Hard Drive Formatting Issues - 2011 MBP
I have a late 2011 Macbook pro that started acting up a few weeks ago. Took it to an Apple store for a consultation and they came to the conclusion that part of my hard-drive not functioning properly. It just so happened to be the portion that had the bootup info on it (according to the tech). Rather than pay to have Apple install a new drive, I decided to go for it on my own as I've built more than a dozen PC's over the last 3 years, swapping out a hard drive is not a big deal to me. Even the tech at the store told me I shouldn't have any issues.
So I disconnected the battery, installed the new drive, inserted the disk that came with my MBP and I get nothing but a grey screen after the DVD drive makes noise reading the DVD for several minutes. I did some searching online and found that I could try to download the disk via holding Command + R at startup (just in case something on the physical DVD wasn't reading properly). The Command + R function shows me my wifi, connects, and downloads what it needs to, but I once again end up with nothing, but a grey or blue screen. I've tried two hard drives, both with the DVD and Command + R function several times now to no avail.
Am I missing a step here or could there be something else wrong with my machine? Are there any other utilities built into the machine I could be running?
I installed a Western Digital 7200 RPM, 500GB drive. Same specs as my original drive, but different manufacturer. I researched and found several other reviews of people using this drive in MBP's.
I re-formatted the original drive a few years back with the same DVD and no issues. I have no backups or other drives to go off of. I was running Windows 7 through boot-camp. Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
MacBook Pro