OSx install hangs at 18 minutes

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Relative wiped her 2011 MacBook Pro and gave it to me. She had been thinking it was developing problems (shut down on her a couple of times and the Superdrive dvd drive was flakey) so she retired it and bought a new Apple computer. When I turned it on, the MBP took me through the usual setup process. Easily got it set up on our home network and connected to my iCloud account. It was running Lion. I did the OSx updates. Looking very good.

Then I decided to update to Mountain Lion, which she had running on it before the wipe. The installer downloaded fine but kept hanging at 18 minutes. I connected the MBP to our LAN modem by hard wire. I booted into recovery mode and ran Disk Utility. No sign of hard drive problems. I erased the hard drive and tried to reinstall Lion. The Lion installer also downloaded fine but then hung at 18 minutes. Tried several times. Called Apple tech support who helpfully spent more than a hour with me and checked with supervisor. Basically ran through all this again. They concluded it must be a hardware problem. Cannot boot into hardware check mode, presumably because it no longer has an OS.

Apple store is 4 hours away. Costs $300 to ship to a central repair depot. Any suggestions?
 
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It sounds like a hard disk error (not 100%) but the first place I'd look. Do you have an external drive you could connect and install OSX onto that. It would help isolate the issue if nothing else
 
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It sounds like a hard disk error (not 100%) but the first place I'd look. Do you have an external drive you could connect and install OSX onto that. It would help isolate the issue if nothing else
Thanks for the reply. How would this help?
 
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I'm not sure I can add any more but at the moment you don't know where the problem is. Installing on an external would help isolate the issue. If it works ok running osx from the external then the internal drive is the issue.
If the problem remains it's the other internals and you'll need further diagnostics/trip to an engineer
 
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So, I haven't given up on this MBP.

Using my iMac, I downloaded the Lion and Mountain Lion installers. I attached a hard drive to the iMac, formatted a partition and set up the Lion installer on that hard drive partition. When I attached the hard drive the MBP and booted it up, I selected the Lion installer on the hard drive. The installer started but then quickly simply stopped and said it could not proceed.

So I hooked up the hard drive to my iMac again, erased that partition on the hard drive, and this time tried to install Lion into it. But the iMac would not let me do that because I am running Mountain Lion and I got a message saying that this new Apple OS (ML) cannot run the Lion installer. So I ran the ML installer instead and installed ML onto that partition. After that was completed I shut down my iMac, unplugged the hard drive and plugged it into the MBP. Then I powered up the MBP and it simply booted perfectly into Mountain Lion from the external hard drive. So presumably there is a problem with the internals in this MBP and I now have to decide whether to pay $300 to ship it to Apple for diagnostics.

Unless anyone has an idea of something else I can try?
 
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That's a small positive step that you can boot from an external. But there's an important distinction to be made. To test the MBP disk vs the rest of the components you need to connect the external to the MBP and then install OSX. I.e. you are using the MBP the perform the installation, not the iMac as you are at the moment.

Use liondiskmaker on your iMac to create an installer DVD then use this and the external on your MBP and perform an OSX install to the external.
If this install works and subsequently boots to the external ok then it definitely points to your internal hard disk at fault (a straightforward replacement you could do yourself).
If the install still fails then it's very likely a non-user serviceable part that's at fault
 
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Downloaded Lion and Mountain lion installers. Where from?
 
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That's a small positive step that you can boot from an external. But there's an important distinction to be made. To test the MBP disk vs the rest of the components you need to connect the external to the MBP and then install OSX. I.e. you are using the MBP the perform the installation, not the iMac as you are at the moment.

Use liondiskmaker on your iMac to create an installer DVD then use this and the external on your MBP and perform an OSX install to the external.
If this install works and subsequently boots to the external ok then it definitely points to your internal hard disk at fault (a straightforward replacement you could do yourself).
If the install still fails then it's very likely a non-user serviceable part that's at fault
I booted the MBP from the attached external drive, then ran the ML installer from the external hard drive and aimed it at the MBP's hard drive. Tried twice. First time it made it to 9 minutes then froze. Left it overnight. Second time the install froze again at the 18 minute mark with that same pixelation. Must be some flakey hardware problem. My daughter is still looking for the disks that came with this MBP when I bought it for her. I understand there is a hardware test app on them.

Thanks for the help everyone.
 
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I booted the MBP from the attached external drive, then ran the ML installer from the external hard drive and aimed it at the MBP's hard drive. Tried twice. First time it made it to 9 minutes then froze. Left it overnight. Second time the install froze again at the 18 minute mark with that same pixelation. Must be some flakey hardware problem. My daughter is still looking for the disks that came with this MBP when I bought it for her. I understand there is a hardware test app on them.

Thanks for the help everyone.

Sorry but that isn't what I suggested at all. That's just repeating what you did to start with. You need to install to the external from a DVD as I described, bypassing the internal disk entirely
 
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Sorry but that isn't what I suggested at all. That's just repeating what you did to start with. You need to install to the external from a DVD as I described, bypassing the internal disk entirely
Aha. I only have DVDs up to 4 GB so I will pop out later and pick up a larger one so I can use liondiskmaker to make an installation disk, then I will insert it into the MBP's DVD drive, plug in the external hard drive, and see if I can use the MBP to install ML to the external hard drive from the DVD. Hope I got it right this time.
 

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Don't use a disk, instead buy an 8 GB flash drive and use it for Lion Disk Maker. It's faster and allows you to do it over if you should mess up.
 
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Yes USB Flash Drive is the go as chscag advises. The days of the DVD, even Dual layer, are behind us.
 
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Ran memtest: the RAM is fine. 4 GB.

Managed to get Lion reinstalled on this mid-2010 unibody MacBook (not a Pro) after constant tries. Set it up with my iCloud settings and apps, then made a Carbon Copy Clone.

Tried again to install Mountain Lion with another fresh download from the Apple Mac Store. This time it counted down to zero and I thought it was going to succeed. Then it started going into negative numbers, then the installer jumped back to 34 minutes, crept down to 18, pixelated and froze. Again. Booted from the cloned external hard drive and copied the Lion clone back to the MacBook.

Still trying to find the original install discs so I can run the Apple Hardware Test. Well, at least I'm learning lots about installing OSX and formatting drives.
 
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Found the original box and empty original disk sleeves. The disks have vanished. So, called Apple again. Very helpful. Plan is to install Snow Leopard from new disks, then try Mountain Lion again. This model probably shipped to us with SL, but Internet Recovery kept installing Lion.
 
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Good luck with the various installs but you still don't know where the failure is occurring (internal disk or other internal components). Until you can isolate that I fear you'll not get any closer to a resolution.
 

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Have you tried booting to the installation disk you made - Lion or ML either one - opening Disk Utility, selected the internal drive and run the Verify and Repair on it?

If you're able to install the OS onto another external drive but not the internal drive - pretty clear indication the internal drive is toast.
 
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Thanks guys. I am up and running fine now with Lion on th MB's internal hard drive, which verifies fine. I'll report back after the Snow Leopard and AHT disks get here. I am not yet convinced there is anything wrong with the hardware.
 

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