OS X won't boot- dreaded "no" sign upon startup

[Tubamajuba]

Everything was running very smoothly for me on my Mac until I decided I wanted to get rid of all previous Office versions (2011 and 2016 preview) before installing the final version of 2016. I used AppCleaner to remove all files related to Office, then I restarted. And that's the last thing OS X did for me. I went into Recovery mode and did the first aid, but it didn't fix anything.

Lost data isn't really an issue for me. I have a slightly dated Time Machine backup, but I can access my files from Windows so nothing is lost. I would like to get my disk bootable again if possible, however.

Does anybody have any ideas I could try? Thanks in advance.

 

[chrfr]

Does anybody have any ideas I could try? Thanks in advance.

You can reinstall OS X from the recovery partition. That's probably the fastest way to revive your computer.

 

[Tubamajuba]

You can reinstall OS X from the recovery partition. That's probably the fastest way to revive your computer.

Thanks, that's exactly what I'll do.

Somewhat unrelated question- does all data from previous time machine backups of older installations of OS X remain intact? If I do a fresh install and set up a Time Machine backup, I want to make sure data that doesn't exist in my new installation but does exist in older backups remains intact.

 

[chrfr]

Thanks, that's exactly what I'll do.

Somewhat unrelated question- does all data from previous time machine backups of older installations of OS X remain intact? If I do a fresh install and set up a Time Machine backup, I want to make sure data that doesn't exist in my new installation but does exist in older backups remains intact.

This won't affect your backup and you probably don't need to do a clean install. Running the installer through Recovery should just replace whatever necessary files you deleted; just don't erase the disk before you install.

 

[Tubamajuba]

This won't affect your backup and you probably don't need to do a clean install. Running the installer through Recovery should just replace whatever necessary files you deleted; just don't erase the disk before you install.

Oh, gotcha. Even better than I thought! Thanks for the info, I'm starting the reinstall now.