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Time to give up?

uncming

uncming

macrumors member
Original poster
Sep 23, 2014
97
44
My daughters 2017 MBP 13 (no touchbar) won’t fully initialize. I can see that the screen isn’t completely dark but it doesn’t go any where.

I’ve tried NVRAM, SMC resets it helps for a few times then it goes back to blank screen behavior. Should we just give up at this point? She’s going off to college in the fall and school will give her a laptop, but need to get her through June some how

Any other suggestions?
 
uncming said:
My daughters 2017 MBP 13 (no touchbar) won’t fully initialize. I can see that the screen isn’t completely dark but it doesn’t go any where.

I’ve tried NVRAM, SMC resets it helps for a few times then it goes back to blank screen behavior. Should we just give up at this point? She’s going off to college in the fall and school will give her a laptop, but need to get her through June some how

Any other suggestions?
Click to expand...
It always sucks to say, and I don't know what else you might try software wise, but you got 5 years out of the thing....you can feel good about the current Macbook Airs. They fly and will definitely last her 5 years!
 
What do you mean by "I’ve tried NVRAM, SMC resets it helps for a few times then it goes back to blank screen behavior." ?
 
Can you boot it into Recovery? That will give a good hint if HW or maybe SW/corruption.
 
You’re not me said:
What do you mean by "I’ve tried NVRAM, SMC resets it helps for a few times then it goes back to blank screen behavior." ?
Click to expand...
About a month ago I can use reset NVRAM and SMC (Command-Control-P-R) to bring it back to life but then a week later after doing that it’ll just go back to not starting. Today, spent all day toying with it and its not coming up at all
 
uncming said:
About a month ago I can use reset NVRAM and SMC (Command-Control-P-R) to bring it back to life but then a week later after doing that it’ll just go back to not starting. Today, spent all day toying with it and its not coming up at all
Click to expand...
It is unlikely to be the original root-cause but this latest issue is a textbook example of the 'CMOS' battery needing to be replaced.
 
Is the CMOS battery on a 2017 replaceable? Was researching but didn’t find that its replacable
 
In a few cases, the 2017 retina are know to have a faulty display connection port to the logic board
were the metallic prongs fade or just disappear.
all that need is a touch of a solder on the "plug" fixed the dark screen.
to see if this is the problem, hold the screen unto a light
if you can see something that looks like 99% darkness, that is the problem
also, try an external monitor to see if this is the problem.
if there is no screen or a dark one, could be the graphic card.
 
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MBAir2010 said:
In a few cases, the 2017 retina are know to have a faulty display connection port to the logic board
were the metallic prongs fade or just disappear.
all that need is a touch of a solder on the "plug" fixed the dark screen.
to see if this is the problem, hold the screen unto a light
if you can see something that looks like 99% darkness, that is the problem
also, try an external monitor to see if this is the problem.
if there is no screen or a dark one, could be the graphic card.
Click to expand...
I’ve tried plugging it into the monitor and it doesn’t look like that its getting a signal
 
uncming said:
I’ve tried plugging it into the monitor and it doesn’t look like that its getting a signal
Click to expand...
ahhh,
something else then, perhaps take the back cover off and see if anything is disconnected.

the PRAM zapping helps, maybe just rezap the pram, save everything file wise within the small window time
then restore to High Sierra (or sierra) to see if that works.
also perform that disk utility First Aid procedure as well.
 
GMShadow said:
Mac laptops don't have those.
Click to expand...
True enough as no actual CMOS on any Mac (as only clock support is provided and the rest is flash; but I guessed many still use the more familiar CMOS term) and a real battery is only used on desktop Macs. But the power source (be it battery or capacitor) can fail and with it you lose the ability to reset the PRAM/NVRAM and this also messes the SMC addressed functions.

I'll brush-up on my language skills from the naughty step.
 
RobbieTT said:
True enough as no actual CMOS on any Mac (as only clock support is provided and the rest is flash; but I guessed many still use the more familiar CMOS term) and a real battery is only used on desktop Macs. But the power source (be it battery or capacitor) can fail and with it you lose the ability to reset the PRAM/NVRAM and this also messes the SMC addressed functions.

I'll brush-up on my language skills from the naughty step.
Click to expand...
Might be on to something. I let the laptop stay on until it was out of juice. Then this morning when I plugged it immediately powered on into Internet Recovery Mode. So it could be that the battery itself is in bad shape and causing problems with the firmware aspects of the system
 
And to that end, the machine booted back into MacOS Sierra, from Monterey.

And when I click on reinstall it says “The installer information on the recovery server is damaged”
 
It’s booting up now in Monterey after risking a restart. Ran a hardware test from Apple and says no issues found. Perhaps its not a deep diagnostic that their engineers use. Could letting the battery die helps some sort of calibration?

To borrow from one of the greatest movies ever…”Is only so happens your friend here is only mostly dead. There’s a big difference between all dead and mostly dead. Mostly dead is slightly alive. All dead, well there’s only one thing you can do”
 
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If it's working again now, just use it.
DON'T "let the battery die".

BUT...
You ought to think about "a backup strategy" if you don't already have one.

I'd recommend an external SSD and CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper.
 
Fishrrman said:
If it's working again now, just use it.
DON'T "let the battery die".

BUT...
You ought to think about "a backup strategy" if you don't already have one.

I'd recommend an external SSD and CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper.
Click to expand...
Absolutely, that’s been done already. Hopefully it’ll stay alive enough to finish this semester
 
uncming said:
It’s booting up now in Monterey after risking a restart. Ran a hardware test from Apple and says no issues found. Perhaps its not a deep diagnostic that their engineers use. Could letting the battery die helps some sort of calibration?

To borrow from one of the greatest movies ever…”Is only so happens your friend here is only mostly dead. There’s a big difference between all dead and mostly dead. Mostly dead is slightly alive. All dead, well there’s only one thing you can do”
Click to expand...
They do have more comprehensive test tools internally IIRC. If you have an Apple store nearby I'd make an appointment. I'd also see about re-creating the recovery partition.

If you can get a good recovery partition I'd reboot into Recovery and run Disk Utility against the main partition.
 
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