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My MacBook is a paperweight


scottsins

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Any assistance is appreciated.

 

It was running fine yesterday. At some point, I glanced over and the screen was black with some url displayed like “support.com/startup” (not sure exactly).

 

I kinda just blew that off and forced a restart with the power button. I was then greeted with this:

 

69f30864b4e44bb6e32f4980be698bed.jpg

 

I tried starting in recovery mode to maybe reinstall El Capitan, but when I get to the step where I’m supposed to select the destination disk for installation, I get stuck because there’s no Finder window or anything to select anything.

 

If anyone knows the fix, please feel free to post here or PM to discuss offline. I would like to avoid taking this to a shop but if that is what’s needed, I would like a good recommendation for that too, preferably located near/in the burbs north of Austin.

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Sorry if you already looked this up, but...

https://support.apple.com/en-us/101666#:~:text=A prohibitory symbol%2C which looks,until your Mac turns off.

A prohibitory symbol, which looks like a circle with a line or slash through it, means that your startup disk contains a Mac operating system, but it's not a version or build of macOS that your Mac can use.

  1. Press and hold the power button on your Mac for up to 10 seconds, until your Mac turns off. (Every Mac has a power button. On laptop computers that have Touch ID, press and hold Touch ID.)

  2. Follow the steps in this article: How to repair a Mac disk with Disk Utility. It describes how to start up from macOS Recovery instead of the installed operating system, then use Disk Utility to repair your startup disk. If Disk Utility finds no errors or repairs all errors, continue to the next step.

  3. While still in macOS Recovery, install a version of macOS that your Mac can use: How to reinstall macOS.

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Sorry if you already looked this up, but...

https://support.apple.com/en-us/101666#:~:text=A prohibitory symbol%2C which looks,until your Mac turns off.

A prohibitory symbol, which looks like a circle with a line or slash through it, means that your startup disk contains a Mac operating system, but it's not a version or build of macOS that your Mac can use.

  1. Press and hold the power button on your Mac for up to 10 seconds, until your Mac turns off. (Every Mac has a power button. On laptop computers that have Touch ID, press and hold Touch ID.)

  2. Follow the steps in this article: How to repair a Mac disk with Disk Utility. It describes how to start up from macOS Recovery instead of the installed operating system, then use Disk Utility to repair your startup disk. If Disk Utility finds no errors or repairs all errors, continue to the next step.

  3. While still in macOS Recovery, install a version of macOS that your Mac can use: How to reinstall macOS.


That’s what I’ve been seeing but it confuses me because I don’t get how/why my OS wouldn’t be something that my machine can use since it’s been using it for a long time now.
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Just now, scottsins said:


That’s what I’ve been seeing but it confuses me because I don’t get how/why my OS wouldn’t be something that my machine can use since it’s been using it for a long time now.

That confuses me, too. Typically, Apple will not allow an install of an invalid OS version.

 

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2 minutes ago, MonkeyDoughnut said:

Seen a couple people mention it happening to them after an update installed, OS just "glitched" and only way to get back to where they had things was to go - recovery, reinstall the OS, restore Time Machine backup

Yeah, it is a failed update. 

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Seen a couple people mention it happening to them after an update installed, OS just "glitched" and only way to get back to where they had things was to go - recovery, reinstall the OS, restore Time Machine backup

So far, I tried to repair the disk. Booted in recovery mode, then selected disk utility. Selected disk”show all devices” from the view options.

What I see is this:

3a24cabfd04fde4020484ddff94c538c.jpg

I don’t know shit about fuck but I would normally expect to see something beginning with SSD to indicate my actual hard drive, correct?

Should I scrap this idea and attempt the OS X reinstall? Or is that destined for failure based on what this shit looks like?

Edit to add: I’m actually using macOS Catalina, if that matters.
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18 minutes ago, scottsins said:


So far, I tried to repair the disk. Booted in recovery mode, then selected disk utility. Selected disk”show all devices” from the view options.

What I see is this:

3a24cabfd04fde4020484ddff94c538c.jpg

I don’t know shit about fuck but I would normally expect to see something beginning with SSD to indicate my actual hard drive, correct?

Should I scrap this idea and attempt the OS X reinstall? Or is that destined for failure based on what this shit looks like?

Edit to add: I’m actually using macOS Catalina, if that matters.

could be drive gone bad, lose connection, or still part of "glitch".

Try this to see is can find it:

 

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