Try Disk Utility first. If that doesn't solve things, you can reinstall the OS. The software is downloaded from Apple and installed automatically; no disks were provided nor needed for Mountain Lion.
Shame on both of us, Jon, for forgetting to advise Rita to rerun "Repair Disk" until she got either an "all clear" or a persistent, uncorrectable error.
The reinstall did not make a difference. Hardware test was negative. I'm thinking about going to the Genius Bar to see what's up because it does start up and show the logo and it chimes but I can't get past that. I did run disk utility from the recovery and everything was fine. I tried to go online via recovery but all I got was the Beachball after I got to apple.com I could really go anywhere.
MacBook Pro - M2, Ventura 13.6 Safari Tech Prev 17.0 Safari 16.6 Firefox 116.0.2 iPhone 7 Version 15.8
