What if my Mac won't start up after the factory reset failed

I tried to do a factory reset by erasing through recovery mode, but it said the process failed. But when I tried to get out of recovery mode and start up my Mac, it said to select a hard drive to restart, I selected the only option: Macintosh HD and then it never loaded, decided to manually turn it off with the power button. Now it won't start up, it says I “restarted because of a problem” and to press a button or wait, then it makes the startup noise, shows the Apple logo and a loading bar with only a tiny bit loaded and then it turns off, starts again with the “restarted because of a problem” page and repeats the whole cycle. Anything helps, thanks.

Best Answered by

Amanda Wong

Answered on Tuesday, August 22, 2023

It seems that the Macintosh HD has been damaged so you can not erase it and Mac can't boot up from it. If so, you should repair the drive first and then try to reformat it again.

The error Disk Utility won't let you erase hard drive issue may occur to both the external hard drive and the Mac internal drive namely Macintosh HD by default. When you fail to erase the Macintosh HD, you can try these solutions:

Repair Macintosh HD with Disk Utility's First Aid:

Boot Mac into macOS Recovery Mode.
Launch Disk Utility and select your Mac hard drive from the left sidebar.
Click First Aid at the top, then hit Run.

Format Macintosh HD in Internet Recovery Mode:

Shut down the Mac and press and hold Command + Option + R or Command + Shift + Option + R to enter Internet Recovery Mode.
Select Disk Utility and choose the Macintosh HD.
Then click the Erase button to reformat Macintosh HD.