Q: Cannot boot without without first booting to ubuntu live disk

Already did that before reverting back to Mountain Lion without effect.

However, will do so shortly and report back.

In the meantime I downloaded testdisk tool and fired it up while being booted to Mac OS Mountain Lion

TestDisk 7.0-WIP, Data Recovery Utility, January 2015
Christophe GRENIER <grenier@cgsecurity.org>
http://www.cgsecurity.org


  TestDisk is free software, and
comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY.


Select a media (use Arrow keys, then press Enter):
>Disk /dev/disk0 - 500 GB / 465 GiB (RO)
 Disk /dev/rdisk0 - 500 GB / 465 GiB (RO)

When I select /dev/disk0 and chose proceed this is the output

Write access for this media is not available.
TestDisk won't be able to modify it.


- No partition from this disk must be mounted:
Open the Disk Utility (In Finder -> Application -> Utility folder)
and press Unmount button for each volume from this disk
- This media may be physically write-protected, check the jumpers.










>[ Continue ] Continue even if write access isn't available

I chose Continue and this is the output

isk /dev/disk0 - 500 GB / 465 GiB (RO)


Please select the partition table type, press Enter when done.
 [Intel  ] Intel/PC partition
>[EFI GPT] EFI GPT partition map (Mac i386, some x86_64...)
 [Humax  ] Humax partition table
 [Mac    ] Apple partition map
 [None   ] Non partitioned media
 [Sun    ] Sun Solaris partition
 [XBox   ] XBox partition
 [Return ] Return to disk selection






Hint: EFI GPT partition table type has been detected.
Note: Do NOT select 'None' for media with only a single partition. It's very
rare for a disk to be 'Non-partitioned'.

So I select "EFI GPT" and then "Analyse" which gives me this output

Disk /dev/disk0 - 500 GB / 465 GiB - 976773168 sectors (RO)
Current partition structure:
     Partition                  Start        End    Size in sectors


 1 P EFI System                    40     409639     409600 [EFI System Partitio
 2 P Mac HFS                   409640  975503591  975093952 [Macintosh HD]
 3 P Mac Boot               975503592  976773127    1269536 [Recovery HD]

I select "quick search" which yields to this

Disk /dev/disk0 - 500 GB / 465 GiB - 976773168 sectors (RO)
     Partition               Start        End    Size in sectors
>P EFI System                    40     409639     409600 [EFI]
 P Mac HFS                   409640  975503591  975093952
 P Mac HFS                975503592  976773127    1269536


















Structure: Ok.  Use Up/Down Arrow keys to select partition.
Use Left/Right Arrow keys to CHANGE partition characteristics:
                P=Primary  D=Deleted
Keys A: add partition, L: load backup, T: change type, P: list files,
     Enter: to continue
FAT32, blocksize=512, 209 MB / 200 MiB

When I press "ENTER" and then select "Deeper Search" on the next screen I get listed a lot of "partitions"? Is this normal?

Disk /dev/disk0 - 500 GB / 465 GiB - 976773168 sectors (RO)
Analyse sector      229376/976773167: 00%




check_FAT: Unusual media descriptor (0xf0!=0xf8)
Warning: number of heads/cylinder mismatches 16 (FAT) != 1 (HD)
Warning: number of sectors per track mismatches 32 (FAT) != 1 (HD)
  EFI System                    40     409639     409600 [EFI]
check_FAT: Unusual media descriptor (0xf0!=0xf8)
Warning: number of heads/cylinder mismatches 16 (FAT) != 1 (HD)
Warning: number of sectors per track mismatches 32 (FAT) != 1 (HD)
  EFI System                    46     409645     409600 [EFI]

This is what I get when hitting stop after a short time. Please notice that the list continues to scroll down below entry 975093952

Disk /dev/disk0 - 500 GB / 465 GiB - 976773168 sectors (RO)
     Partition               Start        End    Size in sectors
>D EFI System                    40     409639     409600 [EFI]
 D EFI System                    46     409645     409600 [EFI]
 D Mac HFS                   409640  975503591  975093952
 D Mac HFS                   439608  975533559  975093952
 D Mac HFS                   439888  975533839  975093952
 D Mac HFS                   440112  975534063  975093952
 D Mac HFS                   440528  975534479  975093952
 D Mac HFS                   440696  975534647  975093952
 D Mac HFS                   442176  975536127  975093952
 D Mac HFS                   442672  975536623  975093952
 D Mac HFS                   442904  975536855  975093952
 D Mac HFS                   443176  975537127  975093952

Maybe this is of some help?

