MacBook Pro Late 2011- Needs a reformat but have no discs

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MacBook Pro Late 2011- Needs a reformat but have no discs

I have a MacBook Pro that was refurbished and did not come with installer OS discs. It needs to be reformatted cause of potential viral things going on and I was trying to figure out how do I wipe out the HD to be safe. The files I need are copied off and a clean install is what Im after. When I started I held down command R and got to disk utility. There is an untitled drive that has 785 gig capacity and a disc 1 that has OSX base system as a child under it. Do I click on untitled only and click the erase tab and then click erase? Didnt know if I should keep the OSX base system file as is or wipe it out too.

MacBook Pro, iOS 9.0.2

Posted on Oct 12, 2015 11:23 AM

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Answer 1

msgisme Author

Level 1

9 points

Oct 12, 2015 11:25 AM in response to msgisme

Correction it has 10.10.5 running currently

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Answer 2

Niel

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Oct 12, 2015 11:29 AM in response to msgisme

Yes, you do. Leave the Mac OS X Base System as is.

(134821)

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Answer 3

msgisme Author

Level 1

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Oct 13, 2015 5:44 AM in response to Niel

Thanks Niel, but I am having an issue with the MacBook Pro. I had reinstalled OSX prior to erasing the HD. After erasing the hd and restarting I get a grey screen and in the center of the screen is a circle with a line through it (the don't symbol). What should I do at this point?

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Answer 4

msgisme Author

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9 points

Oct 13, 2015 7:02 PM in response to msgisme

Update, I held down the power button until it shut down. Then on restart held down command R and got back the disk utility screen. I erased the hard drive again and then reinstalled the OSX again not long after my last post. The setup screen had a few prompts and I went through those and then got to the set up process with the spinning wheel. It ran all day from 10am to 9pm still in the spinning wheel set up in process mode. So I did another press and hold on the power button and restarted without command R hold down. Then it displayed a welcome user screen and a few file vault questions to answer and then the desktop loaded up. Should I trust that its good to go? How can you check for a valid install?

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