Please help - trying to reinstall after internet recovery.

[eevee08]

Okay, so let me start this by saying I'm totally computer illiterate. I have a MBP and am running Lion.

I was browsing Safari while it decided to freeze on me. It's happened before, but this time it went on for a while so I turned the laptop off. When I turned it on, voila, the deadly blinking question mark.

Panicking, I googled using my phone and stumbled upon this internet recovery thing. Due to slow internet it took me an hour. Then, it of course gave me the 4 options - Time Machine, Install New Lion, and so on.

When I choose Install New Lion, after I agreed to the terms and conditions, they asked me to choose which disk I wanted to install the lion. However, the box was empty. More panic. Does this mean my disk was fried or something?

Did some more Googling and saw someone told a person who had a similar case to mine to look for the menu and find the utility disk. I... couldn't find this.

Long story short, I restarted and was welcomed by the question mark again. So I decided to pop here and ask this question while I'm waiting for the internet recovery again.

Any help is truly appreciated, thank you!

 

[eevee08]

Okay, found the disk utility but the bad news is that while I could see a HD on the left hand side, I couldn't do anything, not even Erase it - all greyed out. And in the info tab, the total cap is 0 bytes.

I'm so screwed, aren't I?

 

[Weaselboy]

When I turned it on, voila, the deadly blinking question mark.

This means the system cannot find the OS to boot from, and the most common cause of this is a bad drive. No amount of reinstalling will fix it.

It could also be a bad drive cable or bad logic board, but this is much less common.

 

[eevee08]

Thanks for your reply. I've pretty much given up now.

If I do have to change my hard drive, is it possible to save the data from my fried HDD?

Oh, and is it expensive to change the drive?

 

[Weaselboy]

Thanks for your reply. I've pretty much given up now.

If I do have to change my hard drive, is it possible to save the data from my fried HDD?

Oh, and is it expensive to change the drive?

You can try apps like Disk Warrior etc to recover data, but it is not cheap and the fact you can't even see the drive in Disk Util is not encouraging. There are also companies you can pay to try and recover it for you, but that is also quite expensive.

It is just a standard laptop drive like this and pretty easy to change. You would need to figure out how to reinstall the OS after that though. Do you have the original OS installer DVDs that came with it, or did it come with Lion?

 

[eevee08]

You know what, I'm not sure if I got the CD or not as I'm not home at the moment. Is it better (easier) to have the CD? I shall take a look later.

Seeing how clueless I am about this I think it's better to see a technician - I don't want to do more damage. Maybe I could ask for cost first before deciding.

Gahhh! Thanks again, I was really freaking out. It's not even an old laptop - barely 3 years old.

 

[Weaselboy]

You know what, I'm not sure if I got the CD or not as I'm not home at the moment. Is it better (easier) to have the CD? I shall take a look later.

Seeing how clueless I am about this I think it's better to see a technician - I don't want to do more damage. Maybe I could ask for cost first before deciding.

Gahhh! Thanks again, I was really freaking out. It's not even an old laptop - barely 3 years old.

If your machine is on this list and has had all firmware updates applied, you would be able to use Internet recovery to directly install Lion on the new, blank hard drive. Otherwise, you would need the CD or we could make you a USB installer if Mavericks if you can borrow someones Mac for a bit to do that.

If you are at all handy, the drive install is not that hard. Look at iFixit and they have walk thru videos.

 

[eevee08]

Thanks again, weaselboy fingers crossed the laptop doesn't get sick for too long - I need it!