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MacBook Pro EFI Firmware Update 1.7 Problems

Panzo said:
As any one purchased their macbook pro recently like in the past 2-3 weeks? and noticed these lockups and beachballs?
Click to expand...

Mine is only 1 week old, and came with 1.7 installed. Tried to put an older 320gb drive in to install snow leopard, no dice. It would read very slowly or not at all. So I assume that's the same issue people would have if they upgraded a working system to 1.7.

Still seems to be a problem. The stock 250gb drive that the machine shipped with works fine, even under 1.7, so I'm just using that for the moment.
 
i have this drive: Hitachi HTS545032B9SA02

its the stock one and im having problems with it.... this is very frustrating.

anyone else have this drive and is experiencing this issue?
 
Does anyone have suggestions? I'm running a MacBook Pro Unibody from November 08 so it's the first revision and I have this issue but the suggested fix gives me the circle with a line.
 
I ran the downgrade from EFI 1.7 to EFI 1.6 which appears to have worked, but I haven't put back my old scorpio HDD to see whether the issue remains or not when trying to use/install OSX on it.

For some reason, the stock 250GB drive that came with my MBP seems to operate totally fine under EFI 1.7, perhaps because Apple did something to it which limits it to operating at 1.5Gbps or similar. Very annoying issue though, I'd rather use the larger drive!
 
Ricky Smith said:
Does anyone have suggestions? I'm running a MacBook Pro Unibody from November 08 so it's the first revision and I have this issue but the suggested fix gives me the circle with a line.
Click to expand...

this issue only affects mid 2009 macbooks pros.


If your experiencing this issue please visit an apple store. as you might have a faulty hard drive.
 
Are you sure the issues only with the newer models? I have checked the drive with the seagate tools and it passes, along with zero writing the drive and doing a brand new install of OS X 10.6. The system constantly experiences the beach balling and then picks up as if nothing went wrong. The disk I/O sky rockets then drops back down.
 
Ricky Smith said:
Are you sure the issues only with the newer models? I have checked the drive with the seagate tools and it passes, along with zero writing the drive and doing a brand new install of OS X 10.6. The system constantly experiences the beach balling and then picks up as if nothing went wrong. The disk I/O sky rockets then drops back down.
Click to expand...

have you had to update the 1.7 firmware update? AS far as i know it only affects newer machines, the reason your getting an circle with a line thought it is probably because you do not have the firmware 1.7 its supposed to roll back. personally i would visit an apple store.
 
I'll be going in tomorrow as far as the firmware issue goes I'm not sure which one I'm running I tried looking in system profiler but perhaps im having tunnel vision since im pissed at the computer.
 

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Ricky Smith said:
Are you sure the issues only with the newer models? I have checked the drive with the seagate tools and it passes, along with zero writing the drive and doing a brand new install of OS X 10.6. The system constantly experiences the beach balling and then picks up as if nothing went wrong. The disk I/O sky rockets then drops back down.
Click to expand...

Do you have a Seagate 5400.6? https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/764504/

Btw, yes, you do have a late 2008 MBP which shouldn't have EFI 1.7 firmware issues.
 
Nope its a Seagate 7200 RPM Drive but from what I've read people with this MacBook Pro have also had the issue. From System Profiler am I running 1.7 or 1.6?
 
For ****s and giggles, I decided to upgrade my firmware to 1.7 just to see what would happen. I mean, I've been getting complete system freezes with 1.6 and my Patriot Torqx SSD so what could be worse?

I upgraded to 1.7 and my machine wouldn't even boot afterwards. The Apple logo would show up, then a circle with a slash through it. I tried resetting the PVRAM to no avail. Luckily, I had made the bootable USB drive with the 1.6 firmware on it and restored back to 1.6.

Now everything is back to where it was before... I'm just wondering how long it will be until I get another spinning beach ball followed by a complete system freeze.

Say what you will about PCs, but I never had any kind of hardware problems like this over my many years of PC usage. This is really beginning to sour my first Mac experience (this is my first Mac computer ever).
 
I bought recently (08/01/09) one mb pro 13 and put it an OCZ Vertex, i dont have any problems with it.

Maybe if you go to an apple store and changed the mb, solve.
 
Downgrading 1.7 to 1.6 Problems

Hi everyone.

So I followed Panzo's steps exactly...

Everything was going well until I turned the computer on again and held "option" and selected the USB drive. The computer immediately restarted and the firmware didn't downgrade.

I've tried this 15 times with two different USB drives and I haven't been able to get it to work.

Thank you for you help in advance!

EDIT: I just tried again and this time, right before the computer restarted itself, I saw the Apple logo and the gray statusbar. It possibly was full. I don't understand what is happening.

Thanks again.
 
@dlknowhow, try using disk utility and create one GUID partition (Mac OSX HFS+ Journaled) on the drive before dragging the firmware onto it.
 
Panzo said:
i have this drive: Hitachi HTS545032B9SA02

its the stock one and im having problems with it.... this is very frustrating.

anyone else have this drive and is experiencing this issue?
Click to expand...

I have the stock HTS545025B9SA02 and it works great in my new 15" MBP. I am using it with the 1.6 firmware downgrade since I did the downgrade to use with my SuperTalent SSD. But the SSD still has some system hang problems that I cannot tolerate. The 1.6 downgrade helped a bunch but not completely enough.
 
