Good Grampa, Dumb Grampa

So I let my 15 year old grandson take my MacBook Pro and he calls "grampa it's not working anymore ... Be nice grampa no bad language.

I get it back and it goes to the login screen, I enter my password and all is well, Damn maybe not. The normal blue fan screen comes up but it won't boot to the operating system. In fact it just continues repeating the blue fan screen status over and over and over again (friggin ground hog day).

Now I am a PC man and I would boot to safe mode and clean, if that doesn't work I would pull the harddrive and recover important files, reformat HD and install new operating system, boom off to the races again.

Jr said he downloaded some shareware free junk and was trying to install, he did the required restart and here we are.

I tried to reset pram and boot to safe mode but must be an old idiot. Any suggestions would certainly help. But please slow and easy or at least the "MacBook Pro Fix for Dummies".

I don't have Mac Disks, bought it used.

Thanks all, Jr really is a great kid. LOL

 

If I were you, I'd do one of 2 things.

If its under warranty, take it to the Apple store.

Or

Buy the restore DVD's off eBay and restore it.

 

if your machine has a core i5 or i7 processor, you will have to order replacement discs for your particular machine. you can do this through apple directly for about $20, or maybe through eBay for less.

if your machine has a core 2 duo processor, or core duo, you maybe order replacement discs for your particular machine as above, or just purchase snow leopard retail. snow leopard retail costs $29, possibly less on eBay.

after you have the replacement discs, you will use the strategy of backing up your files on the hard drive and reinstalling the operating system.

you might also look into backing up your files with the help of a linux live cd to avoid having to phyiscally remove the hard drive.

 

boot safe mode and clean out the junk program... look in start up items or for an uninstall for whatever it was maybe...

Mac OS X: Starting up in Safe Mode

 

Thank you all for taking the time to assist me and I will try your suggestions.

The unit has an Intel duo-core 2ghz processor, 1 gig of ram. It is the Macbook Pro MA464LL/A.

It is a used unit not sure how many past owners so warranty is out and not even sure which operating system was installed. But with my expertise in PC repair and building I should be able to to at least destroy this baby.

Thanks Again

 

I think the best option, as masterchef341 said, is to get the $29 OS X 10.6 disks: masterchef341