Thanks a lot for your willingness to help out, much appreciated.

Jens

Update on your suggestion to reset SMC and NVRAM and on behavior when putting the Macbook to sleep (german "Ruhezustand")

Did the SMC and NVRAM reset but no luck. Still got the question mark after both resets. I did not do the Ubuntu live CD trick to boot to Mac OS in between.

Before doing SMC i tried to put the MacBook to sleep via Apple-->"Ruhezustand". This yielded in the status LED to be flashing like normal. However, on keystrock the display went on and I got the login screen but there was the spinning wheel indicator that did not go away. Retried after SMC / NVRAM reset. Same behavior.

Command Control Power Button restartet the MacBook to flashing question mark icon.

HTH

Cheers Jens

Using /dev/rdisk0 for Testdisk

--> Will post shortly. Anything special to check?

Was rEFIt or rEFInd installed?

--> I was already to answer that with a "no" but then did a quick google search and found out that I indeed already visited the site refit.sourceforge.net. However, I'm quite sure that I did this some time ago when this mess started and did not install it.

Was the internal disk erased before Internet Recovery

--> Yes, at some "last resort" if first tried reinstalling Yosemite over the disk (after boot cycling with Ubuntu). After that did not solve the problem, I deleted the partition and installed Yosemite from scratch. This also did not solve anything, so I opted for Internet Recovery. As that was not allowed having already installed Yosemite on the partition, I deleted the partition again.

Thanks again, will post results from testdisk soon

Cheers

Jens

Hmm, unfortunately I do not have the MacBook with me right now but I think I was not able to delete the whole disk but only the partition. I will check back tomorrow as it's getting quite late in Germany :-)

As already mentioned I already went through internet recovery once, but I'm not sure how I would delete the whole disk. Will try and report back.

Cheers

Ok, tried erasing the whole disk via Internet Recovery --> Disk Utility and installing again. I did not explicitly reformat it. It showed a "default selected file format" when erasing which was "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)". I did not change that. Reinstalling went fine but same problem.

After putting to sleep the MacBook shows the logon screen after wake up. But I cannot enter my password. Screen is frozen except the mouse. Keyboard illumination is on but "hardware control keys" like volume do not work.

If I restart (by pressing > 5 secs to power button) I have the same situation as before. Flashing question mark icon.

Stepping back a bit:

1. If I installed rEFIt (which im pretty shure I didn't but not dead certain), what would be the consequences?

2. Any other suggestions how to proceed? I mean it's probably not a plain hardware failure as I can repeatetly reboot or workaround using that Ubuntu live disk with the disk check util. But it also not seem to be a simple problem. Would maybe reinstalling Bootcamp (with Windows 8.1 or even again Windows 10) and then using disk repair utility from there maybe help?

Many thanks and kind regards

Jens

Currently I am on Mountain Lion 10.8.5. However, I'm perfectly fine with installing Yosemite 10.10.2 on it as I eventually need it anyway. So if you suggest, I'll do that. However, as I already had Yosemite on, I'm in little doubt that upgrading will change the situation.

Just ran AHT with "Perform extended testing" not activated. Outcome was "No trouble found." When I go to Harware Profile I don't see a section for HDD, don't now if this is normal, i Just have this sections:

Product

Communication

Video

Memory

Power

Firmware is up to date with MBP91.00D3.B08. This is shown within Mac OS. However, when I use AHT the Boot ROM Version is shown as MBP9.1.88Z.00D3.B08.1208081132. I suppose that AHT just shows more details for the version number. Also SMC Version is up to date 2.1f175.

Right now I'm runnging the extended AHT testing. Will report back then, though it's bound to take an hour or so.

Thanks for your extended helping here, really appreciating.

Just wanted to report back that also the extended AHT did not find any problems.

Maybe this is not so important but I wanted to give you this detail anyways:

When I'm in the situation where booting will not be possible (flasing question mark folder) and then inserting the Ubuntu Live Disk I get the Prompt "No bootable device -- insert boot disk and press any key". I figured that while holding the option key on boot the Ubuntu Live Disk does contain a "Windows" and a "EFI Boot" part. While selecting the EFI Boot works and Ubuntu Live disk starts, selecting the "Windows" part of the Ubuntu Live Disk would result also in a "No bootable device -- insert boot disk and press any key"

Does this make any sense to you or is this just unrelated.