Mazda 3s said:
Say what you will about PCs, but I never had any kind of hardware problems like this over my many years of PC usage. This is really beginning to sour my first Mac experience (this is my first Mac computer ever).
Click to expand...

Understandable for sure, but please don't let one hiccup in the world of Macintosh have too much influence on your opinions. In spite of this whole ordeal I would never switch to a PC. This is fixable. It was an oversight or just bad judgement on Apple's part but looking at the bigger picture it is only that. It is not 200,000 viruses. It is not a routine driver nightmare.

Apple comes out with upgrades to the OS more often than M$ changes their underwear. It will get fixed one way or another. M$ comes up with OS promises that get downgraded before they ever see the light of day.

I am not an Apple fanboy, I am a M$ hater. There's a difference.
 
glavoie84 said:
To those having frequent beach balls, so you have an entry like this added to your system logs every time it happens?

09-06-27 12:42:01 smartd71 Device: IOService:/AppleACPIPlatformExpert/PCI0@0/AppleACPIPCI/SATA@B/AppleMCP79AHCI/PRT0@0/IOAHCIDevice@0/AppleAHCIDiskDriver/IOAHCIBlockStorageDevice, failed to read SMART Attribute Data


I have beach balls every hours and every time, I have this entry added. I also have trouble getting SMART informations with smartctl (smartmontools) when it happens.
Click to expand...

I am running a late 2008 uMB with a stock drive and the clicking sound and the beachball every thirty minutes with the above mentioned entry in the logfiles.
Apple replaced the hard drive with a new (same brand, same version) one but still does not acknowledge that there is trouble.
I have the 1.3 firmware which apparently produces the same problems as the 1.7 firmware. Is there anyone else who has the same issues on the same uMB?

EDIT:

I found the reason for the beachballing on my macbook and I assume it is the same with yours @glavoie84.
You have smartmontools installed via macport. This put the daemon smartd into the /Library/LaunchDaemons/ folder and starts it. The smart daemon checks for the status of the HD every x minutes (30 with me) and then (due to some error with the harddrive) hangs since the HD does not support smart (it becomes deactivated from time to time - no idea why and when).
Remove the smartd plist from the launchdaemons folder and you should be set.
 
Gregte said:
Understandable for sure, but please don't let one hiccup in the world of Macintosh have too much influence on your opinions. In spite of this whole ordeal I would never switch to a PC. This is fixable. It was an oversight or just bad judgement on Apple's part but looking at the bigger picture it is only that. It is not 200,000 viruses. It is not a routine driver nightmare.

Apple comes out with upgrades to the OS more often than M$ changes their underwear. It will get fixed one way or another. M$ comes up with OS promises that get downgraded before they ever see the light of day.

I am not an Apple fanboy, I am a M$ hater. There's a difference.
Click to expand...

Releasing Underclocked hardware: Check
Releasing Dodgy Firmware: Check
Breaking Compatibility: Check
Causing problems to end Users: Check
Not releasing an Official Statement 3 months into discovery of issue: Check

At this point comparing apple to windows would be embarrassing to windows..

Specially my last point, very unprofessional, and it is highly likely we will not receive any statements or fixes anytime soon.
 
Gregte said:
Understandable for sure, but please don't let one hiccup in the world of Macintosh have too much influence on your opinions. In spite of this whole ordeal I would never switch to a PC. This is fixable. It was an oversight or just bad judgement on Apple's part but looking at the bigger picture it is only that. It is not 200,000 viruses. It is not a routine driver nightmare.

Apple comes out with upgrades to the OS more often than M$ changes their underwear. It will get fixed one way or another. M$ comes up with OS promises that get downgraded before they ever see the light of day.

I am not an Apple fanboy, I am a M$ hater. There's a difference.
Click to expand...

I don't want to turn this into a MS vs Apple discussion, but I will make these few notes:

1) Hate is such a strong word. I use both operating systems and I like both equally -- they both have their quirks, but they balance out IMHO. Apple and MS take different approaches to getting the job done and neither one is right or wrong.

2) I've never had a virus with Windows and people who compute responsibly likely never will as well. My 59-year old mom runs a Windows Vista Home Basic machine and hasn't ever been hit with a virus (then again, I installed AVG Free antivirus installed on her machine).

3) Microsoft only controls one portion of the user experience when it comes to PCs and that's the software. Hardware manufacturers provide the drivers/firmware for devices that run on Windows. So if a hardware vendor releases a POS devices with crappy drivers/firmware, it's not really MS's fault now is it?

On the other hand, Apple controls both the hardware AND the software. That makes an issue like this (especially with no comment from Apple) inexcusable.
 
Gregte said:
Understandable for sure, but please don't let one hiccup in the world of Macintosh have too much influence on your opinions. In spite of this whole ordeal I would never switch to a PC. This is fixable. It was an oversight or just bad judgement on Apple's part but looking at the bigger picture it is only that. It is not 200,000 viruses. It is not a routine driver nightmare.

Apple comes out with upgrades to the OS more often than M$ changes their underwear. It will get fixed one way or another. M$ comes up with OS promises that get downgraded before they ever see the light of day.

I am not an Apple fanboy, I am a M$ hater. There's a difference.
Click to expand...

Windows driver nightmares are so 1990's. they have been fixed a long time ago unless you buy something extra like a Creative sound card that is known to be buggy. PC's and Mac's use the exact same hardware. Even the new Dell laptops use the exact same internals as MBP's

i like my iphone, but it doesn't make me want to go out and pay a premium for a Mac
 
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