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lumencreative

macrumors regular
Original poster
May 19, 2014
137
91
Lancashire
So yesterday morning my wife installed Yosemite on her 2011 MacBook Pro. It worked fine all day until she closed the lid on the laptop and then came to go back on it half an hour later. The laptop wouldn't wake and the light on the MagSafe is flickering faintly. The laptop doesn't respond to pressing the power button at all.

When I got home from work I tried everything I could think of. I disconnected the battery, followed instructions to reset the PRAM and SMC but neither of these worked.

As my wife needed to use her computer, I removed the hard drive and put it in my 2011 MacBook Pro and she was using it with no issues last night. However, when she came to use the laptop this morning my laptop is now doing exactly the same thing.

Can anyone offer any advice on a possible way to fix this as otherwise we've got two bricked MacBook Pros thanks to Yosemite.
 

simonsi

Contributor
Jan 3, 2014
4,851
735
Auckland
Are you sure your power adapter is good? That is what you would get with a failed power adapter and a flat battery.

Does your hard drive boot when in her laptop? (that will show if any damage is permanent.)

As you have two power adapters, try both. Same result?
 

Mbrashear

macrumors newbie
Oct 18, 2014
2
0
My 2014 MBP Retina is doing the same

The MBP is brand new (2014) I'm fairly confident this issue has nothing to do with my power supply or battery.

After updating to Yosemite and updating all associated software last night my MBP worked wonderfully, no glitches at all. I closed the lid, plugged it in and went to bed. When I woke this morning to get a little early Saturday morning work done my computer decided it wasn't ready to wake up. When I open the lid I can see the screen is on but it is blacked out. I have tried adjusting the screen brightness to no avail. When I power cycle the MBP is shuts down fine and when it powers back up I get the Apple sound as it typical but then it goes straight back to the black screen and stays that way.

Please help.

Remember when Jobs fired a team of engineers for saying "can't". I wonder what he would would do in light of the recent string of cruddy OS roll outs.

----------

Booting in Recovery Mode produces the same blacked out screen.
 

Mbrashear

macrumors newbie
Oct 18, 2014
2
0
Try this

Got through to Apple support and they fixed my problem.

boot up MBP and then immediately hold down <Control> and <Command> and <R> and <P> then release. You should hear an additional boot chime.

THe MBP then started up successfully.

mystery solved,methinks Apple support
 

lumencreative

macrumors regular
Original poster
May 19, 2014
137
91
Lancashire
As stated above, I have already tried a PRAM reset and it didn't work.

I have tried both power supplies and get the same results with both.
 

simonsi

Contributor
Jan 3, 2014
4,851
735
Auckland
As stated above, I have already tried a PRAM reset and it didn't work.

I have tried both power supplies and get the same results with both.

Both machines now the same? Even if you refit your HDD to either? Neither charger works on either machine?

Suspect the HDD from your wifes mbp is the issue but need to know if your HDD boots in either mbp now.
 

lumencreative

macrumors regular
Original poster
May 19, 2014
137
91
Lancashire
Both machines now the same? Even if you refit your HDD to either? Neither charger works on either machine?

Suspect the HDD from your wifes mbp is the issue but need to know if your HDD boots in either mbp now.

I managed to get my machine working again by disconnecting the battery and re-connecting it (with my wifes hard drive present), however, that doesn't work on my wifes machine and it just remains dead.

I can't see it being a hard drive issue because the laptop doesn't even respond to pressing the power button and if it was the hard drive, it should still at least power on.
 

simonsi

Contributor
Jan 3, 2014
4,851
735
Auckland
I managed to get my machine working again by disconnecting the battery and re-connecting it (with my wifes hard drive present), however, that doesn't work on my wifes machine and it just remains dead.

I can't see it being a hard drive issue because the laptop doesn't even respond to pressing the power button and if it was the hard drive, it should still at least power on.

That is odd. Being brutally honest I can only see it being:

An issue with your wife's hard drive, that has propagated from her machine to yours, possibly corrupting the firmware on both???

Something introduced when you moved the drives, mimicking the drive issue onto yours (SATA cable??)

Something external but common to both machines - mains power??

Certainly odd and difficult to diagnose.
 

lumencreative

macrumors regular
Original poster
May 19, 2014
137
91
Lancashire
That is odd. Being brutally honest I can only see it being:

An issue with your wife's hard drive, that has propagated from her machine to yours, possibly corrupting the firmware on both???

Something introduced when you moved the drives, mimicking the drive issue onto yours (SATA cable??)

Something external but common to both machines - mains power??

Certainly odd and difficult to diagnose.

Thanks for taking the time to respond.

As I say, normally a faulty hard drive wouldn't prevent a computer from powering up (it would usually bring up a folder with a ? in it or something similar). You can even power on a Macbook Pro without a hard drive present, but not in this case, so I can't see it being the hard drive.

The hard drive is currently working in my machine following disconnecting/reconnecting the battery.

I can't see what would be introduced when moving the hard drives but the common factor is OSX Yosemite...Maybe there's something in it that the 2011 Macbook Pro doesn't like?

We have tried two power supplies and we've lived in our house for 7 months and had no previous issues.

It's very odd that this has all happened since my wife upgraded to Yosemite.

My wife's Macbook Pro is still under warranty with the supplier so I'm tempted to send it in but don't want to go to all that hassle if it's a simple fix that I could do myself.
 

simonsi

Contributor
Jan 3, 2014
4,851
735
Auckland
It's very odd that this has all happened since my wife upgraded to Yosemite.

Nothing quite fits the whole picture - but generally software can't break hardware. The exception might be if there is a firmware update involved - did you install Yosemite on both machines via updating each with its own downloaded update or did you download once and move the installer file with a USB stick so both machines were installed from the same installer file?
 

lumencreative

macrumors regular
Original poster
May 19, 2014
137
91
Lancashire
Nothing quite fits the whole picture - but generally software can't break hardware. The exception might be if there is a firmware update involved - did you install Yosemite on both machines via updating each with its own downloaded update or did you download once and move the installer file with a USB stick so both machines were installed from the same installer file?

My wife downloaded & installed Yosemite on her Macbook Pro. Mine already had the Yosemite Beta installed so I hadn't yet downloaded the full version from the app store.

It is very odd indeed. I am aware that 2011 Macbook Pro's are plagued with GPU issues but I'd be suprised if upgrading to Yosemite overworked the GPU enough to fry the laptop.
 
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