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Upgraded to Catalina. I get to the login screen, entered my password and it keeps spinning. I went through internet recovery steps and booted in safe mode with help from Apple support with no luck. It is a MacBook Pro 15 in mid 2012. Is this hopeless or does anyone have any ideas
[Re-Titled by Moderator]
MacBook Pro 15", OS X 10.10
Sounds like a hard drive failure to me since an OS install can really stress an old hard drive. If you feel these steps are beyond your comfort or skill level, then take the laptop to an Apple Store or an Apple Authorized Service Provider to be examined to confirm the source of the problem. While this laptop is considered Obsolete (or is it Vintage?) you may not be able to have it repaired by an Apple store, but an independent AASP may be willing to repair and/or upgrade the drive and memory for you. If the hard drive is failing as I suspect, then replacing it with an SSD would provide a nice performance boost giving the laptop some new life.
Edit: I should add that checking the health of the hard drive as I described earlier by using a Knoppix USB drive isn't that difficult (hardest part may be creating the bootable USB drive). As for replacing or upgrading a hard drive, it is very easy to do on this particular model.
Sounds like a hard drive failure to me since an OS install can really stress an old hard drive. If you feel these steps are beyond your comfort or skill level, then take the laptop to an Apple Store or an Apple Authorized Service Provider to be examined to confirm the source of the problem. While this laptop is considered Obsolete (or is it Vintage?) you may not be able to have it repaired by an Apple store, but an independent AASP may be willing to repair and/or upgrade the drive and memory for you. If the hard drive is failing as I suspect, then replacing it with an SSD would provide a nice performance boost giving the laptop some new life.
Edit: I should add that checking the health of the hard drive as I described earlier by using a Knoppix USB drive isn't that difficult (hardest part may be creating the bootable USB drive). As for replacing or upgrading a hard drive, it is very easy to do on this particular model.
I'm assuming Apple had you run Disk Utility First Aid from Recovery Mode and had you reinstall macOS? Did you erase the drive?
I suspect you may have a failing hard drive. If you cannot boot to macOS, then the easiest way to check the health of the drive is by creating a bootable Knoppix Linux USB drive using Etcher (Mac/Windows/Linux). Option Boot the USB drive and select the orange icon labeled "EFI".
Once at the Knoppix desktop, click on the "Start" menu in the lower left of the Taskbar and navigate to "System Tools --> GSmartControl". Within the GSmartControl app double-click on the internal laptop drive icon which will open up the health report for the drive. Post a copy of the complete report here either as a picture or using the "Additional Text" icon which looks like a piece of paper.
Thank you Kaz-k. I am embarrassed to say I am a novice for Mac repair. Since I can’t get my computer to boot how can I make the bootable drive? I have an IPad and IPhone but no other working Mac. It sounds like this may be beyond my skill level.
Sorry yes Apple did have me run disk utilities from recovery mode and reinstall. I was able to get to where you enter your pass code but it just kept spinning. Everything was working fine until I attempted to upgrade from Yosemite to Catalina.
I get to the login screen, enter my password and it keeps spinning
