MBP won't boot from anything!

Hi I've got a Macbook Pro that was working fine until it froze up yesterday. When I turned it back on, I was greeted with the flashing folder with the question mark. After zapping the PRAM and all that mojo, there was no difference. If I try booting off an external drive, it shows up but doesn't actually start booting. I also can't get it to boot off any of my Leopard discs. Of course, that goes without saying the internal drive doesn't show up as a boot option either. Any ideas? I've troubleshooted a number of Macs but haven't seen one unable to boot anything before...

Hi Chris Jansen;
It sounds like you lost your hard drive. It is possible with the lose of the hard drive for a Mac to not be able to boot from the DVD either. My suggestion is to take it back to the Apple Store and have them check it out. Hopefully you have backups of your data.
Allan

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Xserve G4 Won't boot from Anything

Everyone:
I have a G4 Xserve (slot load) with 2 GB of RAM installed. It was running X.3.9 just as happy as a lark. I migrated all users from the server to use it as a test environment. My first test was to upgrade it to Tiger, which so far has not gone very smoothly.
The Xserve has all 4 bays populated. Bays 1&2 are mirrored using Apple's RAID software, this is the system drive. Bays 3&4 are set as a RAID 0.
My Upgrade goes like this: I inserted the Tiger Server CD (no DVD drive), double-clicked the installer and the server rebooted. The installed seemed to go smooth, but I did have to walk away from it towards the end. When I came back, the server was stuck at a blue screen and a moveable mouse pointer. Couldn't do anything else.
This forced a hard reset, of which the same thing happened. So I thought, no big deal, let's just redo the installation. Insert Tiger CD again, hold down C key....server boots from hard drive and gets stuck.
Weird.
Ok, let's try booting from the Panther CD. Reboot server, hold down mouse button, eject Tiger CD, insert Panther CD, reboot, hold C key....server boots from hard drive and gets stuck.
Dang. This was supposed to be an easy upgrade.
Just so things aren't confused, I pull out the drives with the Raid 0 (Bays 3 & 4). Same process.
OK, maybe it's the Raid on the system drive, so I pull out one of the drives. Same boot process.
Reset the PRAM, just for grins, no change.
Alright, let's see if I can force it to recognize the CD, pull out all the drives and put in a spare, brand new drive from the shelf.
Same thing, won't boot from CD. Neither Panther or Tiger. At least I get the blinking icon that there's no OS installed.
Put the #1 system drive back in, connect an external firewire CD Drive, still won't boot from CD. I still get to a blank blue screen, though.
Try booting in Single User Mode, I still get the same thing, boots from disk to blue screen.
Now I've spent an afternoon of my time and another techs time and we're both scratching our heads. I recalled that I could also issue boot commands via the Sys ID button. Dig out manual, find the combination, same story. Boots from hard drive to the blue screen and stops.
Seems like any input at boot time is being ignored, although it will eject the CD if the mouse is held down. I've verified that the machine is not locked (the light is off). I also opened it up to make sure that the lock switch wasn't partially stuck. Not sure if there's anything else to check.
Thoughts?

does that mean I have to send it to Apple to fix
No. Apple changes the bootROMs from model to model so you can't use the same install disc on different models. It could their way of dealing with piracy.
Example; Say I bought a new MacBook Pro and I had an iMac that was still running Leopard. I couldn't use the Snow Leopard install disc from the new MBP to install SL on the iMac.
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Macbook Pro 15" won't boot from ANYTHING :( Can't mount internal drive

Hi there,
I'm new to these forums so please bear with me if I make a faux pas.
A few days ago while watching a movie on my MBP Intel Core 2 Duo 2.5 the beach ball of death appeared and the computer became unresponsive. I restarted to the flashing folder with a question mark.
Tried to boot from the install disk - No joy : Occasionally gets to the language selection screen (after a good 5-8 minute wait) and then instantly and completely freezes. Cursor won't move, caps lock light is unresponsive etc..
Tried to boot from Diskwarrior - Similar to the above. Long wait, boots to the Diskwarrior 'setting up' screen, unresponsive cursor - despite, Diskwarrior seemingly going through the motions (status in text changes, menu bar appears) and then it reports an unexpected error with code 60, 2105 and completely freezes.
Can't boot from a USB flash drive with a clean version of OS X made from my install disk.
Disk won't mount when in target disk mode. However the DVD drive mounts it's contents onto the host machine when it target mode.
I removed the drive last night and placed it in an external enclosure and OS X reports "The disk you've inserted is not recognised et.. "Initialise" "Ignore" "Eject". The drive appears in Disk Utility but all options are greyed out, SMART status says 'not supported' and it's capacity is shown as 0 bytes. The drive registers in the Hardware pane of Diskwarrior but no-where else.
I'm fine with the fact that the drive has failed but could these problems indicate something more serious? I'm concerned that the machine won't boot from any device or media. Is this a symptom of a failed hard drive or could this be a logic board issue?
Any advice would be greatly appreciated!!!!
Thanks all and Happy new Year.
XOXO

