Mavericks bricked my Air.

[Collider]

Midway through the Mavericks installation, my Air shut itself off completely -- no warning or explanation, and it did not start up again until I was forced to manually switch it on, at which point it said it was forced to shut down due to an error. It then resumed and seemed to finish the update, but immediately thereafter shut itself down again, and now will not boot up at all. No chime, no white screen, no response at all -- there's the tiniest, almost inaudible click from inside the machine but otherwise it's as though the power button hasn't been pressed at all. I've tried the SMC reset, etc, still no response.

Until this point, I've not had any problems with the Air at all -- the only hint of anything that's made me frown is that it sometimes reverts to the sleep-mode black screen for a second or after I wake it from sleep. Nothing else at all. I also ran the Mavericks update on my rMBP, and likewise had no trouble with it at all.

Any ideas what the problem could be?

 

[Steve121178]

Can you turn it on and hold down the option key to boot into recovery mode or can't you even get that far? If you can't then you might need to take it to Apple to get it resolved.

 

[Collider]

Can you turn it on and hold down the option key to boot into recovery mode or can't you even get that far? If you can't then you might need to take it to Apple to get it resolved.

Can't even get that far. Literally no response to the power key at all even after 30+ seconds of holding it down. I kind of figured I'd have to take it in, but was kind of hoping to get some idea of the problem before I do.

 

[Steve121178]

Stupid question, but it is fully charged isn't it?

 

[Collider]

Stupid question, but it is fully charged isn't it?

LOL. Yep, fully charged, and was plugged in throughout (charger light was still green even after it died, so presumably there's nothing wrong on that side of things).

 

[Paulejonesy]

This happened to me too. Happily upgraded. Went along nice for days. Upgraded the firmware to the latest version. Seemed to go okay, downloaded worms from the App Store "for my son", "tested" it at work for about 10 mins, KP, automatic restart. Stayed on grey apple screen for 10 mins with spinning dial. Thought to myself, I'll give that a restart. Held down the power button for 10 secs, it turned off. That was the last I saw of life. Same problem. Smallest of sounds on power button, but nothing else.

Let me know what they tell you at the apple store. My appointment is not till Monday.

 

[Collider]

Let me know what they tell you at the apple store. My appointment is not till Monday.

You'll probably beat me to it -- I won't be able to go until Monday either, and the only store in range is a licensed reseller rather than an Apple Store proper, so probably won't be much help in-store. I'll definitely report back if I get anything useful, though. If nothing else, it's very comforting to know that I'm not alone in this problem.

 

[ShaneBunting]

Can I confirm this is a 2013 post-June Model?

 

[Collider]

Can I confirm this is a 2013 post-June Model?

Indeed it is. Haswell, specs in signature.

 

[jlevin]

I'm having the same issue on my Late-2010 11" MBA. My appointment is tonight. I'll update you if they discover the cause.

 

[Buran]

Do you all have the 128GB SSD? It sounds like it could be an SSD failure.

 

[xraydoc]

There was a recent SSD firmware update and checker for certain MBA models. If your drive fails the test, it will replaced by Apple free of charge. Perhaps Mavericks accelerated the failure?

 

[Paulejonesy]

I left the Air unplugged with a hard drive connected to drain the battery. I read somewhere a full reset of the PMU would fix problems like this. Well, it didn't, but it did change something. Instead of the nearly inaudible sound on pressing the power button, I now get the 3 beeps of doom, which apparently means my RAM is bad. This makes little sense, but at lest it's progress.

 

[Collider]

I left the Air unplugged with a hard drive connected to drain the battery. I read somewhere a full reset of the PMU would fix problems like this. Well, it didn't, but it did change something. Instead of the nearly inaudible sound on pressing the power button, I now get the 3 beeps of doom, which apparently means my RAM is bad. This makes little sense, but at lest it's progress.

That's useful! I'll have to try that, see if I can get the same result. Thanks for the update!

 

[Paulejonesy]

Okay, so had my apple store genius appointment this morning. He unplugged the battery to reset something, had no effect. The upshot is a new logic board and a possible 3-5 day wait. Boo.

 

[Collider]

Okay, so had my apple store genius appointment this morning. He unplugged the battery to reset something, had no effect. The upshot is a new logic board and a possible 3-5 day wait. Boo.

