MacBook Pro EFI Firmware Update 1.7 Problems

[reubs]

What I did when I first installed a new one was I completely cloned my internal to the drive that I planned on putting into the machine. After I got the new drive in the machine, I reset the PRAM upon first boot, and I have had very few (if any problems) at all with it.

I don't know if resetting the PRAM was really the fix, but I'm not having any of the problems I had the first time I tried to do this.

 

[taoke]

I managed to downgrade to EFI 1.6 by booting from a CD. I have no idea why it did not work when booting from a USB.

Anyway, the 120GB OWC Mercury Extreme Pro 6G SSD appears to be extremely stable on EFI 1.6. The system was far from usable on EFI 1.7.

The Apple store also replaced my SATA cable which made no difference whilst on EFI 1.7.

 

[andreiru]

I had a logic board replaced and major freezes / beach balls appeared, rendering Lion unusable. Disabling FileVault 2 made it useable. Only prolonged writes / reads bring beach balls. Copying a file from an external FireWire drive intensifies the problem. Almost impossible to copy anything. This is on a mid'09 2.53 MBP running Lion & OWC sata 2 SSD. Overall the system is usable now as beach balls are rare. I definitely want them gone completely, of course. So the general consensus is that this EFI 1.6 fixes the beach balls for good? What side effects are there in downgrading? Is the later EFI still 1.7? Are you saying that mid-'09 MBPs only supported sata 1 prior to EFI 1.7?

 

[andreiru]

Downgraded to 1.6 and the freezes have completely stopped. However the file transfer speed was cut in half too as it now shows a connection speed of SATA 1 - of 1.5 instead of 3Gbit/s.

This is just in figures though and there is no evident hit to performance, only now the system is more stable, so I'll be keeping the downgrade, it looks. This is regrettable but better than having beach balls. Boots just as fast, or faster, and can copy files at 100MB/s (instead of 200MB/s, although with EFI 1.7 it still copying at 100MB/s - perhaps because of an incompatibility in EFI 1.7 and some of the logic boards). This issue only appeared after the logic board replacement. Which tells me that somehow it could be that not all logic boards in 2009 MBP's are affected...

 

[DtHerold]

I had problems with my SSD (Crucial M4) in combination with my MBP mid2009 and EFI 1.7 myself. The ONLY way to solve the EFI 1.7 problems is to put the SSD in the Optibay and leave the HDD where it is. After that the SSD will work with SATA2.

I suppose there is a 'problem' with the SATA connection where the HDD is usually placed. So if you own a cheap chinese Optibay or an original one - give it a try.

Hope that helps.

 

[exiledwombat]

I replaced my mid 2009 15" Macbook Pro hdd with WD Scorpio Blue. System started to freeze for 15 seconds every 10-15 minutes.

A friend of mine gave me his Fujitsu SATA I hdd and everything worked perfectly fine. So I downgraded to 1.6 EFI, bought another WD (Scorpio Black at this time) and replaced Fujitsu with it. OS X Lion runs absolutely flawless now. WD Scorpio Blue is in my PS3 system, although it should also work great in a mac after downgrade.

My macbook is living a new life. Huge thanks for the dmg!

 

[kulcha]

I'm on EFI 1.6 & the SSD works flawlessly. Tried to insulate using aluminium foil and electric tape, still getting beach ball on 1.7. I'm back on 1.6 again

 

[robaroo]

i just performed this EF1 1.7 > 1.6 downgrade on my MacBookPro5,4 running latest version of lion and my hd is working great now. i had recently installed a wd7500bpkt and was getting beach balls every 15 mins especially when playing movies and multitasking. the problems have not occurred in last 24 hours of use. will report back in a week if problems come up again. otherwise, may not repost again since mbp is working fine. hope apple fixes the efi issues with 1.7 as this workaround is kind of annoying.

i used the install instructions found at: https://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?p=8414998&posted=1#post8414998

and the restore file found at: http://hotfile.com/dl/109001076/5dfaf39/aluminum.macbook.pro.recovery.dmg.html

 

[ricardosoli]

Several months ago I inherited my wife's MacBook Pro 5,4 and installed a 1 Tb Samsung HDD (HM100UI). I suffered silently with the beachball (I thought it was the "rainbow wheel of death"?) for months, but at some point it just became unbearable. I searched all around for a solution, but never found this thread.

After 3 visits to the Genius Bar, 1 replacement HDD from Samsung, 1 visit to an Apple Authorized Service Center (ClickAway), 1 replacement SATA controller cable, I thought I was in fat city. Everything seemed good for about a week or two, and then suddenly everything came to a screeching halt again. I started experiencing the beachball very frequently, and then soon after I couldn't even boot up.

