Help! I need help bad!

[The_Auryn]

Can somebody help me? I'm at my wits end. I apologize if this is placed in the wrong thread.

To begin with, I have two laptops. The first is a MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2015) that I will refer to as "large laptop." The second is a MacBook Air (non-retina, 11", 2014) that I will refer to as "small laptop." In terms of backups, I have a firewire cable and an old WD Passport drive (pre-solid state, the one with the spinning disks). Also, I'm currently living in Eastern Europe, so have no access to Apple Stores or extra hardware.

The large laptop has Monterey installed on it.
The small laptop has Big Sur (which is the highest OS that can be installed on it.

I had recently been on Sierra for both and decided it was time to upgrade to Monterey for the large laptop and Big Sur for the small. Everything was fine for the first two weeks. I delayed backing them up to the external hard drive (I know, big mistake) because I wanted to test them out for a month or so and make sure everything was okay.

The problem came when I upgraded MacFUSE to 4.4.0. Originally I couldn't do it via System Preferences. I had to download it and install it fresh. It worked perfectly with the large laptop (Monterey). When I tried the same thing on the small laptop, it crashed.

I rebooted the small laptop and was greeted with flashing question mark inside folder. I tried rebooting into the Recovery partition, but the keyboard was not working until the password log-in appeared. Then the keyboard worked. Restarting, I've tried all the apple commands (Command-R, Option, Option-Command-P-R, Shift to start in safe mode, D for Apple Diagnostics, T for Target Disk mode (connected to the big laptop with a firewire cable).

Nothing has worked. I've tried using an external keyboard via USB. Unfortunately, here in Eastern Europe, the only thing I could get my hands on was a PC keyboard. I googled the key conversions, but again, nothing worked.

Finally I discovered that if you use Start Up disk in System Preferences, you can order it to go to target disk mode and I was able to get the small laptop to boot as an external drive in the large laptop.

I had an older backup version of the small laptop, but Carbon Copy Cloner told me that because I was running CCC 6 on Monterey, it wouldn't be able to create a bootable version on my small laptop.

I downloaded the Big Sur installer on my large laptop, thinking that I could install it into the small laptop, but when I double-clicked it, it informed me that it couldn't install an older version of Mac OS on my computer. A bit annoying! It doesn't even take into account the possibility that I might be trying to install it on another computer.

I went into disk utility and reformatted my small laptop back to HFS+ and was able to reinstall High Sierra on it. Yay! This was after two days of work. But the recovery partition is still not there. When I reboot the computer, whatever keys I hold down on the keyboard are ignored. Yet once the password log-in screen comes up, the keyboard works perfectly.

The next step I tried to do was download Big Sur and reinstall it onto the small laptop. Under System Preferences, Software Update, there was a little red 1, and it was recommending me to download Big Sur. So I downloaded it, but when I tried to install it, it said: "This disk is not APFS formatted."

I'm sure the first time I went from Sierra to Big Sur, it wasn't APFS formatted. The Mac installer did it without me even knowing. I don't know why it won't do it now.

My large laptop refuses to be helpful. It seems every time I try to install something below Monterey, it says: "We can't install anything below Monterey."

I understand Apple doesn't want people to go backwards, but my small laptop can't handle Monterey.

Finally, I tried my last thought. I used the small laptop (running HFS+ High Sierra) to boot the large laptop. This time, the keyboard (on the large laptop) worked and I was able to start Recovery Mode holding down command-R. When it came up, I again erased the small laptop using AFPS as the file system. Once I did that, I shut down the whole thing and tried to reinstall Big Sur on the small laptop by holding down the option key while I had the Big Sur installer USB stick in the port. It just ignored it and went to the flashing question mark.

Any help would be most appreciated. I know I have old equipment but I don't have the money to upgrade right now. And also, I'm working as a teacher in Slovakia (eastern Europe). There are no mac stores here and everybody has PCs. When I ask my computer I.T. friend about this, he just laughs and says go to Linux. Whatever that means.

