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Grey or White screen with flashing folder with question mark

This is a macbook pro 2010 17" screen. Well I put a hard drive in that has windows on it. Press the option. It see the windows hard drive. So anyway I try other commands to see if can just install mac os on to the hard drive. None of the commands will work. Keep holding them down and get that same flashing folder with question mark on it. Screen is always grey or white. Try external keyboards. Nothing seems to get to a screen to install mac os. The original hard drive dead in it. The owner never back up the macbook. I looked up the problem and seem like every site say the same thing.

MacBook

Posted on Aug 26, 2021 9:35 AM

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Aug 26, 2021 10:11 AM in response to Lanacas

Lanacas wrote:

This is a macbook pro 2010 17" screen. Well I put a hard drive in that has windows on it. Press the option. It see the windows hard drive. So anyway I try other commands to see if can just install mac os on to the hard drive. None of the commands will work. Keep holding them down and get that same flashing folder with question mark on it. Screen is always grey or white. Try external keyboards. Nothing seems to get to a screen to install mac os. The original hard drive dead in it. The owner never back up the macbook. I looked up the problem and seem like every site say the same thing.



If your Mac starts up to a question mark

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204323


Did you replace the drive?


Did you format the new drive?


You can reinstall a macOS on a formatted drive from Recovery—

How to reinstall macOS from macOS Recovery - https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204904


How to erase/format/initialize your Intel-based Mac - https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208496


Aug 26, 2021 10:29 AM in response to leroydouglas

Well it not new drive. I just had one laying around with windows on it. Yes used transmac to format the hard drive. Like I said. I try everything everyone said to do. The only command that works is option. The only thing that shows up is a mouse cursor. None of the other commands work. Every time I hold Command+R nothing pops up. The screen still grey or white then I keep hold of those button the folder with question mark shows up flashing.

Grey or White screen with flashing folder with question mark

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