I finally stumbled upon this thread and a couple of associated threads on the Apple support forum tonight (searched for "macbook pro bad disk controller"). I promptly downgraded my EFI firmware to 1.6, et voila! I can boot up again! So far, so good--no beachballs so far.

So frustrated that I wasted so much time on this issue. Thanks to everyone who contributed to diagnosing the problem and posting the firmware downgrade file and instructions--I'm glad to finally have a working computer again.

 

[kulcha]

Several months ago I inherited my wife's MacBook Pro 5,4 and installed a 1 Tb Samsung HDD (HM100UI). I suffered silently with the beachball (I thought it was the "rainbow wheel of death"?) for months, but at some point it just became unbearable. I searched all around for a solution, but never found this thread.

After 3 visits to the Genius Bar, 1 replacement HDD from Samsung, 1 visit to an Apple Authorized Service Center (ClickAway), 1 replacement SATA controller cable, I thought I was in fat city. Everything seemed good for about a week or two, and then suddenly everything came to a screeching halt again. I started experiencing the beachball very frequently, and then soon after I couldn't even boot up.

I finally stumbled upon this thread and a couple of associated threads on the Apple support forum tonight (searched for "macbook pro bad disk controller"). I promptly downgraded my EFI firmware to 1.6, et voila! I can boot up again! So far, so good--no beachballs so far.

So frustrated that I wasted so much time on this issue. Thanks to everyone who contributed to diagnosing the problem and posting the firmware downgrade file and instructions--I'm glad to finally have a working computer again.

cheers!

 

[hellbent]

ok so im trying to do this to my machine right now...ive got a usb thumb drive i tried to reformat for it but when i go into disk utility theres no option to format in Mac OSX HFS+, how do i do this?

edit:I tried to do it using mac osx (journaled) and then after i selected the source and destination and pushed restore it came up with a message that said:
Restore Failure
Could not find any scan information. The source image needs to be image scanned before it can be restored

 

[hellbent]

ok so im trying to do this to my machine right now...ive got a usb thumb drive i tried to reformat for it but when i go into disk utility theres no option to format in Mac OSX HFS+, how do i do this?

edit:I tried to do it using mac osx (journaled) and then after i selected the source and destination and pushed restore it came up with a message that said:
Restore Failure
Could not find any scan information. The source image needs to be image scanned before it can be restored

ok ive gotten all of that figured out now...i scanned the image, and copied it to the drive. Now when i try to reboot from the disk only the logo for my internal HDD comes up and not the thumb drive

 

[kulcha]

I'm on EFI 1.6 & the SSD works flawlessly. Tried to insulate using aluminium foil and electric tape, still getting beach ball on 1.7. I'm back on 1.6 again

I ordered i7 15" HDD flex cable, no problem now on EFI 1.7 with SDD in HDD bay and another HDD on optical bay. Hope this helps for those who are still on EFI 1.6.

 

[Gary Z]

I successfully ran a retro-firmware changing it from 1.7 to 1.6 and my WD 500GB 7200rpm Scorpio Black now works perfectly. Fast, silent and effective. Thanks to everyone for the painstaking work done to figure out the problem. It's so odd because Apple states that Firmware 1.7 is meant to fix the exact issue that some but not all users were having with the faster SATA drives.

Now I just have to remember to never update from 1.6 until there is a 1.8 or some new version that is proven to work.

Thanks,

Gary

Several months ago I inherited my wife's MacBook Pro 5,4 and installed a 1 Tb Samsung HDD (HM100UI). I suffered silently with the beachball (I thought it was the "rainbow wheel of death"?) for months, but at some point it just became unbearable. I searched all around for a solution, but never found this thread.

After 3 visits to the Genius Bar, 1 replacement HDD from Samsung, 1 visit to an Apple Authorized Service Center (ClickAway), 1 replacement SATA controller cable, I thought I was in fat city. Everything seemed good for about a week or two, and then suddenly everything came to a screeching halt again. I started experiencing the beachball very frequently, and then soon after I couldn't even boot up.

I finally stumbled upon this thread and a couple of associated threads on the Apple support forum tonight (searched for "macbook pro bad disk controller"). I promptly downgraded my EFI firmware to 1.6, et voila! I can boot up again! So far, so good--no beachballs so far.

So frustrated that I wasted so much time on this issue. Thanks to everyone who contributed to diagnosing the problem and posting the firmware downgrade file and instructions--I'm glad to finally have a working computer again.

 

[gcycles]

Good day everyone,

This is my first post here, as I landed with the same issue. About 6 months, my mac started behaving weird: I get the ball while viewing Youtube , HDD clicks, stalls etc. You know the drill.

