Pre 2013 Macbook Pro won't boot up

[theslaz]

Title says it all. I used this laptop about two weeks ago; went to use it today and it wouldn't boot. I get the password page, punch in the password and some white writing shows. Don't know how to lock the screen so that I could read all of this writing; but it does start with"Panic". Probably something like the blue screen of death on a PC. I tried to boot in safe mode; It won't do that. I did boot in Single user mode in order to get into terminal; it wouldn't/didn't go to the command prompt. I tried in recovery mode; I did get to the point where I could check for errors on the HD and repair. It told me everything was okay. I then tried in guest mode. I got to Safari and I was able to surf the net. I did try to do a Malware scan; couldn't do that, as it told me that I didn't have enough space on my HD.
I've done a bit of research on this, and it sounds like it may be a failed HD. I have no problem with that, just would like to know for sure.
I do not have a startup disk for this laptop. I do have one for my desktop. I tried that in my laptop. When I went to the recovery mode, it did recognize that disk. I didn't do anything past that, as I did not want to screw things up more than what they are now.
Any suggestions?
Thanks

 

[Fishrrman]

Some thoughts...

Has your internal hard drive "filled up"?
With no more free space available?
This could cause problems at boot time, because the OS needs some "free space" in which to operate.

IF you can boot into recovery mode, I'd try this:
1. Get a USB flashdrive 16gb in size (or larger)
2. Boot to internet recovery and install a clean copy of the OS onto the flashdrive
3. Boot from the flashdrive (it will offer you to "set it up"), then create an account so that the flashdrive can become an "external boot drive".
4. You now have a second drive you can boot from to access and diagnose the internal.

IF the internal is "filled up", you can delete some stuff (at least 5gb or so), and perhaps get it to boot again by itself...

 

[theslaz]

Thanks for your response. I'm in the process of cleaning a 64 Gig flash drive. May take awhile as I have 40 gig of movie files I have to move to one of my hard drives. I'll let you know.

 

[theslaz]

Did what you suggested. Managed to boot into the laptop with the flash drive. I was able to read the HD. I was able to go into the disk utility and ran the first aid on the internal HD. It went through its motions and a message came back that no problems were found. Shut down the laptop and attempted to boot into the laptop without the flash drive. Nada. Same problem!
[doublepost=1521680559][/doublepost]It gets better. What I didn't notice is that I have a "Restore" image on my Hd. I tried to boot to that; however this took me to the "macOSUtilities" screen. Basically, that gives me a few more options than the Disk Utility, one of those being to restore the operating system to the factory settings. This I would do only as a last option.

 

[theslaz]

The Latest. Determined that my hard drive was probably corrupt; but being that I could read it, I decided to reload the operating system onto the HD. This I did. My intention was than to migrate a recent Time Machine backup from my Imac. To my surprise; after I reinstalled the operating system, the stupid thing worked as before. Didn't lose a thing. I was assuming that by installing a new operating system, I would lose everything! Not to be.