Okay, thanks for those suggestions! However I don't necessarily want to just get the disc out of the disc drive. I'm trying to use it to fix my computer. But let me start from the very beginning so this doesn't get super confusing lol. This will be quite a long reply so please just try & bear with me! I do apologize for taking up so much of your time & I am very appreciative of all the help you can give me!! I got this laptop around Christmas time from my dad. He bought it from someone he works with for me as a gift. Here is all the info about it:
Model Identifier- MacBook Pro 5,1
Version- El Capitan 10.11.6
Processor- 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
Memory- 4 GB 1067 MHz DDR3
Serial Number- *********** (Not sure if I should put actual serial # here)
So when I got the laptop it worked perfectly normal. I could turn it on & use it, no problem. But it was still personalized to the original owner. I could get into the Admin profile & use it just fine because it never asked me for any type of password to login into the admin account. I didn't know what the previous owners usernames or passwords were or anything like that. So I went onto google & searched "How To Factory Reset My Macbook Pro".
I followed the following intructions:
Step 1: Restart Your Mac in Recovery Mode
This is pretty simple. Go to the Apple menu in the top left corner of your screen and choose Restart. As the system restarts, hold the combination of Command and R keys together — you’ll notice the Recovery Mode window.
Step 2: Erase Mac hard drive
- Choose Disk Utility in the Utilities window.
- Click on the Continue button.
- Choose your startup disk.
- Click Erase from the buttons at the top of the Disk Utilities window.
- Choose Mac OS Extended (Journaled) from the menu.
- Click Erase
- When the process is complete, go the Disk Utility menu in the top left corner of your screen and select Quit Disk Utility.
Step 3: Reinstall your operating system
Congratulations, you’ve reformatted your hard drive and now you can reinstall a clean Mac operating system. Simply click Reinstall macOS or Reinstall OS X. Confirm that you really want to do it and follow the instructions you’ll see on the screen.
Okay so I did all those things step by step & then tried to reinstall a clean Mac operating system, but after watching a loading screen for about 20 minutes a window popped up saying that I needed to enter my apple ID & password so that it could reinstall El Capitan from my apple account. I didn't have an apple account at the time & there wasn't a "create new account" option anywhere either. So I used my phone & created a new apple ID & went back to the laptop & entered my new Apple ID & password but that still didn't work because I didn't have a copy of El Capitan on my apple account for the laptop to reinstall. This is when I figured out I needed a "bootable usb/disc" with El Capitan on it. I went onto Amazon & purchased the Mac OS X 10.11 System Repair Install/Reinstall DVD (I posted the pictures of that DVD in my previous reply). I verified it's authenticity with apple so I know that the disc works, but when I follow the instructions on the back off the DVD case it just goes to a screen with the Apple logo & a loading bar underneath (picture attached) & I wait until it loads all the way to the end but then nothing happens. It just stays on that screen for hours. I even read the link that mikzn linked above & followed those instructions which were to reboot the laptop & when it restarts hold down the 'C' key but it just went to the same loading screen & has stayed on that screen for over 15 hours now.
IMPORTANT: Going back to the very beginning when I was still able to use the laptop before I factory reset it, I didn't log out of anything like I now know that I was supposed too. It says before you factory reset the laptop you need to de-authorize Itunes, turn off FileVault, etc. etc...
I didn't learn about needing to do those things until after I had already factory reset the laptop. & I think that that's what my problem is. Do you know what I need to do to fix this? Or do I need to take my laptop into an Apple store somewhere & hope they can fix it?