MacOS – Tried to reinstall osX and ended up getting folder with questionmark on boot

disk-formatmacossnow leopard

Today I decided after 6 years to format my MacBook Pro 2009 laptop.
Originally I had Snow Leopard on it (I still have an unscratched cd) but in some point back in 2012 a friend installed (using his appledId) the Mountain Lion.

I've been messing around with this the whole day and have tried a bunch of different things and now I think I am in the worst possible situation.

In the beginning I restarted the mac and pressed as described online the cmd+R combination. I formated my disk and then tried to reinstall the osx.

The dialog box was saying Mountain Lion and it was asking for an appleId. Obviously my appledId wouldn't work cause I never purchased it.

Then I thought to use my Snow Leopard cd and boot from there (holding the option key). I tried several times but for some reason the mac dvd player keeps rejecting my cd. This is what I call bad luck.

So after some hours, working on my second laptop I decide to do something crazy. Install Ubuntu through a live usb memory stick. I create one, plug it in the mac and make the whole installation.
That was completely stupid of me. I had problems with the graphic card and things were not displayed correctly.

I remove the Ubuntu using gParted and now I am in the point where I start the mac and I get a blinking folder with a questiomark in the middle.

I have no idea what to do. When I click the options button, I get nothing. Not even the harddrive.
When I place the cd of SnowLeopard I also get nothing and after a while the cd is rejected.

So what am I supposed to do now? Any help would be mostly appreciated!

Best Answer

  1. First things, power on with the space key pressed to eject the CD if needed.
  2. Then power on with command+s held - if there is any OS X volume that's bootable, you can get some basic info
  3. If not, reset the NVRAM - (Command Option P R) and hold until you hear the third boot chime.
  4. After the third chime, hold option only and you should end up at a grey screen.

Take a picture of that and post a follow on question with more details / less broad open-ended. If you want to boot from the CD/DVD and wipe everything, ask that. If you can get to single user mode, then you might be able to patch things together.

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