Chosen Solution
Hi everyone, I am trying to repair my MacBook Air 13” and having nothing but problems. The laptop stopped working and would only come up with the question mark folder on startup. I took my laptop to Apple and they said I needed to replace the SSD, which I have done. This has not fixed the issue. I have tried booting into recovery mode using: CMD + R Alt + CMD + R Shift + Alt + CMD + R None of these options have worked for me and I cannot use internet recovery to download anything, I just get the spinning globe and then the menu with the 4 options “Restore from time machine backup, install iOS, disk Utility” When I am in Disk Utility, my laptop cannot even see the SSD. I only have two options available; disk0 and OS X Base System. I have attempted to create a bootable USB drive with both High Sierra and Yosemite, but I can’t boot to it. I can see the USB in Disk Utility but when I boot the laptop and hold option it does not bring up anything except internet recovery. I have attempted to reinstall the OS from Disk Utility, it works fine until the 3rd screen and then I have no disk drive to select to install to. It’s as though the laptop can’t see its own SSD. Is there anything I have done wrong or missed or is this laptop unrepairable? Hope I have explained this well enough.
Sorry to say you are likely hitting an issue with your systems firmware level as well as what the drive requires for an OS. Let me explain… Apple altered the systems firmware so the newer macOS versions from High Sierra (10.13.x) onwards with APFS Vs the older HFS+ can be accessed. To add to this the SSD you installed requires the newer driver to work within both the firmware update and macOS. When you try to run Internet recovery the system is accessing the older macOS as your systems firmware it telling the Apple server that’s what’s needed. References: Mac startup key combinations To overcome this you need to setup an external drive with the internet supplied OS install getting to something that you can boot-up from (Yosemite or Sierra being the likely offerings). Then you need to upgrade this drives OS to High Sierra or newer. References: How to download macOS Then booting up from this external drive you can now setup your internal drive first formatting it using Disk Utility and then using the newer macOS your external is using.
Hi When I have issues installing MacOS I get another storage device that already has macOS(a compatible version for the device) on it and boot from that. Then once in the OS I download a installer from here https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT211683 that is the same or better version of macOS. Once the installer had downloaded ,open it and install macOS to the SSD that you have just installed. Hopefully this helps Any questions please ask Thanks:-)