You might try a PRAM reset and see if this does any good.
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1379?viewlocale=en_US
It sounds like the hard drive itself is toast based on how it looks in an enclosure. So you won't be able to boot from it. Possibly after a PRAM reset you could option boot to a disc or to your external drive.
I had the experience of a failed hard drive totally messing up my PowerMacG4, and it took some doing to get it going again. I finally got it going again, and it has been working ever since without issue.
The MBP is a different machine, but having experienced first hand what a dying hard drive could do, I think it's well worth doing any resets you can.
If no joy, make an appointment at the genius bar and ask them if they can run a hardware test from their store feed. If you do have other issues, they should show up then.
If you end up being able to boot to the optical drive, you could try running the extended version of the Apple Hardware test yourself.
Good luck!

27" iMac won't boot from anything BUT the main drive

Hi all,
My lovely 27" iMac is in perfect working condition, but I thought I'd try to install a OS on a large SD card to see if I would gain any speed.
In the process of doing that (cause I never got that far) I discover that the iMac won't boot from the original install DVD. It simply spits out the DVD when I try to insert into the drive. I'v managed to make an image of the DVD (in a different mac) onto the SD card in order to try an boot from that. No luck. I've tried to insert a original install DVD from my Mac Pro into the iMac, which it reads fine and well, and when I tap the restart button it restarts, but stop with a white screen doing boot up.
If I try to hold down the option key during startup, the iMac WILL let me choose which OS to boot from, but if I choose anything else than the OS already installed it freezes.
I've even tried to boot my Mac Pro from the iMac install DVD - no problems.
I've even run a hardware test on the iMac - no problems.
I am running out of options fast! Please help a devoted Mac-friend.
Take care.
Peter

I WAS using the DVD that came with the machine, but I fear Apple may have sent me the wrong one?
In trying to solve the issues I'd tried other OS disc's (A Mac Pro install DVD and a OS X Leopard DVD) - but none of them would even boot, nor install of my iMac. I always end up with a white screen during boot up.
As I described, the original iMac install DVD would indeed boot my Mac Pro, do the disc seems ok?

New Unibody MBP won't boot from DVD or external drive, just loops

Hey
We bought a new Unibody MBP on Monday, and loaned it to our CTO for a presentation. Having got it back from him now I wanted to nuke the installation and put a fresh copy of leopard on it, so I dropped the DVD in the drive, powered down, and booted holding the "C" key.
I get the chime, screen lights up, thinks for a bit, and if you use your imagination you can almost hear the DVD spin up. Then the screen goes black, lights up, chime, thinks a bit, goes black, lights up, chime and so on
I've tried booting from an external bootable clone I created with CCC (firewire external HDD), and same symptoms.
I even tried swapping in a hard drive that I know has a working bootable copy of Leopard on it, and then all I get is the eternal cycle, without pressing any keys on startup.
I also tried holding down the Option (Alt) key on boot to get the boot device selector. This correctly identifies the various boot devices - the DVD, on-board HDD and external firewire drive (if connected), and lets you select them, tries to boot, thinks, black screen, screen lights up, chime, repeat cycle endlessly until extremely frustrated.
Is there a known cure for this or am I doomed to take the thing back to the Apple store on Monday?
Thanks
Konrad

