Question Macbook Disk Locked

[IamTimTech]

Hello everyone, this is my first time posting over here in the Mac side of Tom' Hardware. I work in computer repair and every so often someone brings in a Mac. The customer brought his Macbook in saying it would not boot and it gets stuck on the loading screen. He said he tried a few different things, one of which was reloading OS X Lion, but when he did this it said that the hard disk was locked and could not be written to. Here is the exact model I am working on.

http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/macbook_pro/specs/macbook-pro-core-i5-2.3-13-early-2011-unibody-thunderbolt-specs.html

I first took the hard drive out and tested it with Western Digital's Diagnostic tool and it checked out fine so I put it back in. I then tried verifying the disk and it said it needed to be repaired, so I repaired it. I then checked the permissions, but it did not allow me to repair them. I guess it does this automatically. After each of those steps I would first try to boot the macbook and then tried to re-install Lion. I am still unsuccessful with a locked HDD.

If I had a copy of Lion I would simply format the hard drive from within the shop machine and then start from scratch. The latest copy of OS X I have on disk however is Snow Leopard. The customer is not concerned about data retention because he already has everything backed up.

Any advice on how to get OS X reloaded on this machine would be greatly appreciated. This damn macbook is ruining my day.

Thank you all for reading, and thank you in advance for any advice.

P.S. I hate Macs. I love their build quality but I hate OS X.

 

[Entomber]

You could reload Snow Leopard and then upgrade it (free upgrade in app store)

 

[IamTimTech]

I was hoping someone would say that. I think if by the end of the day I haven't managed to get it unlocked with a work around then that is what I will do, however; I want to get this disk unlocked because I know this is a problem that I will see in the future again and I want to know the proper fix.

 

[IamTimTech]

I have just inserted my OS X Snow Leopard disc and upon boot-up I get 3 sequential beeps, then 3 more sequential beeps and then this continues until I shut it off.

From what I am reading it turns out that, no I cannot load Snow Leopard on a Macbook which already had Lion on it......awesome. I may have just bricked a customer's Mac. This is why I hate OS X, a shinier less functional Linux Kernel.

 

[McHenryB]

3 successive tones, a 5 second pause (repeating): This indicates RAM does not pass a data integrity check.

http://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT202768

Try reseating, or replacing, the RAM modules.

I can't see why there would be a problem installing Snow Leopard on a Mac that had Lion on; part of the install process allows you to reformat the hard disk and it is then irrelevant what was on it. You should also go through the normal Mac startup troubleshooting:

http://macs.about.com/od/MacTroubleshootingTips/tp/Top-10-Troubleshooting-Tips-For-Mac-Startup-Problems.htm

 

[McHenryB]

Just another thought. Was that Snow Leopard a retail copy or was it one that came with a Mac? The OS disks supplied with Macs (if only they still did that!) were specific to the model they were supplied with and would not work in another model of Mac. Apart from that you should try the PRAM/NVRAM reset and starting in safe mode, as detailed in the link in my previous post, both of which can fix many Mac woes.

Edit: One last tip that I have just found on the net:

In disk utility, click on the hard drive then click 'enable journaling' it should unlock the drive

 

[IamTimTech]

3 successive tones, a 5 second pause (repeating): This indicates RAM does not pass a data integrity check.

http://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT202768

Try reseating, or replacing, the RAM modules.

I can't see why there would be a problem installing Snow Leopard on a Mac that had Lion on; part of the install process allows you to reformat the hard disk and it is then irrelevant what was on it. You should also go through the normal Mac startup troubleshooting:

http://macs.about.com/od/MacTroubleshootingTips/tp/Top-10-Troubleshooting-Tips-For-Mac-Startup-Problems.htm

It isn't the RAM I promise, it has been tested. Also the beeps I am getting are not 3 beeps and then a 5 second pause. It's 3 beeps a very brief pause and then 3 more beeps and so on.

 

[IamTimTech]

Just another thought. Was that Snow Leopard a retail copy or was it one that came with a Mac? The OS disks supplied with Macs (if only they still did that!) were specific to the model they were supplied with and would not work in another model of Mac. Apart from that you should try the PRAM/NVRAM reset and starting in safe mode, as detailed in the link in my previous post, both of which can fix many Mac woes.

Edit: One last tip that I have just found on the net:

In disk utility, click on the hard drive then click 'enable journaling' it should unlock the drive

I have tried all of those solutions. Posting here on Tom's was actually an afterthought. Also my copy of Snow Leopard is a retail copy. I purchased it to build a Hackintosh, which I never got around to doing. It seems I should get around to that.

 

[McHenryB]

I believe the timing of the beeps varies on different models, but a repeated pattern of 3 beeps always means a RAM problem. If you have run the Apple Hardware Test and it does not indicate a problem with the RAM then I can only suggest that it is a problem with the logic board. Unless you have the parts to hand, the cheapest solution may be to take it to an Apple Store to at least diagnose the problem.

 

[IamTimTech]

Sorry man no. The ram and logic board are fine. This is a common problem on the net when people try to upgrade to/from Lion or Mountain Lion the disk get's locked. a "Genius Bug" as they are calling it. They attempt to load Snow Leopard from the disc and the computer just beeps. Apple and several other techies say that Snow Leopard will not load on the new macbooks do to a different memory controller and battery controller. I took the snow leopard disk out and it went back into the boot utilities just fine. The closest Apple Store is 2 hours away from here, thus why it even came in the door.

We got it fixed. In the end all we had to go into disk utility and erase the partition I created last leaving only the recovery disk and 400 some odd gigabytes of free space. At this point it let me install Lion from the net. Don't know why it did, but it's loading up just fine now.

 

[ToineF]

P.S. I hate Macs. I love their build quality but I hate OS X.

that pretty much sums it up, ya!

 

[BadAsAl]

Since you don't have to worry about data, have you tried using the disk utility from the Snow Leopard disk to partition the drive? This will essentially format it clean and then I don't see why it would not load Snow Leopard.

The preferred method though is to fresh install Lion. There are ways to make a bootable Lion USB from a PC, Google it. You can then boot from that and wipe the drive, repartition or whatever and then do a fresh install. Or if you can borrow a Mac (or buy a cheap older MacBook... I use a 2008 MacBook Pro) you can find Lion DMG on the web and download and put it on a USB.