Problems installing Mavericks on a MBA 2012.

[JaAnTr]

Hi, I bought a used MacBook Air off eBay and it was working perfectly but I wanted to reinstall it. I did that and it worked but it was being incredibly laggy when transitioning between windows and scrolling. It was also using 8GB RAM nearly all the times and around 70% CPU. I then tried to formatted the hard drive and tried to reinstall it using the method where it downloads Mavericks from the internet. It went through all the installation but has been stuck of the Apple logo screen with the loading wheels spinning for over an hour.

How can I fix this?

Thanks!

 

[Weaselboy]

Can you confirm exactly what you did. To do a reinstall with Internet recovery you would hold command-option-r to boot to Internet recovery. After logging in to your wifi you would see a spinning globe while the recovery utility installs. Once that is done you will see the recovery screen below.

From there start Disk Utility and select the drive brand name itself at the very top of the left column then go to the erase tab and format the drive to Mac OS Extended (Journaled) in the drop down.

Then quit Disk Util and click reinstall OS X. What happens when you do this?

 

[JaAnTr]

I wasn't doing that, I was just booting in to recovery with cmd and option and then formatting and then connecting to the internet and it seemed to just download it. I'm trying it the way you said now.

Can you confirm exactly what you did. To do a reinstall with Internet recovery you would hold command-option-r to boot to Internet recovery. After logging in to your wifi you would see a spinning globe while the recovery utility installs. Once that is done you will see the recovery screen below.

From there start Disk Utility and select the drive brand name itself at the very top of the left column then go to the erase tab and format the drive to Mac OS Extended (Journaled) in the drop down.

Then quit Disk Util and click reinstall OS X. What happens when you do this?

 

[Weaselboy]

I wasn't doing that, I was just booting in to recovery with cmd and option and then formatting and then connecting to the internet and it seemed to just download it. I'm trying it the way you said now.

The command-r method would boot from the Mavericks recovery partition on the local drive. Thing is unless you have previously "purchased" Mavericks with your AppleID this would not work.

The method I described will get you back to the version that came form the factory. Should be Mountain Lion in your case. Once that is up you can go to the App Store with your AppleID and purchase (free) Mavericks and install it over top of ML.

 

[JaAnTr]

I think I have previously purchased it, as when I got it, it already had Mavericks installed but I downloaded it again from the app store and made a bootable USB. Anyway, it's now installing Mountain Lion so hopefully that works.

The command-r method would boot from the Mavericks recovery partition on the local drive. Thing is unless you have previously "purchased" Mavericks with your AppleID this would not work.

The method I described will get you back to the version that came form the factory. Should be Mountain Lion in your case. Once that is up you can go to the App Store with your AppleID and purchase (free) Mavericks and install it over top of ML.

 

[JaAnTr]

I've tried it and it didn't work. It downloaded, installed, rebooted and got stuck on the white/gray background with the spinning loading wheel for about an hour and a half.

Anything else I can try?

The command-r method would boot from the Mavericks recovery partition on the local drive. Thing is unless you have previously "purchased" Mavericks with your AppleID this would not work.

The method I described will get you back to the version that came form the factory. Should be Mountain Lion in your case. Once that is up you can go to the App Store with your AppleID and purchase (free) Mavericks and install it over top of ML.

 

[Weaselboy]

I've tried it and it didn't work. It downloaded, installed, rebooted and got stuck on the white/gray background with the spinning loading wheel for about an hour and a half.



Anything else I can try?

It sounds like the drive has failed. Did the drive seem to format okay when you erased it?

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1509?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US

Try running the Apple hardware test from this link.

 

[JaAnTr]

It sounds like the drive has failed. Did the drive seem to format okay when you erased it?

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1509?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US

Try running the Apple hardware test from this link.

How am I able to get to that link? Is there a web browser in recovery?

And yeah it formatted fine and I've clicked the verify disk and it says it was fine.

EDIT: Ignore the first sentence, I'm running the hardware test now.

 

[JaAnTr]

I've run it and it's failed and given the error - 4sns/1/c0000008:tpcd--124

I've googled around and it seems that's something to do with the sensors?

Will that prevent it from booting up?

Thanks.

It sounds like the drive has failed. Did the drive seem to format okay when you erased it?

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1509?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US

Try running the Apple hardware test from this link.

 

[Weaselboy]

I've run it and it's failed and given the error - 4sns/1/c0000008:tpcd--124

I've googled around and it seems that's something to do with the sensors?

Will that prevent it from booting up?

Thanks.

I am not familiar with that error code and saw the same comments about temp sensors in my searches like you did. One would think that would not stop it from booting though. I was thinking the test might show bad memory, as that can cause these types of issues, but yours seems to pass.

I don't really know what else to try to fix it at our level. My guess at this point is you have a failing drive and in addition to that (coincidentally?) that temp. sensor is bad. I think it is time for a visit to the Appel store.

Sorry I could not be more help.