Raj wrote:
That is not the reason it didn't work. Here is the actual clarity:
*A retail Leopard DVD should be able to boot a new Macbook Pro unibody.*
So you are saying even if the driver for the controller on which the DVD drive sits is not available in the Leopard DVD you are using because the hardware was not manufactured at the time the Leopard release on the DVD was made, the OS should magically just boot? How is that possible? Unibody MacBook Pros have entirely NEW AHCI chipset - for which there won't be any drivers on the older Leopard DVD and as such the DVD wont be detected once the OS on the DVD loads. In cases where the chipset used is same (as in previous generations of MBP) it will boot.
The key difference here is that if you used an older version, some new hardware may not be supported - however, the computer *should still boot from the DVD*, which is the subject of this discussion.
The OP said that his computer boots from the DVD that came with the computer - just not with the old retail Leopard DVD. Also - what should happen if the new hardware happens to be the controller on which the DVD drive is sitting? How will it be able to read the DVD? What about the graphics card? If the drivers on the old leopard disk do not recognize the new graphics card - how is the OS going to display on screen?
On my way home, I stopped at a Mac store and asked them to test this. They successfully booted a new Macbook Pro unibody from an older Leopard DVD. And this is why Apple is replacing my computer, because it is a hardware issue, not a software one.
Again - you fail to understand that whether or not the old DVD boots on a new machine all depends on how much hardware has changed and what hardware has changed. It may boot on some generation of machine because the basic chipset and graphics did not change or were handled generically by the drivers on the older DVD but it may totally refuse to boot on new gen machine which has totally different / incompatible hardware.
So your claim that any old Leopard DVD must continue to boot on any new machine is not really technically explainable.

After attempting secure erase, iMac w/homemade fusion drive won't boot from *anything*

2009 iMac with homemade fusion drive (SSD installed in optical bay). Was working fine with Yosemite until I attempted to secure erase it before giving away the machine.
Now the drive is borked. Disk utility could make no sense of it, can't reformat, it can't repartition it. And now it has completely stopped booting. I cannot even get it to boot of an external USB drive anymore (the original operation was performed while booted from a Yosemite installer drive on a USB stick).
I've reset the PRAM, reset the SMC, and just nothing. All boots are attempted from internal messed up fusion drive, which eventually ends in the "prohibitory sign".
I'm not even sure what to try at this point. Any suggestions out there?

Thank you for the reply. I have since resolved the problem, although not in the most satisfactory way.
Here's what I did:
Pulled both drives out of the iMac, put them into a USB dock, and reformatted each one. Both drives appeared at this point to be fine.
Reinstalled both drive into the iMac, and started up from a USB drive. No problem.
Recreated the fusion drive from the terminal. No problem.
Now, because I am a glutton for punishment, I tried wiping the fusion drive again. This time, part way in, it kernel panicked. Luckily, I was able to reboot once again to the external drive.
At this point, the fusion drive was in the exact same messed up state as when I started. Disk Utility app could do nothing with it.
Fortunately, this time I went right to the command line, and was able to fix things up and recreate the fusion drive before anything else bad happened.
I gave up on wiping the drive for now. If I need to do so in the future, I will disable the fusion drive and try to wipe each physical drive separately.
I should note that this iMac has never given a spot of trouble before now, so I am highly suspicious of the way disk utility tries to wipe a fusion drive. I certainly won't try it again. (I don't know if it has ever kernel-panicked before in the 5 years I've owned it).

Won't boot from anything

I was suspecting HDD failure, despite the lack of any audible evidence of that. But now I'm leaning towards the dreaded logic board failure of some component, resulting in board replacement. Here's the history.
I rebooted my MacBook Pro after installation of something to /System/, which always requires reboot obviously. It got stuck between the kernel load screen(apple logo and gear) and the progress screen. Basically I see a blue screen and it goes no further. fsck from SUM resulted in repair of file miscounts, reboot gave same symptom and no further damage can be found ever since.
So, dead HDD right, nope. The drive mounts as a target disc, hence how I also ruled out what I installed to /System/. I also get the exact same result from optical discs, internal drive and external LaCie FW drive, whether it's Apple media, TechTool Pro, Service diagnostics, burned OS X DVD's, Linux LiveCD's.
So next step is obviously Verbose mode, but I'm not really sure how to read that. If you need me to post Verbose output, let me know how much of the output I need to jot down and post. Other than that, any ideas?

Just tried it twice booting from the internal. Along the lines I see two or three things that say failed but it keeps moving and other things succeed. Eventually it exits verbose mode on its own and goes to the plain blue screen. I get a movable pointer but it never gets passed the blue screen.

