2010 MBP refusing High Sierra

[kahlil88]

Customer brought me a MBP that stopped booting. HDD checks out, the SystemVersion.plist shows 10.15.7, so I backup the HDD and try to re-install only to discover it won't boot Catalina or Mojave (verbose mode says not supported). This was when I realized it's a 2010 model and had to assume the OS was installed with the dosdude patcher. I booted my patched installer and ran the post-install tools, still not booting (gives the 🚫 symbol). Now I'm thinking maybe it needs the APFS BootROM update and tried installing High Sierra but it fails at the firmware phase, which would seem to confirm my hypothesis.

Maybe it will never boot Catalina again, but I'd like to at least get High Sierra running on it.

 

[ryanmillercg]

Customer brought me a MBP that stopped booting. HDD checks out, the SystemVersion.plist shows 10.15.7, so I backup the HDD and try to re-install only to discover it won't boot Catalina or Mojave (verbose mode says not supported). This was when I realized it's a 2010 model and had to assume the OS was installed with the dosdude patcher. I booted my patched installer and ran the post-install tools, still not booting (gives the 🚫 symbol). Now I'm thinking maybe it needs the APFS BootROM update and tried installing High Sierra but it fails at the firmware phase, which would seem to confirm my hypothesis.

Maybe it will never boot Catalina again, but I'd like to at least get High Sierra running on it.

High Sierra should be compatible with a 2010 Macbook Pro according to https://support.apple.com/kb/sp765?locale=en_CA

Have you tried a plain USB installer for High Sierra? Wipe the drive (maybe not APFS, because that's more for SSDs than HDDs) then install. I've found internet recovery installers will fail if the user didn't sign out of their Apple account before-hand.

 

[FNH15]

Customer brought me a MBP that stopped booting. HDD checks out, the SystemVersion.plist shows 10.15.7, so I backup the HDD and try to re-install only to discover it won't boot Catalina or Mojave (verbose mode says not supported). This was when I realized it's a 2010 model and had to assume the OS was installed with the dosdude patcher. I booted my patched installer and ran the post-install tools, still not booting (gives the 🚫 symbol). Now I'm thinking maybe it needs the APFS BootROM update and tried installing High Sierra but it fails at the firmware phase, which would seem to confirm my hypothesis.

Maybe it will never boot Catalina again, but I'd like to at least get High Sierra running on it.

Try a really early OS (like Lion or even Snow Leopard) and then try updating it to HS - might be able to force it to update the firmware that way...

 

[kahlil88]

Tried clean install of High Sierra from USB as well as updating from clean install of El Cap. I read somewhere that firmware updates can fail if the hard drive isn't original so I've been using the original 500GB from my 2012 MBP.

Firmware package linked on dosdude's website won't install. Tried installing manually with sudo bless -mount / -firmware <firmwarepath> and it at least tried. Blank screen, rapid blinking LED and recognizable firmware update tone... but after 30 minutes I got concerned and had to force shutoff and power cycle a few times before it would boot again.