Black screen of death after upgrade to Big Sur

[Adenitz]

Hello to all,
I'm a desperate macbook air owner 13 (A1466 EMC2925, Early 2015) how tried to upgrade to Big Sur. Something went very very wrong and the laptop ended up with absolutely black screen and very noisy fan (like it is full speed). I have tried different things such as pressed Power button for 10 sec and turned OFF, trid to reset SMC and NVRAM, but that didn't solve the problem.

The laptop was working fine before the attempted upgrade. Now all I have is a loud fan. Ihave found on Apple forums that I/O board should be disconnected and if laptop starts OK, I need to buy new I/O board. However, if there is a way to perform clean install of macos catalina?

Is it possible that macOS damaged the hardware? There must be some way to return to the previous version of macOs.

Hopy you'll be able to help.

 

[6749974]

One person said what worked for them was booting into Internet Recovery Mode and reinstalling an older OS.

Someone else said they hit the button combination Shift + Control + Alt + Power for 10 seconds and then pushing the Power button again.

Check out the YouTube channel Mr Macintosh for videos about this issue, they have a website also, and the comments in the videos because YouTube users discuss their problems and remedies.

I fortunately don’t have this issue so can’t speak from experience. I do have a problem where it will black out when connected to external monitor and what works for me is either unplug external monitor, and restart. The other thing that works is to assume password dialogue is up so I type my Password (blindly, cause I can’t see my screen) and it boots in.

Big Sur sucks. Go back to Mojave if you can.

 

[Adenitz]

Hello and thank you for the reply. I have found this video, but it is for Macbook Pro and it is closest to what I have. However this didn’t solve the problem. It seems that SPI ROM became corrupted. I think I’m gonna sell this to spare parts / donor parts.

Never expected this, hundred dollars wasted in a few minuts.

 

[Audit13]

Was the MacBook ever dropped or exposed to moisture?

 

[Adenitz]

Was the MacBook ever dropped or exposed to moisture?

No, at least not at that time when problem occured. It was dropped once, but few months before. He update was taking too long so the laptop was unattended for an hour or two. It was shut down when I returned and after power on, only loud noise and no image and no startup sound.

On Google I found that this could be caused by corrupter EFI and that new macOS upgrade writes to EFI firmware

 

[Audit13]

Disconnect the battery for about an hour, reconnect and try to boot.

 

[Adenitz]

I have sent the macbook to a repair shop in another town. They told me they examined the laptop and most likely the problem is not due to OS update. It could be a bad coincidence. There is a problem on the logic board which they're not able to solve.

Thank you all for your advices.

 

[Jo. U.]

Hello to all,
I'm a desperate macbook air owner 13 (A1466 EMC2925, Early 2015) how tried to upgrade to Big Sur. Something went very very wrong and the laptop ended up with absolutely black screen and very noisy fan (like it is full speed). I have tried different things such as pressed Power button for 10 sec and turned OFF, trid to reset SMC and NVRAM, but that didn't solve the problem.

The laptop was working fine before the attempted upgrade. Now all I have is a loud fan. Ihave found on Apple forums that I/O board should be disconnected and if laptop starts OK, I need to buy new I/O board. However, if there is a way to perform clean install of macos catalina?

Is it possible that macOS damaged the hardware? There must be some way to return to the previous version of macOs.

Hopy you'll be able to help.

I had the same thing happen to me. I tried everything that was suggested to reboot, but nothing worked. I finally took it to the Apple Store and left it with them and they got it fixed (removing Big Sur)...I am steering clear of Big Sur now. They said it was because my laptop is older (it's a 2015 version.) Ugh! It annoys me to see the little red dot saying I have an update in my settings! I wish Big Sur would go away!

 

[Apple_Robert]

I had the same thing happen to me. I tried everything that was suggested to reboot, but nothing worked. I finally took it to the Apple Store and left it with them and they got it fixed (removing Big Sur)...I am steering clear of Big Sur now. They said it was because my laptop is older (it's a 2015 version.) Ugh! It annoys me to see the little red dot saying I have an update in my settings! I wish Big Sur would go away!

I am surprised the Genius didn't get Big Sur installed correctly for you. I installed it on my 2015 MBA with 4GB of RAM and it runs just fine. Did you try and install the latest version of Big Sur?

 

[Jo. U.]

I am surprised the Genius didn't get Big Sur installed correctly for you. I installed it on my 2015 MBA with 4GB of RAM and it runs just fine. Did you try and install the latest version of Big Sur?

I was happy it was working again, but I have been afraid to try downloading it again since the Genius bar didn't do it. At least I have a working computer. It was such a pain to get an appointment, have to take it in, and I had to leave it there for a few days. Maybe I should try it again...(I have 16GB RAM...Intel i7 processor)

 

[Apple_Robert]

I was happy it was working again, but I have been afraid to try downloading it again since the Genius bar didn't do it. At least I have a working computer. It was such a pain to get an appointment, have to take it in, and I had to leave it there for a few days. Maybe I should try it again...(I have 16GB RAM...Intel i7 processor)

If you don't feel comfortable, keep your computer as is. I would hate to see you run into trouble again and have to go to the Apple Store once more.

 

[Adenitz]

Jo U, if this red dot is annoying you, you could try to get rid of it in tje following way:
1.

1. Launch System Preferences and click Software Update.
2. Click Advanced.
3. Uncheck the first three boxes: Check for Updates, Download New Updates When Available, and Install macOS Updates.
4. Click OK.
5. Turn OFF Wifi
6. Click software update again and let it try to find updates with wifi disabled. This should remove red dot.
7. Close software update and enable Wifi again.