New MacBook Pro User Setup Question

I just got a used late 2011 15" MacBook Pro and am going through the setup process. It seems has been going on the "Setting Up You Mac" screen for about an hour now. Is this normal? Thanks.

Forgot to say this is a later 2011 15" MacBook Pro MD318LL/A, 2.2GHz i7, 4GB Ram, 500GB HD if it helps anyone.


Gregg
Waukesha, WI USA
Late 2011 15" MacBook Pro
2.2GHz i7, 4GB Ram, 500 GB HD, MD318LLmA

W9awx said:

I just got a used late 2011 15" MacBook Pro and am going through the setup process. It seems has been going on the "Setting Up You Mac" screen for about an hour now. Is this normal? Thanks.

Click to expand...

Were you doing a fresh install of the OS? And if so…how did you go about it (steps).

- Nick

When I turned on the laptop for the first time, the setup assistant came up. I entered information about my apple account, network settings, keyboard and location information. It seems to be stuck on this screen for the last 45 minutes.


iPhone 6
iPad 2 wifi
MacBook Pro, Late 2011, 15" MD318LL/A

W9awx said:

When I turned on the laptop for the first time, the setup assistant came up. I entered information about my apple account, network settings, keyboard and location information. It seems to be stuck on this screen for the last 45 minutes.

Click to expand...

I know that you purchased this MacBook Pro recently. Looks like the previous owner wiped the HD…and probably tried to do a "factory reset" of some sort. Since things are "hanging" or stuck for 45 minutes (or more by now)…here's what I would do if it were my computer.

- Shut the computer down. You may need to force it to shut down by pressing & holding down the power button until it shuts off.
- Reboot the computer (press the power button).
- Immediately press the two keys command (the 4-leaf clover looking key) and the r key (command + r).

This will boot the computer into the Recovery Partition. Once booted…you should see a window like this:



- I would then click on the Disk Utility choice…and erase & reformat the drive (Mac OS Extended Journaled).
- Once done…quit Disk Utility.
- Now click on "Reinstall Mac OS X"

Now let it do it's thing…this will probably take a while.

- Nick

Thanks once again Nick. I did the command key codes as asked. It asked for my encryption key, then the setup assistant for about 15 seconds. Some magic words by me. And there she is. Thanks.


iPhone 6
iPad 2 wifi
MacBook Pro, Late 2011, 15" MD318LL/A

W9awx said:

Thanks once again Nick. I did the command key codes as asked. It asked for my encryption key, then the setup assistant for about 15 seconds. Some magic words by me. And there she is. Thanks.

Click to expand...

Holy Smokes…that was fast. Seems like all the info you entered the first time was actually accepted…but somehow the computer got hung up & didn't fully boot. Great to hear everything worked out. I'm sure you're going to give the computer a good test run. Definitely verify that everything is as it's supposed to be (amount of installed ram, size of storage, correct installed CPU & GPU, check that the WiFi works, etc.).

Also…what OS is installed?

Let us know how things turn out.

- Nick

So far so good. Yosemite 10.10.5


iPhone 6
iPad 2 wifi
MacBook Pro, Late 2011, 15" MD318LL/A

Sounds good.

- Nick