Macbook Problen!?!?!

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Hey guys well I am new here but I have a problem. I recently bought an apple laptop from a guy on craigslists. When we met up, I obviously tried the laptop. We were at Dennys so I was using the wifi there and everything seemed to work fine. I checked everything. Opened all th programs and everything. Everything seemed to work fine so I was feeling good. Then I shut it off and when I get home I charge it and turn it on. Then what happened was that it stayed at the grey screen with the apple logo and the spinning circle underneath the logo. I was confused and just shut it off by holding the power button and turned it back on. Same thing. So I called the guy I bought it from and then he said he didnt know what was going on. He was no help and he said he gave it to me in working condition. I read online about all these keys you hold when you turn it on and trust me I have tried all of them. The laptop was running Mountain Lion 10.8.2 so I went ahead and bought the disc since I read reinstalling the system will help. So I reinstalled Mountain Lion. After that the computer restarted and everything seem to work again. But then later when I tried it, same thing with the logo when I turn it on. I was mad and didnt know what to do. So I inserted the disc once again and went into disc utilities and checked if the hard drive was working(I had already checked it before and it said everything seems to be OK). But when I was in the disc utilities section, my hard drive wasnt on the list. I was confused so I went ahead and shut it off and restarted it again. But same thing. No hard drive comes out. When I try reinstalling Mountain Lion, it says to pick a hard drive but there is nothing to pick. I dont know what to do now. I just tried doing the fsck -fy when I hold Command and S and at first it said *Volume Modified* and so I typed fsck -fy again and then it said Volume is OK. I dont know what to do. HELP! I dont have anything I need like documents since I just bought it. Thank!
 
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Your Mac's Specs
21" iMac 2.9Ghz 16GB RAM - 10.11.3, iPhone6s & iPad Air 2 - iOS 9.2.1, ATV 4Th Gen tvOS, ATV3

Totally agree. Nearly wasnt going to read a block of words but being in Hospital i got nothing better to do . . . .

On the problem, 1st do as SubZero stated and 2nd, where did you buy a Mountain Lion disk from ?? Apple dont make them for one, but they do do a ThumbDrive with the OS on it, alternately you can buy it through the Mac App Store from 10.6.5 or later.

Can you start up in Safe Mode ??

Starting up in “safe mode” may help you diagnose problems you’re having with your Mac.

Note: To print these instructions, open the Help Viewer’s Action pop-up menu (looks like a gear) and choose Print.
Shut down your Mac and wait 10 seconds.
Press the power button.
Immediately after you hear the startup tone, hold down the Shift key.
You should press the Shift key as soon as possible after you hear the startup tone, but not before.

Release the Shift key when you see the gray Apple logo and progress indicator (spinning gear).
To leave safe mode, restart the computer normally without holding down any keys during startup.

Or are you able to run a Apple Hardware Test ??
OS X Mountain Lion: Use Apple Hardware Test
 

dtravis7


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Your Mac's Specs
MacMini M-1 MacOS Monterey, iMac 2010 27"Quad I7 , MBPLate2011, iPad Pro10.5", iPhoneSE
That really sounds like the hard drive is dying or dead. Is this a Macbook Pro or plain Macbook?
 
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chas_m

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Tattoed: Apple does not make nor sell a thumb drive with Mountain Lion on it. You're thinking of Lion.
 
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Macbook Pro, 2.4GHz Core2 Duo 10.6.8, MacMini
What exactly was done? Did you take it home straight from Denny's? Did the person selling it take it home first? Did you drop or bump it? Did he tell you why he was selling the laptop?
 
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You also, somehow need to find out how old your mac is, not sure; it depens on how old your mac is but the OS disks Or how to get them should have been provided with the macbook.
 
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Tattoed: Apple does not make nor sell a thumb drive with Mountain Lion on it. You're thinking of Lion.
Oh they stopped that did they?? I was presuming seeing they did for Lion, and really cant think of a reason that they wouldln’t.
Seems to not have worried too many folks then, but i still think they should of had to option, for those suckers that havnt got great BBand
 
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He didnt change the laptop cause I took it. After I tried it I didnt give it back to him. So he couldnt have switch them. He told me he sold it cause he is an apple technician. He had like 15 laptops. He showed me a pic. But I dont know what to do. I dont wanna buy a new hard drive and then that wasnt the problem. At times the computer does get in and I can use it but it is so slow I cant do anything. It freezes so much. Whats is wrong??!?!?!!?
 
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chas_m

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It certainly SOUNDS like the laptop's drive has been damaged somehow and is in the process of failing. But we can only go by your provided descriptions of what its doing. If the guy is really an Apple tech he should be happy to check it out and find out what the problem is.

Otherwise, you'll probably need to go visit a different Apple-authorized tech to get to the bottom of this.
 

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