Omnibus response...
Thanks, but no thanks. Since the iBook seems to be bricked, you might pile some dirt on the keyboard and plant ivy.
Keeping stuff together...
|I found out that the reason the Macbook Pro I am looking at is an open box and returned so soon is b/c the person who bought it wanted a touch bar instead so returned it to the shop for a different model.
Forever the sceptic, I don't buy that.
Had the original purchaser bought the 2016 model I could see the mind change and upgrade, but since se went for the $200 cheaper 2015 model in the first place, I'll scratch my head.
At any rate, the same MBP is available from the
Apple Refurbished Store for $1,099 as I type.
And last, but not least, back to square one...
If these steps can be followed, they should get your MBP working with no need for your external drive:
- Boot from your external.
- Navigate to Disk Utility.
- If it appears in DU's sidebar, select your MBP's "Macintosh Hard Drive" (or whatever it's called). (Don't select the top line, i.e. the HDD, itself, but the one immediately below it.) (*)
- Click on the "Erase" tab.
- If you're offered options, select "Write all zeros".
- Let 'er rip, and be prepared to wait a while.
- Since you've got a bootable external, I assume that you've got a cloning app, so now clone your external back to your MBP.
- If Steve Jobs is smiling up on Olympus, the MBP should now be good to go on its own.
(*) Erasing only your OS X volume, not your entire HDD, will preserve your recovery partition.