I have had this old Macbook Pro (2011 Model I think) that my brother gave me a while ago because he didn't know what was wrong with it. When I try to boot it up it is just stuck in an infinite loading screen. I think it is a hard drive failure or something but I have no knowledge of how Macbooks work so my opinion means nothing lol. Also if I want to power it on it HAS to be plugged into the charger so I guess there is something wrong with the battery too? Anyways I found the OS X install disc today so I was able to boot up from that and start the install for OS X but 2-3 minutes in the install fails without really giving a specific reason. So I go to the Disc Utility and try erasing the Macintosh HD but it comes up with a failure to erase because it could not unmount the disc. I have no idea what to do from here. If someone could please help or give any guidance that would be awesome
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Please help me fix this Macbook Pro
- Thread starter UsuallyWindows
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
I responded to your other thread that had less detail. If using Terminal to force unmount the disk (and erase it, if necessary) doesn't work then the HD could be bad. Even if it does work the HD could still be dying.
The battery could definitely be bad and if you had the OS up and running it would probably tell you that. There are several threads on here about where to get batteries.
If the HD is bad you won't be able to fully determine if there's anything wrong with the MBP other than the HD. However, since it runs from the DVD I'd advise getting an SSD for it (see ifixit.com for how to swap a hard drive out in that model) and, after testing, purchasing and installing the maximum amount of RAM. If it's working OK it will be a nice machine.
The battery could definitely be bad and if you had the OS up and running it would probably tell you that. There are several threads on here about where to get batteries.
If the HD is bad you won't be able to fully determine if there's anything wrong with the MBP other than the HD. However, since it runs from the DVD I'd advise getting an SSD for it (see ifixit.com for how to swap a hard drive out in that model) and, after testing, purchasing and installing the maximum amount of RAM. If it's working OK it will be a nice machine.