MBP Won't boot from DVD

Onyx has informed me that my drive needs to be repaired. So I tried to boot from the Snow Leopard install DVD and just get the grey screen with the apple. I let it run all night and it didn't go any further. I tried to boot from a bootable TechTool Pro DVD. Same result. Then I booted in single user mode and ran fsck. It said it made some repairs but still couldn't boot from a DVD after that and still get the message in Onyx that the drive needs to be repaired. Haven't tried to boot from an external drive yet, but I am just concerned that booting from a DVD doesn't work.

You say that you can't boot using the Snow Leopard Install DVD. Have you tried the Install DVD that came with your Mac?
It is possible that the operating system on the DVDs you are attempting to boot from is to old to boot your Mac.
Allan

MBP won't boot from HD or disk drive

After using my MBP daily since I got it in Feb, this morning it refused to boot. It got as far as the gray screen with the logo and the spinning cog. The cog would spin for a while then stop. Then nothing. This has happened a time or two when I'd installed a program that the computer didn't like, and I'd always been able to use the install disk.
This time it didn't work! I tried starting while holding the "C" --didn't work. Same thing..cog stuck.
Next I tried holding down the Option key while booting. This gave me a choice of HD or Disk drive. HD booted and immediately froze before I could do anything.
Rebooted and tried chosing the disk drive...nothing.
This has gone on all day with intermittent breaks to scream and punch pillows.
Next, I found a TechTools disk in my Warranty pack. I somehow managed to eject the install disk and put in the TechTools disk according to direction on the front of the disk, with C key depressed...nothing. I took out the battery and reset the power settings. No help. I've tried every key combination that is physically possible with only 10 fingers and nothing has helped.
I'm embarassed to say that I'm typing this on my husband's Fujitsu Lifebook. I'll never hear the end of this.
Please help!
MacBook Pro Mac OS X (10.4.6) 2gig

The genius is wrong. As long as you have the latest version of OS X on a PowerPC Mac it will work fine.
Here is a document from Apple that discusses the issue: Intel-based Macs: "You have inserted a disk containing no volumes that Mac OS X can read" alert message
You can't format a disk in an Intel-based Mac from a PowerPC Mac and have it boot successfully but you can access the disk or repair it.

Early 2008 MBP won't boot from internal disk

Hello Apple Community,
This is my first post here I hope somone can help me. I have a MBP from 2008 I upgraded to Lion about a month ago and had some minor issues right away, but now I can't get past the boot screen without a kernel panic. I did a time machine restore to one of my external drives and it boots up fine. I figured my internal drive was going bad so I installed a new one yesterday and the exact same Kernel Panic happens. I don't live in a city with an apple store so that isn't an option for me. I am contemplating going all the way back to leopard because the was the last os I can remember that was completely stable for me. Any suggestions?
Thank you

Check the format of your replacement drive. Verify that is was formatted as GUID. Often times the drives are formatted to the older scheme. It must be a GUID partition scheme to be bootable with an Intel Mac.

My MBP won't boot from my Expresscard SSD after I took it out during sleep!

Before this happened I booted my Macbook Pro from an Expresscard SSD. Oddly enough you can take it out while the computer is sleeping. This time though I took it out and inserted it in another computer to transfer files. I put it back in and woke the computer, and I started getting weird messages (ex. Evernote didn't work because it couldn't read its database,) and other things. Now it simply hangs on the Apple logo during startup.
Does anyone that knows what exactly happens to a drive during sleep, and while being read by another computer? What I can do to avoid reinstalling OSX on the drive?

+Oddly enough you can take it out while the computer is sleeping.+
What makes you think that? From your description, it's obvious that you corrupted the contents of the drive. You can try "Repair Disk" in Disk Utility, but most likely you'll have to reinstall. I wouldn't trust any of the data on it now.

Won't boot from anything and shows flashing ? and Finder/Folder icon

What do I do to fix this? Thank you guys!

