I purchased an old early 2013 15" MacBook Pro to fix up and hopefully re-sell. However I'm having an issue that I can't trouble shoot - looking for ideas.
Background:
The machine arrived yesterday and it came without a hard drive or charger. I had a matching SSD for this machine already and purchased an Apple branded 85 watt power brick to go with it. Once it arrived, condition seemed used but not too bad. No major issues and the board looks very clean. So, I installed the SSD, plugged it in, and booted to internet recovery. The internet recover installed Mac OS X 10.8 mountain lion without any issue. Once that was booted I updated to 10.10 Yosemite overnight. One weird thing - and keep this in your mind for later - during the install the display shut down when the machine rebooted to do the upgrade to Yosemite. It was late and I didn't want to bother, so I went to bed. In the morning I turned the machine on and it booted right in to Yosemite.
So, this evening I tried to upgrade to El Cap.
Issue:
Something must have happened during the El Cap upgrade because the machine boots, then loads the Apple logo with the loading bar, then dumps some text on the screen and says "There was an Error, press any key to restart" - and it loops like that. Obviously the installation is corrupted or something, no big deal - just reboot to recovery, right?
Well, now the computer won't boot on anything for more than 30 seconds before the display just shuts down. I am fairly confident that the machine is actually still on and functioning and that it is just a display issue.
Some observations:
1.) If I boot to the recovery partition, it begins loading from the internet, but display shuts off after about 30 seconds
2.) If I hold option I can boot to another drive. I booted an Ubuntu live disk and after about 30 seconds the display just shuts down again. What's interesting here is that if I leave the machine alone I eventually hear the Ubuntu log in Chime - so the machine definitely appears to be doing everything else and it's just that the display isn't on.
3.) If I shine a bright light on the display I can tell that it is not merely that the backlight is off - the entire display is shut down.
4.) I cannot seem to boot target disk mode
5.) I tried Apple hardware test, but same issue - after about 30 seconds the display goes bye-bye.
6.) I have reset SMC and PRAM and it appears to have no effect
7.) The issue occurs whether on battery or connected to the AC adapter.
Does anyone have any ideas of additional things to check or try? I could complain to the seller and probably get a refund out of eBay/paypal, but it was a good deal and if I can fix myself I'll give it a go. My big concern is there is a hardware issue somewhere on the board so if anyone knows anything I can check or try to either confirm or rule that out that would also be appreciated
Thanks in advance!
Background:
The machine arrived yesterday and it came without a hard drive or charger. I had a matching SSD for this machine already and purchased an Apple branded 85 watt power brick to go with it. Once it arrived, condition seemed used but not too bad. No major issues and the board looks very clean. So, I installed the SSD, plugged it in, and booted to internet recovery. The internet recover installed Mac OS X 10.8 mountain lion without any issue. Once that was booted I updated to 10.10 Yosemite overnight. One weird thing - and keep this in your mind for later - during the install the display shut down when the machine rebooted to do the upgrade to Yosemite. It was late and I didn't want to bother, so I went to bed. In the morning I turned the machine on and it booted right in to Yosemite.
So, this evening I tried to upgrade to El Cap.
Issue:
Something must have happened during the El Cap upgrade because the machine boots, then loads the Apple logo with the loading bar, then dumps some text on the screen and says "There was an Error, press any key to restart" - and it loops like that. Obviously the installation is corrupted or something, no big deal - just reboot to recovery, right?
Well, now the computer won't boot on anything for more than 30 seconds before the display just shuts down. I am fairly confident that the machine is actually still on and functioning and that it is just a display issue.
Some observations:
1.) If I boot to the recovery partition, it begins loading from the internet, but display shuts off after about 30 seconds
2.) If I hold option I can boot to another drive. I booted an Ubuntu live disk and after about 30 seconds the display just shuts down again. What's interesting here is that if I leave the machine alone I eventually hear the Ubuntu log in Chime - so the machine definitely appears to be doing everything else and it's just that the display isn't on.
3.) If I shine a bright light on the display I can tell that it is not merely that the backlight is off - the entire display is shut down.
4.) I cannot seem to boot target disk mode
5.) I tried Apple hardware test, but same issue - after about 30 seconds the display goes bye-bye.
6.) I have reset SMC and PRAM and it appears to have no effect
7.) The issue occurs whether on battery or connected to the AC adapter.
Does anyone have any ideas of additional things to check or try? I could complain to the seller and probably get a refund out of eBay/paypal, but it was a good deal and if I can fix myself I'll give it a go. My big concern is there is a hardware issue somewhere on the board so if anyone knows anything I can check or try to either confirm or rule that out that would also be appreciated
Thanks in advance!