Q: reinstalling mavericks

What happens when you choose 'Reinstall OS X' ?.

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It sounds like the hard drive is damaged. The "four options" you see are from the Recover Partition, which is either a separate bit of the hard drive, or within the firmware of the Mac itself if the hard drive is broken.

When you say "putting OS X onto disks and putting them into the laptop", what exactly do you mean? Did you make an installer boot disk for the OS?

Have you got an external drive that you can connect to the Mac and install the OS onto? You can do that from the "four options" Recovery menu, but just select another disk. If that works, then you know it's the internal drive that's knackered.

The good news is that if it can run Mountain Lion, then it can run Mavericks. It would be worth your while getting a new hard drive (may be an SSD!) and replacing the internal drive with that.

In the absence of better ideas:

Get an 8GB (minimum) USB stick

Insert the stick. Go into Disk Utility and erase the stick, leaving the Volume name as Untitled

If you have the "Install OS X Mavericks.app" on a DVD (as you suggest), insert the DVD

Exit Disk Utility; you should have a menu at the top of the screen. Choose Utilities > Terminal

type ls -al /Volumes and note the volume name of the DVD that has Install OS X Mavericks.app on it

Use the following command to make a bootable OS X Mavericks Installer on the USB stick:

(Note: assumes Install OS X Mavericks.app is in the root of the DVD and the following text in bold is all on one line)

/Volumes/<Volume name of DVD>/Install\ OS\ X\ Mavericks.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/Untitled --applicationpath /Volumes/<Volume name of DVD>/Install\ OS\ X\ Mavericks.app --nointeraction

(Note: the <> are not to be typed, they indicate information to be provided by you)

Wait a long time for the creation to finish. When it does, restart the mac. If does not automatically go into the install of Mavericks, restart again, holding down the option key until you see a selection of disks to choose from. Click the disk called Install OS X Mavericks and it should be off and running from there.

Hassles or results, please reply back

If possible, start in Internet Recovery, by holding Command Option & R after the chime.

OS X: About OS X Recovery

BTW andy & benwiggy, I was composing my reply whilst there were no ones existing, I'm not referrng to either of you so no offence meant; I just didn't know if there were better ways

Froggie, see my above on how to make the boot disk, the "stick" you may know as any flash drive. If you have the "Install OS X  Mavericks.app" on another mac already (yours?) substitute the DVD copy you made for where it is on your hard disk, the make will be quicker that way.

Also, the "Install OS X Mavericks.app" is 5.3GB, so you will have needed a dual layer DVD to copy it successfully I think. All in all, easier to make the boot disk on your computer.

Message was edited by: SilverSkyRat: extra info

can you copy/paste the command you typed?

If you go back into Disk Utility, with the DVD inserted, it should appear on the left have side. It should list the DVD drive itself, and then a volume name directly underneath it; what does that say?