Computer does not read usb on startup

I think you need to have mac os installed first before you try to install Bootcamp. You could try to install mac os via a usb stick but you’d have to make it bootable. For that, you’d need to download the most appropriate version for your mac book pro from the app store, using your apple id. I don’t know what model/ year of macbook pro you have. I don’t know what kind of shape it was in, so can’t say if it would be worth it to try and get it running. There should be a model number on it somewhere. Go to everymac.com and see how old it is. Maybe it might not be worth spending the $ to get it running. If it has a dvd drive in it and that works, you could buy a copy of snow leopard for $30 and install from that. Otherwise you’ll have to make a usb bootable stick. You could google how to do that for mac. After you have done that, you’d have to hold down the option key on the keyboard after rebooting and plugging in the usb stick right away. You should then see a list of all potentiallly bootable drives, including hopefully the usb one. Choose it and run the installer, if you had a hard drive in there it would have had to have been mac formatted first. This you could have done via os x tools from the installer. Move your mouse to the top center of the screen and it should appear. Oh and you’ll need a charger/ power cord for it plus a working battery along with a hard drive which you have now. Am assuming there is nothing majorly wrong with it— the only way to tell for sure is to make an appointment at your local genius bar or apple authorized service place... and open your wallet. There may have been a reason it was abandoned during work— or not

anyways it’s your call in the end

john b

Macs are picky about USB sticks especially for booting. I've found the quality of USB sticks to be quite poor even from reputable manufacturers. A lot of times I will use an external hard drive instead of a USB stick.

Maybe creating the Bootcamp disk on another Mac doesn't provide the necessary drivers for another system. I don't use Bootcamp so this guess could be incorrect.

Have you tried booting into Internet Recovery Mode using Command + Option + R? If the laptop ever had OSX 10.12.4+ installed then it might work. Worth a try.

I'm not sure which exact model you have, but if the above does not work and you want to test to see if the laptop works, then try installing one of the Ubuntu Linux flavors (Kubuntu, Ubuntu-Mate are best to try) or or Linux Mint. You can create a bootable USB installer using Etcher.