On Wednesday, the 29th of April, my MacBook Pro froze up while I was using Discord. I was on my lunch break, so I closed the lid since I was on a time crunch. The fan was still making sound but the screen was blank, so I figured a restart was required. I force powered it off via the power button and was doing the usual clear of the NVRAM (CMD + OPTION + P + R). It must've not registered the P since it went into some internet updated screen on boot. Seeing this, I turned it off and on again to get different boot options, some netting a question mark folder. Shift for safe mode get s me a circle w/ a slash through it. Time machine can detect my external hard drive having a backup from 2021, but not a valid destination on the same drive. I don't want to clear install and lose my files and apps.
My computer is a mid 2015 model that I got in February of 2016. I did replace the battery once in October of 2021. I have a 2TB WD external hard drive (HDD) connected via USB 3.0. I'm not sure if connection makes a difference but I need the Ethernet cable for my work computer.
Attempting to boot from the 10.14.6 it has gave a rainbow pinwheel. Reinstalling Mojave is an option, but I have read that files could still be at risk. At first, Disk Utility got the 16 code for dismount issues. Opening the terminal to dismount and remount work. It took a few restarts, but Disk Utility loaded it all and gave no error message detecting the drive on Thursday the 30th. I have read the screen seeming frozen is normal. The computer wakes up fine and I can move the cursor w/o it changing its appearance. I'm just wondering about timeframes, since it seems longer than search results mentioned to expect and is still on the restoring screen.