Chosen Solution
Currently having the same issue. New MacBook Pro with slow internet loading. Installed new OS (Mountain Lion). Still slow. Accidentally did a SMC thinking it would make it faster without backing it up first. It reset the computer and brought up options to re-install OS. Shows disk needs to be repaired, but the computer can’t repair it. I need the apps on it, I don’t have a disk for them. Both recovery disk and Macintosh disk are lock and unable to just re-install. Apple is saying they can’t figure it out and we need to reset = erase it Is there a way around it!?? Please help
You’re facing the shoe cobblers conundrum here just like he can’t resole your shoes with you in them ;-} Basically, you’ll need to boot up under a second bootable drive to then run Disk Utility from it to fix your internal drive.
Replace the hard drive/IR cable with the one from the 2012 model. MacBook Pro 13" Unibody (Mid 2012) Hard Drive Cable
I had the same problem. I had to first boot up in Recovery Mode, use it to install OS X on an external drive, then boot up on the external drive, and use Disk Utility to reformat the internal HD to Mac OS X Extended (Journaled). After that, I was able to boot up again in Recovery Mode and reinstall OS X on the internal HD.
