I have posted about my husband's mid-2010 13" Macbook Pro before and got helpful information, so I thought I'd try again. He was trying to run an update, and after updating, the computer got stuck on the opening screen and wouldn't budge. We tried a number of things, including resetting PRAM, etc, and nothing worked. Of note: it doesn't seem to recognize any of the usual keyboard shortcuts during startup except Command -R (which also does not seem to be working now). Then it stopped recognizing the startup disk, so we took a shot in the dark and installed a new hard drive.
I created a bootable USB stick but trying Option plus start doesn't get the screen where you select which drive to start from. (I tested the USB stick in my own Macbook and it works fine.) And while trying all of this stuff, we stopped being able to go directly to the Recovery utilities and now it's going into Internet Recovery mode instead.
Can any of the wise people here think of things we can try to get this thing back up and running? It is used solely for browsing the internet and watching Netflix, and it seems ridiculous to pour much money into it, but given the cost of a replacement...
Alternatively, if it's beyond salvaging at this point, can anyone recommend a replacement that has a similarly awesome display and won't break the bank?