can locate a recovery SL DVD from an early 2011 MBP, that one will work as that is what the machine used to ship with.
 
fun173 said:
What can I do now, I just want to get lion back, i've tried a ton of things to get SL on and nothing works. Internet recovery won't work and I don't know what the hell to do. if i bring it to apple will they put lion back on it for me free of charge?
Click to expand...

Your easiest method will be to have apple do it. They are not obligated to do software repairs free, but most of the time the technicians will help no charge, especially since it will only require them to start an install and let it do its thing.

if you really want SL on it you will probably only have success by installing 10.6 on your Hargrove while its connected to a 10.5-10.6 mac. Macs are wonderful in that they accept he's from other macs; obviously quite different from windows. Sometimes when I had problems with a mac erroring during install, I would have no problems after using a surrogate to get the OS on the drive.
 
I partitioned the drive into 2 partitions and loaded a dmg of 10.6 on one. It boots up and hangs at the apple logo. I feel like I'm getting closer :p

Edit: now when I select the osx disk partition it beeps at me. What useless restrictions placed by apple. I'm really contemplating returning this thing.
 
You have to try to install a recent version of SL, like 10.6.8 or something. Earlier versions simply don't have the drivers for your machine.
 
apparently, you could set up another, older machine with the latest SL and then clone it onto the new mbp
 
Yes you can install SL on a Lion pre-installed MBP. You just need the grey restore discs for your specific MBP (ie 13" only works with 13", 15" with 15", etc). You can get it from Apple or do it the easy way and get it on ebay for 25$. I thought it was worth it, knowing I can go back to SL just as easy.

I have done it on SSDs, regular HDD, the HDD that came with Lion pre-installed, on my MBP after the FW update.
 
Took it to Apple to have them re install Lion but they said they would install SL on it for me. It would not work and just kept beeping 3 times. He would have looked into it further but they cant check in any machines because they are having renovations next week. he booked me an appt at another store at 2:45 so they will look into it.
 
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