I'm trying to help but your answers and the information you've given isn't clear at all. If the answers to these questions weren't necessary I wouldn't ask them. If you're trying to boot with an older OS it won't work and that's not a hardware issue.
Yes, you have a hardware issue but since you don't want to supply any information neither I or anyone else can help you troubleshoot it.
Good luck.
John

2011 MBP won't boot from main bay

I have an early 2011 13" MBP. I removed the SuperDrive and replaced it with an SSD. I also placed another SSD in the main bay. Everything worked fine and suddenly the SSD in the main bay would not be recognized. I switched the main bay SSD with original HDD and everything worked fine for a week, then that stopped being recognized. Now my main bay will not recognize any drive. It is not the SSD or the HDD. I have tested them in the hard drive caddy I replaced the SuperDrive with and as external hard drives plugged into USB. Anyone ever had this issue?

That is what I hear about apple. The replacement part from iFixit is $50. I wonder what would be cheaper.
http://www.ifixit.com/MacBook-Parts/MacBook-Pro-13-Inch-Unibody-Early-2011-Late- 2011-Hard-Drive-Cable/IF163-026

Yet another "won't boot from a certain disk" issue

My Sawtooth G4 just got a new second drive, which seems to work fine. At first it wouldn't boot OS 9 (there are multiple partitions on it) but after some messing with the OS 9 install disk and changing the Startup Disk in the control panel I got that sorted out. The real problem is with OS X. I'm running 10.3.9 on my primary HD and I wanted another OS X system on the new HD so I CCC'd my first disk to the new HD's first partition (which worked fine on the old drive's second partition, now erased) but the Mac won't boot from it. It showed up under the boot options menu (hold option down) but simply wouldn't boot from it no matter what. Finally, I erased the partition and installed OS 10.3 then upgraded it to 10.3.9 (still won't boot from it) but the problem continues. I get the spinning wheel followed by the circle with the bar through it.
It looks to me like there are tons of possible causes for this after reading through several similar threads here. Could somebody tell me what the most logical approach is to fixing this? Or maybe there's some stupid obvious thing I forgot?
Thanks!

Haven't you ever had a system crash or something that messed up your startup disk or some portion of the OS? And what if your prefs or anything custom has been affected? If you only have one startup drive and it gets hosed you are really in a world of hurt, as then it's up to recovery methods to salvage things. And if you don't have unlimited time to sort all this out? It seems obvious why I would want two startup disks - I've used this system for fifteen years and it just works, thats all. Under OS 9 everything was a lot simpler - you just copied the files to another disk and if they were there, you got a boot disk; everything is a lot more complex in X and I don't really understand it even now.
Then there's the issue of why the other startup disk, while recognized as such, won't boot. That's a puzzle to me. I can't imagine how the Carbon Copy Cloned disk wouldn't work for this - that's what I did before and it worked fine.
The new drive is a SATA drive with an OWC card, but since the partitions with OS9 boots work fine I don't know what to think. (I have to have OS 9 because I still use Vision for my sequencing and audio recording, and because 9 crashes more often than X I always have at least two boot disks of my main system - just in case.)
Thanks.

MacBook Pro Won't Boot from Leopard DVD

My brother's MacBook Pro (2009 13") won't boot from the Leopard install DVD. Here is what happened:
- I tried to do Bootcamp on it. I installed Windows 7 but realized that there were no Bootcamp drivers for that.
- Deleted Widnows 7 and put the XP install disc in. Somehow, it formatted my Mac partition instead of my Windows partition.
- Now that the MBP was only running Windows XP, I connected it to my iMac in target disk mode and wiped it (GUID, one Mac OS Extended (Journaled) partition).
- I tried to put the Leopard (10.5.0) install DVD in there so I can restore from the Time Machine backup, and it sees it when I hold option at bootup but refuses to boot from it.
- I reset the PRAM and tried again, no luck.
What is going on here? Does it have to do with the fact that it was doing Bootcamp? I either want to boot from the disc or somehow restore from Time Machine some other way. I can use another computer (my iMac) if I need to.

Haha yeah, I posted right before. The thing I'm wondering now: Does this mean that a Mac that came with Lion cannot be downgraded to Snow Leopard? Well, I'll save it for another question if I ever cross that bridge.
Limnos wrote:
Just so we know, this is the original OS disc that came with this computer? Even if you're trying to use a retail installer disc I am not sure those came out the the sufficient sub-version required to boot the computer (I think it needs at least 10.5.7 but don't have the specifics of your model).
Edit: I guess I'm a slow typist.

MBP won't boot from anything!

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