I have a Macbook Pro, mid-2009, Macbook Pro 5.2
17 inch, 2.8 core 2 duo, 500 GB with FUJITSU MJA2500BH FFS G1 hard drive.

I have read a lot of the comments, and tried a lot of the workarounds.

Booting with the Aluminum_MacBook_Pro_Recovery on a stick does not work, I get the circle, that represents the file UnsupportedHW.png. I guess there is no downgrade for me.

Next, I tried a method described here: http://pubmem.wordpress.com/2011/04/09/flash-efi-firmware-update-manually-on-a-macbook-51/

The command to mount the file is: sudo bless -mount / -firmware /Applications/Utilities/MacBook EFI Firmware Update.app/Contents/MB51_007D_03B_LOCKED.scap

Apparently there is a way to mount an EFI image ROM and then force an flashing of the chip, however I tried with the file in EFI update 1.6 and nothing happened. I think I am missing something.

So, please, anyone with the same computer, what can I do?
What worked for you? I'm willing to replace the HDD.

PS: Does installing Lion help sort out this issue?

I am becoming desperate....

 

[Brenster]

Good day everyone,

This is my first post here, as I landed with the same issue. About 6 months, my mac started behaving weird: I get the ball while viewing Youtube , HDD clicks, stalls etc. You know the drill.

I have a Macbook Pro, mid-2009, Macbook Pro 5.2
17 inch, 2.8 core 2 duo, 500 GB with FUJITSU MJA2500BH FFS G1 hard drive.

I have read a lot of the comments, and tried a lot of the workarounds.

Booting with the Aluminum_MacBook_Pro_Recovery on a stick does not work, I get the circle, that represents the file UnsupportedHW.png. I guess there is no downgrade for me.

Next, I tried a method described here: http://pubmem.wordpress.com/2011/04/09/flash-efi-firmware-update-manually-on-a-macbook-51/

The command to mount the file is: sudo bless -mount / -firmware /Applications/Utilities/MacBook EFI Firmware Update.app/Contents/MB51_007D_03B_LOCKED.scap

Apparently there is a way to mount an EFI image ROM and then force an flashing of the chip, however I tried with the file in EFI update 1.6 and nothing happened. I think I am missing something.

So, please, anyone with the same computer, what can I do?
What worked for you? I'm willing to replace the HDD.

PS: Does installing Lion help sort out this issue?

I am becoming desperate....

Ok, last things first. No, Lion does not help either as in place upgrade from Snow Leopard or as a new install. I've tried both with the same results.

The following instructions worked for me, and are a repost from whoever posted them initially earlier in this thread (Note I performed this on a 15" mid-2009 MacBook Pro 2.53GHz, not a 17" variant):

"Alright, here is my take on the russian instructions, tested and worked thank the lord.

Idiot proof version coming soon.

1337 version ( those who know their way around in mac)

1) Download the linked .dmg file.

http://rapidshare.com/files/27518861...o_Recovery.dmg

2) do not mount file

3) plug in a usb drive any size

4) REformat this USB drive in Mac OSX HFS+ Journaled in disk utility.

5) Click on the newly formatted drive Volume, then click on the tab restore (same row as erase).

6) in this panel you will see two white input boxes, in source you will browse and select the .dmg downloaded in step 1, you can either brose it or drag and drop it in the source bow.

7) in the Destination box, drag and drop the newly formatted Volume from step 4/5

* no need to have the erase destination box checked/ticked.

8) hit the restore button/

9) once this is done, unplug and replug the usb drive, shut down the machine

10) boot up the machine while its booting up, before the apple icon pops up, press and hold the OPTION button until your drives/partitions pop up.

11) in my case i had three pop up, my bootcamp partition my main mac harddrive, and the BOOTABLE USB drive i just made, select the bootable USB drive (yellow orangish color) Use Arrows to navigate and Enter button to select

12) once this is selected the apple logo will come up and a dark gray bar will start to move right under it. Sit relax and wait for the process to be done.

END: you have now downgraded to EFI firmware 1.6

If you get this error

"Image Error:

Could not find any scan information. The source image needs to be imagescanned before it can be restored."

Click on the image file in the list on the left and then click on Image in the menu and then on Scan Image for Restore. After that, everything should go smoothly.

Thanks to SmAcDuff for pointing out the solution to the Image scan error."

 

[gcycles]

Thank you for pointing out the steps for me, but I have already tried this. It does not work, as I said, when booting from the USB stick, I get the "access forbidden" sign

and there is no other message or progress bar.

I must add I have disabled bluetooth and have also disabled the Sudden Motion Sensor.

