Old mac won't boot

[TrainFan475]

My friends gave me this super old mac to do whatever I want with, so I tried to boot it up but it's been stuck on this loading screen for the past 15 minutes. Is there any way to fix it?

[Action_Johnson]

make a macos bootable drive and reformat it.

[Roswell]

Probably a drive issue. Doesn't matter anyway, you would need to replace it regardless unless the previous user wiped the drive, you'd need their login credentials.

 

Turn it off and then boot it up while holding down CMD+R (Windows key+ALT+R on a Windows keyboard) until you see a loading bar to get into recovery. At least you'll be able to tell if the drive is shot that way.

[TrainFan475]

Just now, Action_Johnson said:

make a macos bootable drive and reformat it.

reformat the mac's hard drive?

[Roswell]

6 minutes ago, Action_Johnson said:

make a macos bootable drive and reformat it.

 

5 minutes ago, TrainFan2020 said:

reformat the mac's hard drive?

 

You can't format the drive without the original login credentials. I suppose you could pull the drive and put it into a PC to format to whatever and then put it back into the iMac to format again with the installer.

[TrainFan475]

4 minutes ago, Vitamanic said:

Turn it off and then boot it up while holding down CMD+R (Windows key+ALT+R on a Windows keyboard) until you see a loading bar to get into recovery. At least you'll be able to tell if the drive is shot that way.

none of the keyboards I connected are working with the mac. they don't light up or anything

[Electronics Wizardy]

6 minutes ago, Vitamanic said:

 

 

You can't format the drive without the original login credentials. I suppose you could pull the drive and put it into a PC to format to whatever and then put it back into the iMac to format again with the installer.

You can format the drive unless the firmware lock is enabled from a bootable usb or target disk mode.

3 minutes ago, TrainFan2020 said:

none of the keyboards I connected are working with the mac. they don't light up or anything

What model is the mac? Can you do internet recover(cmd + r at bootup)

[TrainFan475]

Just now, Electronics Wizardy said:

You can format the drive unless the firmware lock is enabled from a bootable usb or target disk mode.

What model is the mac? Can you do internet recover(cmd + r at bootup)

I don't know what model the mac is, but it's gotta be before 2013 because it's like 4 inches thick

also how can I use keyboard shortcuts if it doesn't recognize any keyboards?

[Roswell]

1 minute ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

You can format the drive unless the firmware lock is enabled from a bootable usb or target disk mode.

What model is the mac? Can you do internet recover(cmd + r at bootup)

As soon as you try to touch a drive in recovery with an installation on it it's going to prompt for a password.

 

They also already tried to boot into recovery.

 

7 minutes ago, TrainFan2020 said:

none of the keyboards I connected are working with the mac. they don't light up or anything

That points to a more serious issue. You can try making a bootable USB and see what happens. You'll need another Mac to make it or if you're on Windows: https://pureinfotech.com/create-macos-bootable-usb-windows/

[Electronics Wizardy]

1 minute ago, TrainFan2020 said:

I don't know what model the mac is, but it's gotta be before 2013 because it's like 4 inches thick

also how can I use keyboard shortcuts if it doesn't recognize any keyboards?

the firmware should know about keyboards before it tries to load the os. Try holding cmd + r at bootup and holding option at bootup aswell for a boot menu.

[Electronics Wizardy]

1 minute ago, Vitamanic said:

As soon as you try to touch a drive in recovery with an installation on it it's going to prompt for a password.

 

They also already tried to boot into recovery.

you can reset the login password super easily, so that work stop you from doing a reinstall or using the system.

 

Also recovery mode doesn't need a password, and doign a reinstall doesn't either.

[Roswell]

16 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

you can reset the login password super easily, so that work stop you from doing a reinstall or using the system.

 

Also recovery mode doesn't need a password, and doign a reinstall doesn't either.

No you can’t... When was the last time you used a Mac? Anything tied to an Apple account can’t be formatted without an Apple ID login. You can force the issue on the older models with a removable drive as I stated previously but you need to do so with another machine.

[Electronics Wizardy]

14 minutes ago, Vitamanic said:

No you can’t... When was the last time you used a Mac? Anything tied to an Apple account can’t be formatted without an Apple ID login. You can force the issue on the older models with a removable drive as I stated previously but you need to do so with another machine.

I just did a reinstall and password reset on a 2014 mac mini, no issues, and had a icloud login.

 

This is also a older mac, so 2009-2011, and that method would work fine on here. Unless there is a firmware password, its super easy to just reinstall the os or reset the password.

[Action_Johnson]

You can make a bootable USB drive with a MacOS installer, that's really all you need. You might need another mac to do that...

 

If it's gotten to the point of the apple, you don't need to worry about a firmware password. 

 

I doubt the Hard Drive has gone bad on it

 

You do not need to open it up to remove the hard drive

 

make a bootable USB and attempt to reformat and reinstall macos before you do anything. It's probably just a simple corrupt OS install. 

[TrainFan475]

Hold on, I think I'm onto something. I swapped the hdd with one that has windows 10 and...

[TrainFan475]

It boots into windows! It has an i5 750, 8gb ram, and a radeon hd 4850