Youch! Taking mine in this morning -- here's hoping it's not so dire! Thanks for the update, and fingers crossed you get it back quickly!

 

[Paulejonesy]

Youch! Taking mine in this morning -- here's hoping it's not so dire! Thanks for the update, and fingers crossed you get it back quickly!

Thanks. Let us know how you get on. Hopefully the battery pull sorts you out.

 

[chablu]

Add another one to the list of bricked Macbook Airs.

Updated my 2011 MBA (128GB) to Mavericks, which went fine. Had 7 available updates in the App Store, so I did what anyone would do and installed them. The computer restarted and showed gray screen with an Apple logo and a progress bar. After the progress bar hit 100%, the computer shut itself off. Turning it back on, you get the progress bar again. It never goes past this point.

Booted into Recovery Mode and tried to run Disk Utility, which told me the drive could not be repaired and that my only option was to backup the data and reformat the drive. Tried putting the MBA in Target Disk mode and accessing it from another computer, no luck.

Installed Mavericks to a bootable usb thumb drive, booted that on the Air and tried repairing the disk with DiskWarrior. No luck.

I ended up recovering all of the data that I could using Data Rescue 3 and transferring files over Thunderbolt by putting my iMac into Target Disk mode, which went really fast, given that i had ~100GB of data.

After I recovered most of my data, I tried reformatting, and got a message that the hard drive has failed and could not be reformatted.

I have an appointment for tonight, but I'm a bit worried because my Air is 1 year out of warranty. Awesome.

 

[Collider]

Thanks. Let us know how you get on. Hopefully the battery pull sorts you out.

No such luck, sadly. They did the manual SMC reset, and got the three beeps of doom, and ordered a new part -- I'm assuming it'll be the logic board as well, but that update came via text an hour after I took it in, and just said 'new part ordered', so I'm not 100% sure. Definitely sounds like the same problem as yours, though.

I wouldn't mind so much, but the damn thing's less than three months old, and I literally just got my rMBP back last week from having its screen replaced for the flogged-to-death image retention issue. A bad month all round for my poor computers, it seems...

 

[Paulejonesy]

I think you're right. 3 beeps is bad RAM, so it'll be a new board.

I know how you feel. I've been (un)lucky enough to own the last 3 releases of the air, and all 3 had to go back to the store for one reason or another. I pretty much begged the guy to swap the thing out it was so new, but their policy is a failure within the first month gets you a swap, from then on its a repair (with possibly referb parts.)

I too have the rMBP, same vintage as yours, and thankfully haven't had to deal with the image retention issue (yet).

 

[Paulejonesy]

Just to update, The Apple store in Regent Street replaced the logo board (and the display assembly) of my Air, and I'm typing this on it now. Took a bit longer than I would have liked (picked it up at 6 tonight - right on the cusp of the 3-5 days), but the staff in store, as usual, were fantastic.

Good luck with your repairs.

 

[Collider]

Just to update, The Apple store in Regent Street replaced the logo board (and the display assembly) of my Air, and I'm typing this on it now. Took a bit longer than I would have liked (picked it up at 6 tonight - right on the cusp of the 3-5 days), but the staff in store, as usual, were fantastic.

Good luck with your repairs.

Glad yours worked out okay! I got mine back yesterday too, and the receipt confirmed it was also the logic board that got replaced under warranty. They also finished the Mavericks install, which was also helpful -- was not looking forward to attempting that again! Seems to be working just fine now; mostly it's just a relief to know that I hadn't done something unfathomably stupid to void my warranty!

Now if only I could backup to my WD external without worrying about that failing too...

 

[Antomin]

Ditto for me. 2013 13" MBA i7 8G RAM 512 SSD bought in July 2013. Worked fine for a while after Mavericks install. Two days ago, hung and became unresponsive. I turned it off and then it wouldn't restart. Then it started restarting randomly (with no input). On a random restart, I accessed recovery. It said I had to back up files and reformat hard drive, that it could not repair. So I did this. Had to re-download Mavericks. Then, after two failed installs, managed to get OS re-installed. Barely got through registration screens when it died again. Frustrating. Trying to finish writing my PhD thesis. Maybe I should have stayed with PC. Have to wait 6 days for a 15 min "genius" appointment.

 

[calvol]

After reading this thread, glad I hung on to my old Dell Latitude running Win7/LinuxMint, just in case. Sounds like a nightmare.