PLEASE Help me save my macbook air

[kyleabel64]

So i just bought a macbook off a friend and they were adamant about me deleting all the files from it. It worked 100% fine before i messed with it. I dont know a whole lot about macbooks but figured it wouldnt be too hard. i went into internet recovery mode and erased the "Macintosh HD" and this was obviously not the right thing to do. from there it would not power up and went straight to a flashing prohibited sign (circle with a line through it.) i took it to apple and one of their "genius'" worked on it for a few minutes but they were about to close so she said it would be $400 to have it fixed. I'm pretty sure all i need to do is reinstall an operating system onto it (came with sierra) by creating a new hard drive to save it to. when i go into internet recovery mode to reinstall OS X it fails at the last second of installing. in disk utility it currently has APPLE SSD SM0128G Media on the internal drive and Apple disk image media as well as OS X Base System on the disk images section. any help would be greatly appreciated as i feel like this is definitely a fixable problem, im just not sure how to go about it.

 

[HappyMBAowner]

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/help-me-rescue-my-macbook-air.2191192/

 

[smirking]

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/help-me-rescue-my-macbook-air.2191192/

I think what this person has is different. The other case was an issue with an EFI firmware password placed on it and isn't recoverable. I'm not sure what the flashing "prohibited" sign is, but that might be fixable.

@kyleabel64 could you post an image of that "prohibited" sign?

 

[kyleabel64]

Well the prohibited sign has now changed to a flashing folder with a question mark in it. I included pictures of the folder,and everything in my disk utility currently.

 

[DeltaMac]

The "flashing folder" means that your MBair cannot locate a drive with a bootable system.
And, your screenshots show that the SSD bootable system (and the partition) is gone.
The drive shows "unformatted", so...

You need to erase (format) the drive.
From your Disk Utility screenshot: Select the APPLE SSD SM01... line, then click the Erase icon. Name the volume if you like. You could use "Macintosh HD", or whatever you want. Click erase. This prepares the drive, so you can install the system. When that erase is complete, Quit Disk Utility, and then choose Reinstall. Be sure to choose your newly erased drive as the destination for the install.
That should work this time.

 

[kyleabel64]

@DeltaMac thank you so much. this worked perfectly. Good thing i didnt listen to the "Genius" at the apple store who said it was a hardware malfunction that wouldve cost me $400 to fix.

 

[macintoshmac]

@DeltaMac thank you so much. this worked perfectly. Good thing i didnt listen to the "Genius" at the apple store who said it was a hardware malfunction that wouldve cost me $400 to fix.

Kindly also choose APFS format while you are at it.

 

[kyleabel64]

Not sure if i chose the APFS format but i have been using it all day since its been fixed. I didn't change any of the formatting settings so hopefully APFS is the default @macintoshmac

 

[Macdctr]

[I][COLOR=#0000b3]Good thing i didnt listen to the "Genius" at the apple store[/COLOR][/I] who said it was a hardware malfunction that wouldve cost me $400 to fix.

From my experience a lot of those so-called "Genius" working at the Apple store don't know as much as you think. Glad to see everything worked out for you

 

[macintoshmac]

Not sure if i chose the APFS format but i have been using it all day since its been fixed. I didn't change any of the formatting settings so hopefully APFS is the default @macintoshmac

You can check via Disk Utility if at all this bothers you.

 

[DeltaMac]

There's not much reason to choose to format as APFS, as the macOS installer will convert from Mac OS Extended during the install process. It's a default for current macOS systems.