Chosen Solution
Hello, I replaced my original hard drive with a new SSD drive using the guide on this site. Everything went smoothly. Now when I turn it on all that shows up on the screen is a blinking question mark. I have the old drive backed up with time machine on an external hard drive, when I plug that in, nothing happens. I also tried using the original snow leopard install DVD that came with the computer and it just spins for a minute in the DVD drive and then ejects. Any ideas on how to get this up and running?
Can you power it off, hold the option/alt key, and power it on? Alternatively, you may want to use recovery mode. This can be used to completely erase and restore the new hard drive. Press CMD and R and hold while powering on to do that. You should be able to release these keys a moment after you hear the chime.
Here’s a good reference: Mac startup key combinations Sadly, your system predates Internet recovery so that won’t work and of course as you don’t have nothing installed on the SSD yet you don’t have the hidden recovery partition installed either. Connect your hard drive via SATA to USB adapter and then restart your system but press the Option (⌥) key to get to the Startup Manager and now select your HD as the boot drive. Then you should be able to run Disk Utility to prep your drive and then run the OS installer from your HDD. As an option you could also setup your system in Target Disk Mode and then from a second system connected via FireWire prep and install the drive from your other system.