Please tell me what can I do, and to what effect:

1. Try to burn the "Aluminium_" boot rom file on a CD and boot from there?
2. Swap hard drive with a newer one - which ones have you people found to be the most compatible with this stalling problem?

3. Put back Leopard, as opposed to Snow Leopard which I have now?

4. Although my laptop has no more warranty, phone Apple and ask for a solution, even if am from Romania and there is no official Apple here, only subcontractors.

Thank you

 

[Brenster]

Thank you for pointing out the steps for me, but I have already tried this. It does not work, as I said, when booting from the USB stick, I get the "access forbidden" sign Image and there is no other message or progress bar.

I must add I have disabled bluetooth and have also disabled the Sudden Motion Sensor.

Please tell me what can I do, and to what effect:

1. Try to burn the "Aluminium_" boot rom file on a CD and boot from there?
2. Swap hard drive with a newer one - which ones have you people found to be the most compatible with this stalling problem?

3. Put back Leopard, as opposed to Snow Leopard which I have now?

4. Although my laptop has no more warranty, phone Apple and ask for a solution, even if am from Romania and there is no official Apple here, only subcontractors.

Thank you

If it's not a silly question, exactly which file are you burning out to USB? If the file you've burned won't work from USB, it won't work from CD either. Either the image you've burned isn't bootable, the image itself is corrupted or your USB stick is at fault.

Are you definately using the same file as can be found at http://hotfile.com/dl/109001076/5dfaf39/aluminum.macbook.pro.recovery.dmg.html (link coutesy of Rabaroo earlier in the thread). If this file doesn't work for you then it's likely the firmware it contains isn't appropriate for your 17" machine.

Changing the HDD or reverting to an even earlier of OSX won't help with the firmware downgrade - the downgrade & firmware it imprints works independently of them both.

It may well be the the downgrade image we've all burned and used is specific to the 15" mid-2009 EFI firmware - your 17" machine may be rejecting it due to the downgrade firmware in question being inappropriate for your specific model.

 

[gcycles]

I guess it is the same file. Will try again, with another usb device. I thought that it worked on 17's too, I guess maybe not.

If this fails though, what can I _really_ do to improve my Mac's behavior? Thanks

 

[davidlv]

I guess it is the same file. Will try again, with another usb device. I thought that it worked on 17's too, I guess maybe not.

If this fails though, what can I _really_ do to improve my Mac's behavior? Thanks

I am not going to reread the whole thread to confirm this, but I seem to remember that this issue is only seen on the 15" 2009 MBP. Your issues may be due to a different problem, probably a bad HDD or maybe the SATA cable.
Try a different HDD first, then if the issue is exactly the same try a new cable.

I had various issues with a Scorpio Blue HD, fixed that by swapping for a Seagate Momentous 500GB 7,200 rpm drive (later changed to the Hitachi, but the Seagate worked fine). The Scorpio Blue worked fine in a USB case, but it had serious beachball issues when installed internally (probably power saving setting-related).

Remember, not all HDD issues are due to the firmware.

 

[danwayfilms]

I spent almost a month with this problem on my mid 2009 15 in.

I took it to the Apple store and showed them exactly what was going on and how it was an issue with the computer, but they would not hear it because I had swapped the hard drive.

I even asked them if they would upgrade the hard drive with an APPLE OEM hard drive but they wouldn't even consider it. They told me they couldn't do ANYTHING because i swapped the original hard drive.

Luckily everything works now that i'm on 1.6. I just wish they would've fixed this. I have to constantly remember not to allow software update to install the upgrade.

 

[gcycles]

OK, I understand all these problems.

So, for now, I am going to replace my HDD cable.
Please tell me how can I find one Is there a part number, model number, replacement part ID?
better yet, is this cable generic or special to Apple?

Thank you

 

[kulcha]

OK, I understand all these problems.

So, for now, I am going to replace my HDD cable.
Please tell me how can I find one Is there a part number, model number, replacement part ID?
better yet, is this cable generic or special to Apple?

Thank you

for my case, i've a friend who is using 15" i7, i got his S/N and ordered the part.

 

[gcycles]

The Apple representative in RO will not sell me any parts prior to an inspection made by them, which is free. I guess I will do that.

If it helps diagnose my problem, the extended HW test reported no errors.

 

[ddurmus]

I just changed the hdd cable on my 2009 macbook pro with a 2010 hdd cable bought from ifixit.com, and I can confirm that the 1.7 update works without any issues now. I have a OWC ssd installed and previously it wouldn't even boot up with the 1.7 and had to downgrade to 1.6.
Haven't noticed any sleep lag, or spinning beach ball so hoping that those were caused by the hd cable as well.