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Level 1

3 points

Macbook continues to fail to install Mavericks

Ok so to start, I have a strong feeling my macbook is on the verge of dying. It crashes after about an hour of use, won't charge, has a broken disk drive and just seems to by on its last legs. Today I was trying to install windows 7 via bootcamp and it was in the middle of partitioning my drive for windows. I had set 100gb for windows leaving 250 for my actual mac OSX when suddenly the darn thing crashed in the middle of it. Upon rebooting, the 100gb I had set for windows had become unavailable and the partition didn't appear in the disk utility. After searching the internet for a way to bring it back, I wound up rebooting and holding command + r to bring up the boot screen and I selected disc utility. I deleted Macintosh HD and attempted to reinstall Mavericks so that I could start from a clean slate, and hopefully fix the crashing problem as well, but now it is stuck in a sort of infinite install. It will attempt to install and get to some point on the progress bar before saying that it failed to install and to restart the computer and try again. I have literally nothing to actually boot into other than the OS install screen and have a feeling this is the end for this laptop because after it stopped charging, apple refused to repair it and give it a warranty (due to visible damage to the outside case) and wanted $300 to do anything, meaning I could take it home after paying and have no guarantee it would work. Because of this I feel that if I brought it apple with this problem, they wouldn't do anything to it unless I was willing to pay more than its worth. I do hope that the Apple community can help me because I have nothing left to try. The laptop is a Macbook late 2010 (last plain Macbook made) with 4gb ram 350gb HDD and I believe a 2.66 ghz intel processor and it was running the newest version of Mavericks. I really hope that somebody can help me because losing the laptop completely would be such a waste

MacBook, iOS 7.1, Mavericks, late 2010 macbook

Posted on Jul 20, 2014 6:44 PM

35 replies

ZachBella Author

Level 1

3 points

Jul 21, 2014 9:02 PM in response to Loner T

I currently reinstalled SL again since whenever I get stuck in the install loop I simply cannot access my desktop. I can verify my disk again, but its been done countless times in the past few days, also the disk itself has been restored countless times as well. If you could list steps for the harder option that would be an amazing help! Thanks for the support you've been giving me for the past two days, I REALLY appreciate it! 😀

Loner T

Level 9

59,471 points

Jul 22, 2014 3:55 AM in response to ZachBella

What you have been executing so far is an upgrade from SL 10.6.8 to Mavericks 10.9.4.

This is an Erase and Install of Mavericks on your internal disk.

1. You can do this on your iMac - Creating a bootable OS X installer in OS X Mavericks . Please ensure that you do not overwrite your iMac disk. Keep a good TM backup of your iMac. A backup before you start this procedure is recommended.

2. Using your SL media that you have been using, instead of restoring SL, erase the internal HDD using Disk Utility and stop the restore from going further.

3. Use the USB from step 1, boot your Macbook and run the install of Mavericks.

Step 1 can be simplified if you use Diskmaker X as indicated here - http://arstechnica.com/apple/2013/10/how-to-make-your-own-bootable-os-x-10-9-mav ericks-usb-install-drive/

It references the Apple How-To article as well.

Loner T

Level 9

59,471 points

Jul 22, 2014 4:59 AM in response to ZachBella

Here is my test to build a USB (my installer is in the OtherSamsung840 directory under Documents).

sudo ~/Documents/OtherFromSamsung840/Install\ OS\ X\ Mavericks.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/Untitled --applicationpath ~/Documents/OtherFromSamsung840/Install\ OS\ X\ Mavericks.app/

Ready to start.

To continue we need to erase the disk at /Volumes/Untitled.

If you wish to continue type (Y) then press return: y

Erasing Disk: 0%... 10%... 20%... 30%...100%...

Copying installer files to disk...

Copy complete.

Making disk bootable...

Copying boot files...

Copy complete.

Done.

diskutil list

/dev/disk0

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: GUID_partition_scheme *1.0 TB disk0

1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk0s1

2: Apple_HFS Macintosh HD 743.7 GB disk0s2

3: Apple_Boot Recovery HD 650.0 MB disk0s3

4: Microsoft Basic Data BOOTCAMP 256.0 GB disk0s4

/dev/disk1

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: GUID_partition_scheme *16.0 GB disk1

1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk1s1

2: Apple_HFS Install OS X Mavericks 15.7 GB disk1s2

Loner T

Level 9

59,471 points

Jul 22, 2014 5:37 AM in response to ZachBella

I do not have a an SL 10.6.8 system that I can blow away, but here is a test on a 13" 2012 MBP.

1. The USB is selected for installation.

2. The installer starts...

3. The Installer log can be accessed via...

4. The internal drive is visible in Disk Utility. Select the disk (not individual volumes) to erase the disk. Re-format it as Mac OS X Extended (Journaled).

5. Install a copy of OS X Mavericks.

ZachBella Author

Level 1

3 points

Jul 23, 2014 3:31 PM in response to Loner T

All right, I followed the instructions word for word (this is actually how I did it when I first deleted my hard drive after the boot camp issue) and it produced the same error. I also checked the installer log and it produced over 300 errors. I don't understand why the laptop is doing this considering when I initially installed Mavericks it was running snow leopard and it let me update it fine!

Macbook continues to fail to install Mavericks