Suitable replacement for a 2011 macbook Pro?

I havent tried an external monitor because I dont have the lead. I dont think it's a monitor issue though, I think it is a booting problem (perhaps HD problem even though the diagnostics said all was OK). It is asking for the password, so it is not completely borked, but it just cant get to the end of the loading screen before it gives up the ghost.

I think I am actually resigned to having to spend money on getting it sorted, but not until I am absolutely sure it is fucked - plus I would like to recover some of the files from it if possible.
 
Sounds a bit like my problem. I went through four or five apple care people before I got the correct person. Contact them again and ask them to talk you through setting the date and time through terminal. (that is what was wrong with RC's mac). Which password is it asking you for? The login screen one or the wifi? If you can make a boot drive on the windows pc, I'd try that before paying someone.

I'd get / borrow / steal a cable and see if the monitor works? and if it does get your data off...

Hope it works out. It's a pain in the hoop doing all the checks and tests and still having to pay to get it fixed.
 
Actually, when doing the internet restore it is asking for the wifi password. When trying the other options, it is asking for the macbook password.
I am just burning the DMG file to my eternal drive, so we are getting there. It wasnt as convoluted as it sounded. Pretty straight forward really.
Thanks for your help
 
Ok cool. So, sorry for the mulitiple questioning, did you put in the wifi password? Did it let you past that? If it did, can you see the install lion in recovery mode page? If you can, use this to install Lion onto your external hard drive. It'll make an os on the external hard drive and you can boot from that directly. If it will not let you do this, your date and time is wrong. if you can get to this stage, you will be able to access terminal and change the date and time...

With the windows option, I'm a stranger in a strange land!!! I am guessing that after putting in your wifi password the mac goes white screen?
 
Copied and pasted...

When you’re booting your Mac from the recovery partition and are planning to reinstall OS X, you might be met by the following message:

An error occurred while preparing the installation. Try running again

Now, if you haven’t used your Mac for a while, the error might be caused by an incorrect system date setting. You can check this by going to utilities (internet recovery mode)and opening the terminal. Once in the terminal enter the following command and hit return/enter:

date

The result of this command will be the date that the system currently has been set to. For some reason, it might have been reset to 2001, in which case we need to set it to the right date. To do this, we enter a new command. This command will be entered as follows:

date {month}{day}{hour}{minute}{year}
Every bracket should be replaced with a two-digit number. Below you see what the command should be for the current time and date – May 4th 2018 11:54.

date 0504115418
Enter the command and hit return. You can then check if it was set correctly by running the first command again. If the date was wrong, it was likely that which caused the error, and after you quit the terminal it should be able to install OS X just fine.
 
Ok cool. So, sorry for the mulitiple questioning, did you put in the wifi password? Did it let you past that? If it did, can you see the install lion in recovery mode page? If you can, use this to install Lion onto your external hard drive. It'll make an os on the external hard drive and you can boot from that directly. If it will not let you do this, your date and time is wrong. if you can get to this stage, you will be able to access terminal and change the date and time...

With the windows option, I'm a stranger in a strange land!!! I am guessing that after putting in your wifi password the mac goes white screen?

When I do the internet recovery thing, the page you screenshotted comes up as above and then asks for wifi password. When it can then connect to the interwebs, there is a 4 minute loading bar, after which it says "fuck it" and goes white.

I havent done the windows uption yet...waiting on this disk writing.
 
Ah. Right. I understand now. It's even more fucked than the one I wrestled with :)

Hope the windows option works.

Not to teach you to suck eggs but are you sure the windows option will just update stuff? Do you know anyone with a mac you could call to let you target drive your mac and get your bits off before you hit the nuclear button?
 


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