I think the problem lies somewhere in the multiple backups being cloned back to the computer. From the time the Apple Chime rings on start-up to the time when the log-in window appears, the keyboard doesn't accept anything. Everything on the internet seems to suggest the solution lies in those start-up commands, but mine doesn't work. I just want to get my small laptop back to where this all began before installed MacFUSE.

Any thought would be greatly appreciated! Thank you!

 

[lcubed]

sounds like the drive on the 'small' laptop has died.
not surprising given the age.

you could replace the drive or attempt the procedure in this posting

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/i-think-my-macbook-air-ssd-is-dead-help-me.2100525/

(i would replace the ssd drive and then install your backup)

 

[The_Auryn]

Can you install Big Sur onto a USB memory stick (via the big one), and then start up the small one from that? If so, use the tools to erase the small one properly, before installing a fresh copy of Big Sur.

Impossible to do. I've tried it and unfortunately you need to hold the "option" key down to get to decide where to boot from. But the keypad seems to be dead/non-functional until the main login-password screen arrives. :-(

 

[The_Auryn]

sounds like the drive on the 'small' laptop has died.
not surprising given the age.

you could replace the drive or attempt the procedure in this posting

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/i-think-my-macbook-air-ssd-is-dead-help-me.2100525/

(i would replace the ssd drive and then install your backup)

But the weird thing is, the drive on the small one is working. Everything works, except from the time that i start the har disk (chime) to the point where the window pops up with the log-in screen. The keyboard refuses to accept anything until that point. Is there some sort of interior firmware that may have been corrupted? If I could just get the keyboard to accept command-R after I hit the restart button, it would work. '

I just can't replace the SSD drive at this point while living in Eastern Europe. :-/

 

[lcubed]

still sounds like imminent SSD drive failure

 

[Brian33]

You've described your situation clearly and you've intelligently tried a lot of options. What I can't understand is why the small laptop would (apparently) ignore all of the startup key sequences. It would seem to me that it would take a firmware change to cause that, and I am certain installing MacFUSE couldn't have changed the firmware...

Maybe, as you say, the system isn't recognising the keyboard early enough. It's a long shot, but might the SMC have something to do with that? Have you tried following Apple's procedures for resetting the SMC?

 

[The_Auryn]

@Brian33 Hi Brian, thank you for your response. It's much appreciated. I think something must have happened to the firmware. I found an older 120 GB SSD disk that was original to the small laptop. As a last resort, I swapped it with the small laptops's 240 GB SSD. When I started it up, upon arriving at the password screen, both the trackpad and the keyboard would not work. I couldn't enter the password for the drive. After a few minutes, a message appeared on the screen stating: If you are having problems, power down and immediately power up again and you will automatically be placed in recovery mode. I did that and it worked, but I was only given three options: Have you forgotten your password, or is your keyboard not working? I pressed the latter and it said: Enter your password to decrypt the main volume. I did that and it said De-encryption encrypted. Press the button to restart. I found it a bit strange that it could decrypt the entire drive (by the way, the old SSD I reinserted into it is APFS with 10.14.6 Mojave installed. The button initially didn't do anything, but eventually it did restart on its own. Same problem. Mojave screen reinstalled but wouldn't allow me to type in anything. I finally restarted using a usb PC keyboard loaned from a friend, and that allowed me to type in the password and allow the system to boot. I immediately went into Security & Privacy, FireVault, and it's confirmed it's still decrypting (with about 2 hours remaining). I will allow it to go through the process, but do you think that would have any effect on ignoring all key commands from start-up (chime) to password screen?

As for your comment about resetting SMC (system management controller) i tried it, along with resetting the PRAM and all the other commands, but again, everything is dead from the Chime to the Password inbox. And I've tried using external keyboards to do those key commands, (command-R) etc. This old hard drive that I swapped in was original to the small laptop. I can't imagine why it doesn't recoginize key commands.

Again, thanks for your all your help, guys. I know I need to upgrade to a new system, but right now with the economy as it is, it's tough to do. :-/