Accidentally Erased Partitions, Now have black screen with White Folder with ?

Yep, I can get back to a super old version of MacOS now. But again, nothing is working to restore my computer back to it's original state 3 weeks ago. The Restore from TimeMachine option only gives me TWO choices?!?! Its not showing all my backups I've done over the years. And one of them is from 2016 and the other from March, 2024. I've done a LOT of stuff with my music since then and it will all be lost. Why is my Timemachine backup from 3 weeks ago and another one from this summer not showing up?! Is there anything I can do?

Ok, so that command does nothing. But I did put that into google and searched and find a few other posts with similar-ish problems and the commands they used. Not exactly sure what they are for, but I'm including a few different photos here for you to view, hoping any will help. The commands I used in order were:

diskutil info /dev/disk0
diskutil info /dev/disk2
gpt show /dev/disk2

Hey there, I just wanted to get back with you, so you know I didn't flake out and leave. I've been really busy after work the last few days and for some reason, all of a sudden, the laptop will NOT connect to my WiFi at work, so I can't work on this stuff in the day and report back at night. But I'm still here and still going to try all of this! I really appreciate you helping this much so far. At this point, it's almost like a fun journey to see if we (basically you) can fix this problem! And yes, I realize I could lose everything. I do have a backup showing from March, 2024, so that just in case, everything goes wrong, I can get back to at least that. Still not great at all, I'm going to lose a TON of ripped music I just did this summer, but at least I'll have most of my stuff back.

Also, not sure why the laptop is doing this now, but when I boot into Internet Recovery Mode, it's usually giving me a Startup Error and a number and not even letting me get into Disk Utility or anything! The one # it says is: -1007F and I think the other is something like 3000? Can't remember now. But I know for sure it's throwing -1007F a lot now. One time it did boot into the Recovery Mode but it was back to that super old version of MacOS, not Big Sur!!! I don't know why it all of a sudden started doing this stuff again?! I was ready to put all your commands into the terminal and see if it worked, and now I can't even get the computer to the Recovery Mode! This is so frustrating.

But just wanted to let you know I'm still here and will be working on this today and this weekend. Thanks

Ok, got it ALL right this time. Sorry I missed that hyphen. I double checked everything, but somehow missed it, my mistake.

So I typed in everything and when I got near the last command, it started "running" something on and off until it finished and here is what it said. I think it's good? Not sure though.

DUDE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Hahahahaha....

Hahahahahaha, this might have been the most fun I've ever had on a computer! It works! It's all back! You did it man! And you wanna know something EVEN MORE AMAZING??? I took this thing into the Apple store locally and they said: it can't be fixed. And yet you fixed it! UN REAL! Just absolutely amazing! You did it man! You did it!

I'm almost sad it's all over.

But one final question. All of the "discs": disk0s4, disk0s5, disk0s6, disk0s7 and NO NAME are all on my desktop now and I don't want to touch them until you tell me what to do with them, haha. I'm going to do a Time Machine backup right now, before I do anything else. And I'll await your response.

Can't thank you enough again man. Truly inspiring to know that there are people such as yourself, that are THIS knowledgeable AND willing to help others in their spare time. You must really enjoy problem solving as much as I do. This was quite the adventure my friend. Thank you

I'm really glad it worked. And I'm glad you enjoyed the process.

I'm just glad I decided to glance at your post since many times I will skip a thread where a high level contributor is already responding (I've been very busy so I haven't had much time recently to really hang out here, but needed a distraction).

Again, THANK YOU so much for taking your time to help another human being in need! Can't thank you enough. And if you have time and don't mind, I'd LOVE to hear the explanation about those command lines you had me type in. From the last set you sent me, that seemed to fix everything. I know I'll never truly understand it all, but would love to try and get the gist of it. What was each line of command doing? What was it affecting? That would be neat to learn HOW and WHY you had me type in all those commands. Just for my own curiosity. Again, I'll never understand it like you or other experts, but it would be fun to see your thought process and what exactly was going on with those commands.

Yeah, Apple doesn't train their front line agents for anything but basic support options. Erase & reinstall is their mantra. I cannot blame them sometimes, since that can be the easiest & fastest way forward since Apple is only concerned with macOS & the Apple hardware working properly...third party hardware & software is generally the responsibility of the user or the third party vendor.

This guy was their "expert". He's a nice guy and he's helped me out before. But it was either one of two things: 1. he just didn't want to take the time to do all this stuff you did because apple wants him to just move on to the next easy fix or 2. he didn't know and is told to just do exactly as you said: whip and reinstall. Because that is exactly what he told me. That he can't help and to just whip and install.

I'm not sure whether Disk Utility will allow you to rejoin those deleted partitions back into your macOS APFS Container automatically or not. If not, then our adventure can continue a bit longer since I have some command line instructions readily available to make sure the space used by those partitions is reintegrated in the macOS APFS Container (I have provided these instructions for people who had botched Windows Bootcamp installations & removals although I'm not sure anyone bothered to follow up with confirmation of success...they worked for me in a test environment involving multiple partitions within a DMG file).

FYI, if you find that you still get an option to boot Linux, then that is another very easy fix since the Linux bootloader resides within a folder on the hidden EFI (aka ESP) partition. There is no automated Linux uninstaller or removal tool.

So how DO I rejoin those partitions back into my macOS APFS container? It's still showing that my entire SSD is 350GB for Mac. And the other drives, while no longer on the desktop, are still in the Disk Utility app, but grayed out now.

No option to boot into Linux.

I hope you don't give up on your Linux experimentation either. A lot of my knowledge comes from using Linux for the last 20+ years. The best way to go with Linux is to either install to an external drive, or use just about any older computer (64bit CPU 2007+), or install into a Virtual Machine running on macOS if your computer has enough system resources. Partitioning & dual booting to a single drive is always risky, but mostly because people usually discover one or more partitions are too small. I dual booted early on when I was learning Linux by dual booting with Windows (actually triple booted one time) since booting to external drives at the time was not a good option with USB1 or even USB2. Windows was worse since it didn't know how to play nice with others.

Definitely not giving up on Linux. I still have Kubuntu on my main desktop PC on it's own SSD (windows on another, so there is not dual booting). And I think I'll try out the external drive way of running Linux on this laptop. That way there is no partitioning or dual booting. It's definitely too old and not fast enough though to allow running Linux in a VM. My super fast really nice desktop I built can barely run a few different distress of Linux in a VM without problems. Others don't work well at all. I'm going to use Linux Mint on an external ssd.

Oh, and another thing. For some reason, the Disks are not going away. I right click and Eject them. But when I reboot each time, they show up back on the desktop again. Do I want to go into Disk Utility and "ERASE" them? Unmount them? Or restore them?

Thank you

Actually, not sure what happened the first time? I typed in that command and it brought up nothing. I just tried it again and now it works. This is what it spit out:

So here is all the output from putting in those commands. Again, at the very end, disk0s2 is not showing up :( But everything else went well and had no errors.