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2011 MBP won't boot into OS X but runs windows

E

erbster

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Nov 15, 2011
10
0
I have a 2011 15" MBP running OS X 10.9.5 on an SSD I fitted about a year ago. Just recently I went to start it up- had gone flat in sleep, so I charged for a bit and then tried to boot (away from power). Get familiar bong, Apple logo and several shades of grey background and then a blank screen and cursor. Was able to bootcamp into windows (partition on same drive). Then launched recovery tool ( another partition on same drive) and did repair disk. Also repaired permissions. Still wouldn't boot. Tried resetting smc and pram (twice), all to no avail.

The original drive is fitted in the optical bay, but no longer has an os on it.

Any ideas on what's going on?
I'm assuming, as disk tools and windows work, it's not Mac hardware at fault, but the ssd?
I read elsewhere that trim needs enabling on every os upgrade? I don't think I did that when I went from lion to Mavericks.

Should I reformat the ssd and reinstall Mavericks?
Any other ideas? There's some data not backed up I'd like to recover somehow first

Any advice gratefully accepted
 
I doubt your SSD has a problem. It might be possible your install got corrupt somehow. I had a similar situation where my computer would only boot into Windows. I try reinstalling Mac OS. If you were able to verify/repair the disk, the partition is probably still readable so you can try copying the files to another drive from your recovery partition.
 
jav6454 said:
Did you press and hold the option key as soon and you here the "Bong" sound?
Click to expand...

Yes, that takes me to the boot menu- I can see OS X ( the one that does not work), boot camp (works) and two recovery partitions. I think one is left over from lion and the other was out there by mavericks. The system has worked fine since I installed the ssd and I installed mavericks about a month after it was released to the public.

Thanks for the comments folks-so it looks like reformat and reinstall osx on the existing osx partition?
 
erbster said:
Yes, that takes me to the boot menu- I can see OS X ( the one that does not work), boot camp (works) and two recovery partitions. I think one is left over from lion and the other was out there by mavericks. The system has worked fine since I installed the ssd and I installed mavericks about a month after it was released to the public.

Thanks for the comments folks-so it looks like reformat and reinstall osx on the existing osx partition?
Click to expand...

A reformat shouldn't be necessary. Just get it into Recovery mode and reinstall OS X on top of it, then you won't lose everything.
 
Thanks for the advice. I'll try a restore and let you know how I fare
 
Arrrggghhhhh!!!!!!

I booted into the OS X 10.9 recovery disk (the lion one is still there too) and reinstalled mavericks. After about two hours, the machine rebooted and my system was back up and running. Hooray!

Trim was not enabled, so I turned it on and rebooted. Back to the same situation as before, henceforth referred to as the "grey screen of death"

Hmm

I'm now in the process of reinstalling mavericks AGAIN.

My questions:
Should I enable trim?
Should I plug in my precious time machine drive in, in an attempt to back up the work files not yet backed up?

It now IS looking like a reformat is needed.
But will it work, or is there something broken with the drive, despite the evidence I mentioned in my previous posts......
 
erbster said:
Arrrggghhhhh!!!!!!

I booted into the OS X 10.9 recovery disk (the lion one is still there too) and reinstalled mavericks. After about two hours, the machine rebooted and my system was back up and running. Hooray!

Trim was not enabled, so I turned it on and rebooted. Back to the same situation as before, henceforth referred to as the "grey screen of death"

Hmm

I'm now in the process of reinstalling mavericks AGAIN.

My questions:
Should I enable trim?
Should I plug in my precious time machine drive in, in an attempt to back up the work files not yet backed up?

It now IS looking like a reformat is needed.
But will it work, or is there something broken with the drive, despite the evidence I mentioned in my previous posts......
Click to expand...

In 10.9.5 or Yosemite, you may have to disable the kext signing requirement first before enabling TRIM. You'll have to download the Yosemite version of TRIM Enabler to do this one.
 
erbster said:
Arrrggghhhhh!!!!!!

I booted into the OS X 10.9 recovery disk (the lion one is still there too) and reinstalled mavericks. After about two hours, the machine rebooted and my system was back up and running. Hooray!

Trim was not enabled, so I turned it on and rebooted. Back to the same situation as before, henceforth referred to as the "grey screen of death"

Hmm

I'm now in the process of reinstalling mavericks AGAIN.

My questions:
Should I enable trim?
Should I plug in my precious time machine drive in, in an attempt to back up the work files not yet backed up?

It now IS looking like a reformat is needed.
But will it work, or is there something broken with the drive, despite the evidence I mentioned in my previous posts......
Click to expand...

Did you by any chance upgrade the firmware of your SSD?
 
AFAIK I did not change anything on my MBP immediately prior to the "incident"

I can't work out which version of trim enabler I'm using, and I am not certain whether it was on or off prior to my troubles. It was on when I had Lion, I then installed Mavericks and don't remember checking it.

I will remove it and try using the laptop without trim (to see if it is working) and then try trim again.

I have a Samsung SSD 840 Series, running firmware DXT07B0Q; there is an update to firmware DXT09B0Q available. I operate an "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" approach to this sort of thing, but since it does look broke, perhaps I should update the firmware.

Jav6454- were you suggesting that I should try updating the firmware, or were you suggesting that I might have caused the problem by trying it?

I'm a bit nervous of firmware updates, as it could damage the working (Windows) partition and/or recovery partition.
 
Last edited:
Update:
Eeek! Firmware update looks a bit scary (i.e. might wipe disk in process). I don't know how to make a bootable CD/DVD for the upgrade- why don't samsung describe this?

Further update:
I have a mac mini running 10.9.5 on a Samsung 840EVO, installed a couple of months after the 840 (non-evo) in the MBP. Trim is not enabled on this drive (I forgot it). Have had no trouble.

Looking like the problem might be related to trim. Have removed trim enabler from MBP (was out of date version anyway) and will try a reboot, to see if the system comes back up.

Wish me luck...
 
Update:my mbp has been up and running happily, as well as rebooting with trim not enabled, so I'm assuming my odd problem was caused by my failure to update the trim enabler software. At some point I'll try turning trim on again (after making a proper backup!)...
 
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