Macbook Pro won't startup

Thank you for the prompt response.

What I can tell you is MacBook Pro, ~5 years old, I believe I am running 10.8.5.

Lately, my machine has been spontaneously crashing, usually after a while, and with a few things open. I suspect theres some bad RAM.

Following this, sometimes during startup, on a grey screen with a white logo, I get a progress bar. This usually takes a few minutes, and then it's back to normal.

Last night, during the grey bar process, it spontaneously shut down, and when I start up, this process simply repeats itself.

I got lucky and while resetting the PRAM, I stumbled across Recovery Mode. t says 18.8.2 when I select the recovery disk during startup.

In Recovery Mode, I am able to run a diagnostic, but I cannot successfully repair. I am instructed to backup, and reinstall.

FSCK will not repair the system.

When in Recovery Mode, if I select “Reinstall Mac OSX, it does not see my internal HD, which is strange, as Disk Utility can see it.

I do not know what 'Restore' means, but it the options I have appears to be either…

a) erase my external and replace it with my internal HD - unacceptable, I can't erase the external

b) erase the internal and replace it with a ”basic system” - not sure of the verbage, I'm not on that screen at the moment, but it's an option on the left in the Disk Utility process.

It has been some time since I have backed up, and would rather not risk erasing the internal, just to see if this 'restore' option (possibly) fixes my machine.

I am working on getting a burner and a hard copy of the OS installers. I have lost mine.

I appear to have the opportunity to burn an image of my internal from the Disk Utility.

I suspect my next steps are:

1. Try to burn an image of the internal

2. In Revovery Mode, select 'the '“restore with base system” option

3. Hope for the best

What are my next steps?

Thank you.

I tried everything I could from those links:

Disk utility can’t repair.

fsck can't repair.

Verbose mode crashes

sudo fsck_hfl -l /dev/<diskname> doesn’t work.

diskutil verify / in Single User mode doesn’t work.

Can't start up in Safe mode.

Reset PRAM, No change.

Reset SMC. No change.

Unplugged all Peripherals. No change.

Still crashing on grey-screen progress-bar startup.

Do you have any suggestions?

Thank you for the clear instructions.

I got an external with no data on it. I booted into the Recovery Partition and used Disk Utility to restore a copy of my internal to it. It took ~5 hours, but I have not been able to verify the contents of the transfer.

When booting into recovery mode I now see 4 choices:

1. My old HD

2. The original Recovery Mode choice

3. A new HD icon from the external, this time with an orange Firewire icon

4. A new Recovery Mode icon from the external, with an orange Firewire icon

When I tried to startup with the new orange HD icon it did the same crash on grey screen (ias though it coppied my old bad system onto it?). This strikes me as odd/promising as perhaps it is mirroring bad software and not bad hardware?

When I boot into Recovery Mode, and select "Install the OS," it asks me to verify my Apple ID, which I do, clearly as I am on the forums. However, and here's the kicker, it stops me and says (verbage) “I haven't used this ID on the App store yet, we need to verify” at which point the process stops.

I have not used the app store to date.

I don't have access to the app store as I am in very limited recovery mode.

QUESTION: How do I verify my Apple ID with the App store when I cannot access the app store from my curent Recovery Mode, and/or what are my next steps?

Thank you for your time.

New question:

When trying to continue the installation process, Restore Mode now sees all my drive choices as locked. I did not lock them.

How do I unlock them?

Also, Disk Utility can’t repair the internal.

The external is fine.

Verify/Repair Permissions are greyed out as a choice.

Every few restarts Verify Permissions becomes active, I don’t recall the outcome, but Repair Permissions did not become active.

When booted into Recovery Mode, under File, “Unlock” is not an available option.

Additionally, Disk Utility now sees problems—and cannot repair them—on the external HD that I did a Restore of my internal onto last night.

Last night the disk was fine.

The error numbers I get when running Disk Utility on the external are the same as those when running Disk Utility on the internal.

I found a USB stick that I could install an OS onto and boot from, however, when I go through the installation process, I get an error message that says something to the effect of “This Apple ID hasn’t been used in the App store yet. Click here to review.”

I “click here,” and nothing happens.

I believe the limited functionality of the browser in Restore Mode is preventing me from continuing the installation process.

Question: How do I continue the installation process, knowing that I have very limited browser functionality?