Old Mac Book Pro…fix or replace???

[EchoStache]

My hand me down 2012 Mac Book Pro will not boot up. When I key in my password, it loads for several minutes. When it gets to the end of the status bar, it shuts off. When I turn back on, I am prompted for pass word, then does the same thing. Rather than pinch in password, I have the option to restart or power off. After either/both of those, i get a password prompt and it does the same thing. So no matter what I do, it prompts for PW, loads for a while, then blank screen. Have to push power button which repeats the issue.

Is it time to *gulp* buy a new one? 😭

[fell-like-rain]

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207019

TL;DR: Run Disk Utility, and if that doesn't work, reinstall the OS.

[EchoStache]

Wife managed to fix....she did reinstall the OS.  Typing on it now.  Dodged a bullet..here's hoping for another 5 years from this 10 year old Mac.  She would have wanted me to get a new Mac Book Air...$$$$$$$.  I probably would have gotten a cheap chrome book for $300.  So saved at least that much! 

[alsoknownasDean]

here's hoping for another 5 years from this 10 year old Mac.

Only if you're open to using Linux once you're no longer able to update to a supported version of macOS.

[Archipelago]

Hi, you may be able to breathe some new life into the Mac by upgrading the hard drive to an SSD, and adding some RAM as well. I did that with my wife's computer not long ago (same year computer as yours). It was very much worthwhile and cheap as well.

[alsoknownasDean]

Hi, you may be able to breathe some new life into the Mac by upgrading the hard drive to an SSD, and adding some RAM as well. I did that with my wife's computer not long ago (same year computer as yours). It was very much worthwhile and cheap as well.

This is possible if it's the non-retina display model. The retina display models have RAM soldered to the motherboard and bespoke SSDs.

Honestly ten years is a decent run, and it's likely that this machine is running macOS Catalina that goes out of support later this year.

[seattlecyclone]

I recently replaced a MacBook Pro of the same vintage. I was constantly needing to close tabs and restart my browser because the computer was running out of memory. The battery life had really gone down. Everything was sluggish in comparison to my new one. I was using an unsupported OS version because the latest supported version was noticeably slower than that. It was time.

[ChpBstrd]

Is it time to *gulp* buy a new one? 😭

No.

Your Pro is 3 years newer than my base Macbook, so you can expect at least another 2 years out of it, depending on your needs to edit videos and whatnot.

I installed Catalina on my '09 Macbook using software by http://dosdude1.com/catalina/. No issues and I have a currently supported Mac OS on an old laptop. That said, my laptop does have an SSD and 8GB RAM and it's plenty snappy for me with its Core 2 duo. I was tempted to install Linux and stop worrying about RAM and processor speed forever, but opted to just update OSX.