Unable to exit OS X Utilities?

It sounds like you've erased the OS on the internal drive. To verify this, disconnect the external drive and reboot. Hold down the Option key. If all you get is the Recovery partition, you've erased the OS. Reinstall it from there. Once that's done you can try Migration Assistant.

Well, we've verified you erased the internal drive which is what I wanted to know. So when you picked this machine up it had a new hard drive but couldn't boot up? It sounds like they'd put Mavericks on it for you. The problem is that since you didn't download Mavericks with your Apple ID it won't let you install. This is a bit of a mess at this point. Do you have access to another Mac? If you can log in and download a copy of Mavericks using your Apple ID, you should be able to proceed. Once you do that it'll recognize your ID when you try to install.

It sounds like maybe the problem wasn't with your hard drive, but maybe with the SATA cable. That's what connects the drive to the motherboard. There's an easy way to test this, which is to move the drive to an external enclosure. If it works there, the cable is bad. Did they give you the original hard drive back?

Was it Apple that did the repair? Either way, you should still be under warranty if this is a new machine.

That is because that other Mac doesn't include the proper driver set for your newer Mac. So the Mavericks download done on the other Mac won't work on the newer Mac.

You'll need to Reinstall the original Shipping version of OS X. To do that you need to boot to the Online Internet Recovery system. At startup hold down the Command + the Option/alt + the r keys and keep them held down until you see a globe on the screen. If you only have a Wifi connection from that Mac you'll need to Log Onto you WiFi connection so have the password for that handy. But if your Mac has an Ethernet port it ios best to Wire the system to your internet router.

Once the Online version of the Mac OS X Utilities loads use Disk Utility to Repartition the drive as one partition to remove all traces of anything that is still on the new HDD. You must really do that and not just Erase the Macintosh HD partition. You need to remove the Recovery HD partition created by the Mavericks install. That partition is hidden and can't be removed by just erasing the Macintosh HD partition.

Once that is done select the second option on the original Utilities screen, IE "Reinstall Mac OS X". The original version of OS X that came on that Mac when it was new will be downloaded and installed. From there you can then attempt to restore your system from the Time Machine backup using the Setup Assistant system when the system restarts for the first time, after the OS X install. Or let it boot and do all lthe setup stuff thenn download Mavericks from the Mac App Store and then once that is completed use the Migration Assistant to copy over all your apps, settings and files from the TM backup.

amms wrote:

Hello again. I was finally able to download Mavericks using my Apple ID on another Mac, and when I went home and reinstalled OS X it went smoothly. After it finished and auto-restarted, the grey apple logo screen appeared as normal, but after an hour of waiting it didn't boot up so I tried restarting it.. and now every time I restart it brings me to the apple logo screen and is stuck there. I held the option key after restarting and it now gives me the Macintosh HD option as well as the Recovery option. But yeah, just stuck on the apple logo/loading screen. :-(

You are Welcome.