Freezing when booting up even with gparted bootable USB flashdrive on 17" 2010 MacBook Pro


MacBook Pro 13″, macOS 13.6

Posted on May 19, 2024 4:38 AM

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3 replies

May 19, 2024 12:19 PM in response to Alex Jameson

Internet Recovery is NOT available in ROM in most Macs before 2011 models. So you will need to explore this list of other possibilities.


When your computer was released, the way you launched the required Utilities (including Disk Utility and Installer) was to use the ones on the Release software DVD. if you have a model-specific version for your model (unlikely) or a Full Retail 10.6 DVD, you use its Utilities, boot and install that version, then use Software update to get to 10.6.8 with all updates, which is the version that can reach out to the Mac App store for the first time and download and install a later version.


10.11 El Capitan is a recommended waypoint, even if you expect to install a later version, because it has an improved Mac App Store that makes getting later versions much easier.


The next source of Utilities is the Recovery Partition on the boot drive. If your drive spins up, even if not MacOS bootable, it may still have a usable recovery partition. To get there, try invoking recovery with Command-R or hold Alt/Option at startup and see if the recovery partition shows as a potentially bootable drive.


Recovery Partitions up through 10.12 Sierra can be found with the Startup Manager (Alt/Option boot). At 10.13, if an SSD boot drive is used, the format is transitioned to APFS. The Recovery partition is present, but it is inside the APFS container, and the Startup Manager on an older Mac may not be able to find it.


The next source of Utilities to consider is any MacOS 10.6 or later versions on any additional drives or clones you may (or may not) have lying about, even if they are from another Mac. You can use those Utilities to ERASE a new drive, and start the installer to place MacOS on the new drive.


The next source to consider is a Time Machine backup drive. Versions from 10.7.3 or later are said to contain a Recovery Partition that could be used to ERASE a new drive and run Installer to place MacOS on a new drive. Time Machine backups created in MacOS 11 Big Sur or later are APFS format, and APFS format backup drives do NOT have a Recovery partition.


Two Mac solutions:

With certain combinations of new and old Mac, you can use Target Disk mode to repair, erase, and install on the drive of the old Mac, by treating it as a disk drive on the new Mac.


Transfer files between two Mac computers using target disk mode - Apple Support



May 19, 2024 6:55 AM in response to Alex Jameson

That Mac can only run up to MacOS 10.13 High Sierra.


Is one of those drives a bootable High Sierra Installer?


if not, you need to make one.


MacOS Installers contain a minimal MacOS called MacOS Base System, which is used to run the specific version of Installer qualified to install the SAME version as the incoming MacOS System. This makes qualifying new versions easy to test, and acts as a 'canary in the coal mine' for whether a system will be able to run once installed.


Bootable USB-Stick installers will have Recovery tools as well.


Your Monterey installer shown has Monterey MacOS Base System on board, and can not possibly run on MacBook Pro 2010.

May 19, 2024 11:43 AM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

The first line of your lecture/answer is both irrelevant and incorrect.


In front of me I have an El Capitan, High Sierra and Gparted bootable installer all of which have ran on this machine, prior to this issue.


Irrelevant.


I know.


Incorrect, I've had Monterey running on here as well as Ventura and Sonoma 14.4.1


So the issue is [trying to keep it simple] using the bootable installer for "High Sierra" and getting the icon on screen to respond by [A] pressing the return key or [B] clicking on with the mouse it doesn't.

This after using {alt+cmd+R} to reach disk utility to reformat the drives to the correct format i.e. to see if a fresh start to the whole procedure might help, also tried with El Capitan etc.

Perhaps I've disturbed something when I replaced the supadrive with a caddy containing a second SSD that hasn't shown up immediately during the several weeks I've been dual booting between Ubuntu and Sonoma {14.4.1/14.5}?!

Freezing when booting up even with gparted bootable USB flashdrive on 17" 2010 MacBook Pro

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