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MacBook Pro Dies while booting

Eightbitgamer757

Eightbitgamer757

macrumors regular
Original poster
Feb 8, 2018
108
52
Idaho
Hello again guys, this is an issue I have been having with the MBP for a while (Early 09 17"), where while in the middle of booting up, normally right as the apple logo appears, the laptop just turns off again. It normally does this a couple times before finally making it to MacOS and not having issues. I've noticed it happens a lot more often when it is booting off the battery, however i don't think it's the battery as it has a brand new one from NewerTech, and it also did it with the old one. If it matters, it happens with both El Capitan and Catalina, however i don't think the OS is at fault. Any ideas?
 
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Can it boot from a Linux USB stick? Or the OS X stick (i.e. making a 10.13 USB restore)? This might tell us a lot of information.
 
Since this is an early '09 MBP, then I would think it means the Mac is shutting down due to power constraints. You see, when a Mac draws too much power for the power adapter to provide, it pulls in from the battery. In this case, I assume you battery is dead which means no extra juice.

Hence, as a safety feature, CPUs will shut down when detecting insufficient power.
 
jav6454 said:
Since this is an early '09 MBP, then I would think it means the Mac is shutting down due to power constraints. You see, when a Mac draws too much power for the power adapter to provide, it pulls in from the battery. In this case, I assume you battery is dead which means no extra juice.

Hence, as a safety feature, CPUs will shut down when detecting insufficient power.
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The battery is not dead, it is a brand new one that i purchased only a couple months ago. Only has 13 cycles on it. I am also using the proper 85W power adapter that was originally shipped with this MacBook.
MysticCow said:
Can it boot from a Linux USB stick? Or the OS X stick (i.e. making a 10.13 USB restore)? This might tell us a lot of information.
Click to expand...
It has been able to boot from an installer stick I have just fine, it just seems to shut down randomly right after POSting, if it doesn't shut down and continue booting, i have a completely normal MacBook with full clock speeds and everything.
 
Amethyst1 said:
MacBooks forcibly underclock the CPU to 1 GHz when there’s no working battery to prevent just this from happening though.
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Unsure if that was a feature in '09. I for one know that my Late '08 does not do that.
Eightbitgamer757 said:
The battery is not dead, it is a brand new one that i purchased only a couple months ago. Only has 13 cycles on it. I am also using the proper 85W power adapter that was originally shipped with this MacBook.

It has been able to boot from an installer stick I have just fine, it just seems to shut down randomly right after POSting, if it doesn't shut down and continue booting, i have a completely normal MacBook with full clock speeds and everything.
Click to expand...
Then the issue lies with the power subsystem hardware.
 
Do you still have the original hard drive installed?
This can be caused by a failing hard drive -- could still be working, but has some issues, such as not quite coming up to speed the first time. A couple of retries, and it boots, but that first time, it does a boot test on the hard drive, fails, tries again a couple more times, fails, and your Mac can shut off.
 
DeltaMac said:
Do you still have the original hard drive installed?
This can be caused by a failing hard drive -- could still be working, but has some issues, such as not quite coming up to speed the first time. A couple of retries, and it boots, but that first time, it does a boot test on the hard drive, fails, tries again a couple more times, fails, and your Mac can shut off.
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No, it was replaced with a brand new SSD
 
Was this a model / year which had the discreet GPU issue? I know it existed on the 2008 15" models, not sure if it exists on the 2009 17" model. It also doesn't have the symptoms of a failed GPU but perhaps it's in the process of failing? Just throwing it out there as I have no other suggestions.
 
m1maverick said:
Was this a model / year which had the discreet GPU issue? I know it existed on the 2008 15" models, not sure if it exists on the 2009 17" model. It also doesn't have the symptoms of a failed GPU but perhaps it's in the process of failing? Just throwing it out there as I have no other suggestions.
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No, this has the 9400m/9600m GT combination, which was pretty solid and aside from the 9600GT not working under Catalina (in my case anyways) the 2009 models aren't known to have GPU issues.
 
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Maybe it is the new battery. Did you buy a 'perfect' battery?
Also, maybe plug the power adaptor in on startup.
I have the same model with a new battery and a new hard drive, that worked.
 
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Theodore loves apple said:
Maybe it is the new battery. Did you buy a 'perfect' battery?
Also, maybe plug the power adaptor in on startup.
I have the same model with a new battery and a new hard drive, that worked.
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It is a new NewerTech battery, however it did it with the old battery as well. As for the power adapter, it still does it just not as often.
 
Hmm. A couple of questions:

a) Does this behavior occur only when doing a cold boot? Or does it happen regardless of whether you're doing a reboot, or boot from being powered off?

b) You mentioned this occurs regardless of whether you're booting from Linux or OS X. Does this happen when the Mac tries to boot from the Recovery Volume? (CMD-R)

It's my suspicion that you've got some motherboard damage, possibly a short-circuit that happened during your installation of the new battery.
 
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rampancy said:
Hmm. A couple of questions:

a) Does this behavior occur only when doing a cold boot? Or does it happen regardless of whether you're doing a reboot, or boot from being powered off?

b) You mentioned this occurs regardless of whether you're booting from Linux or OS X. Does this happen when the Mac tries to boot from the Recovery Volume? (CMD-R)

It's my suspicion that you've got some motherboard damage, possibly a short-circuit that happened during your installation of the new battery.
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I agree
 
The unibody MacBook Pro (OPs is a 2009 17-inch) battery is somewhere in between. Not the easy replacement of the earlier models, but not like the multi-cell, sometimes glued, later models. It's a hard case battery, with the (tri-wing) screws that need an unusual driver to remove.
 
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DeltaMac said:
The unibody MacBook Pro (OPs is a 2009 17-inch) battery is somewhere in between. Not the easy replacement of the earlier models, but not like the multi-cell, sometimes glued, later models. It's a hard case battery, with the (tri-wing) screws that need an unusual driver to remove.
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That's what I was afraid off. This has me thinking about if one of the cells wasn't replaced.
 
jav6454 said:
That's what I was afraid off. This has me thinking about if one of the cells wasn't replaced.
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(?) When you replace the battery, all cells are part of the battery. It would not be possible to replace (or not replace) just one cell. OP's unibody MBPro has a hard plastic case for the battery, but that battery also is made up of several cells inside that enclosure, just not visible as cells like on the newer MacBook retina, etc, models. (Cells can become visible if the battery swells enough to split the case :) )
 
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DeltaMac said:
(?) When you replace the battery, all cells are part of the battery. It would not be possible to replace (or not replace) just one cell. OP's unibody MBPro has a hard plastic case for the battery, but that battery also is made up of several cells inside that enclosure, just not visible as cells like on the newer MacBook retina, etc, models. (Cells can become visible if the battery swells enough to split the case :) )
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I'm unfamiliar with the 17" arrangement as I had a 13" one which was an all or nothing approach.
 
jav6454 said:
I'm unfamiliar with the 17" arrangement as I had a 13" one which was an all or nothing approach.
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This is the battery situation for my particular MBP, its a hard shell battery as DeltaMac has said, and it is replaceable, just a bit of a pain to do so.
 

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