2011 MBP - Login Screen Hang / Incorrect Password / System Hang / Folder With ?? On Boot

[prisstratton]

Hi Everyone,

I would like to detail the issues I have been having with my MBP over the last week and the steps I have taken so far.

I appreciate your thoughts and feedback on this problem.

My system description is in my signature. Just further to that, the AMD GPU failed two years ago and I have that disabled via the NVRAM fix on this site. The drive in the system is a Samsung 850 EVO and has been in use for five years, there is more than half the drive still unused. I am running High Sierra 10.13.6 and the drive is formatted as APFS and is encrypted.

Thank you in advance for your kind attention.

Events as follows:

Sunday September 13: Running CCC, it says that my disk has read/write errors and a reboot might fix this. A reboot is done and everything runs normally after that. I ran Disk Utility and it reports no errors.

Thursday September 17: The login screen hangs with the spinning beachball. When it finally accepts my password it says that it is incorrect, several repeat attempts give the same result. I power down and reboot and on re-start get the folder with the question mark.

I boot into Recovery >> Disk Utility and the APFS container and Macintosh HD partition are both missing (view was set to “All Devices”).

I boot using my CCC backup. Once the system is running I am prompted for my password for Macintosh HD, the drive is visible and accessible and everything looks normal. I purchased a new SSD and proceed to clone to the drive and get it setup. Later that evening the system hangs and I switch back to the original drive. Everything runs okay for a few days.

Sunday September 20: I experienced the same hang at the login screen, after a power down it accepts my password on the next attempt.

I ran virus and malware scans on the system and found nothing.

At this point my next move was to reinstall High Sierra. But I am starting to suspect that the hard drive cable might be the problem……thoughts on that ?? Is there something else I should have done ??

Please note: I will be unavailable for the rest of today and will be able to respond again on Monday A.M. (Central Standard Time).

Thank you.

 

[Juicy Box]

Maybe the system is corrupt?

I would try a free install and use the migration assistant to migrate your files.

I had a similar issue with a failing HDD before.

My iMac kept having issues that were textbook failing HDD symptoms. The issues got progressively worse with time. The Mac was under warranty, but the Apple Store refused to replace the HDD due to it passing their HW Diagnostic Test.

They would just wipe the drive and reinstall the OS, but after a while the system would become corrupt again.

It was like there were bad sectors on the boot drive, and when the Apple "Genius" would wipe it, the data written wasn't on the bad parts. After using the Mac for a while, those portions would eventually become used, and then the problems would appear.

The time it took for the iMac to become unusable would shorten with each visit to the Apple Store, to the point that it the Mac stopped working after a few days after visiting the Apple Store.

The final time was 12 days before my warranty was over, the drive totally failed and corrupted the boot loader with it. It would boot in Internet Recovery, external boot drives, or anything. The Genius tried for hours to get their diagnostic tool to boot, and when it finally did, the HDD finally failed their test.

They finally replaced the drive.

I am unsure if that is your issue, but if your system was corrupted it could explain the issues you are having.

 

[prisstratton]

Thank you for your response.

My next step is to re-install the system, so I will see if that fixes things.