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Weirdest stuck MBP - I'm all out of options!

G

Gowardo

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jul 20, 2012
13
1
London, UK
Hi guys,

First of all thanks to anyone who will take the time and try to help on this one. I'm quite tech savvy but completely stuck on this one.

Let me give you some background info...

- June 2012 MBP
- HDD swapped for SSD (put the HDD in the optical bay as a storage drive and got rid of the optical drive)
- When HDD swapped for SSD, I used SuperDuper! to clone the drives, this fries the recovery partition - i.e. doesn't copy it onto your new drive
- Recently, I upgraded to the latest OSx version (El Capitan) and everything was working fine for quite a long time (weeks)
- Just yesterday, my MBP no longer wanted to boot up, it turns on, but doesn't go past the initial progress bar (with the apple logo)

Things I tried...

- Recovery mode (partition no longer exists on this MBP so no luck)
- Safe boot (no luck, gets stuck on progress bar)
- Single User Mode (checks return ok results, but after reboots it still gets stuck)
- Reset NVRAM (no luck)
- Reset SMC (no luck)
- Internet recovery partition (this was the closest I got to getting it to work again, but it goes as far as the wifi selection, logs into network, downloads something, then gets stuck...)

I don't have another Mac, so I can't attempt target disk mode, but I was hoping you guys could suggest something else for me to do. What about things such as ...

- USB recovery?
- Taking SSD out of mac and installing OSX extended from my PC?
- Anything else?

Any advice highly appreciated, I am completely stuck :(
 
Gowardo said:
Hi guys,

First of all thanks to anyone who will take the time and try to help on this one. I'm quite tech savvy but completely stuck on this one.

Let me give you some background info...

- June 2012 MBP
- HDD swapped for SSD (put the HDD in the optical bay as a storage drive and got rid of the optical drive)
- When HDD swapped for SSD, I used SuperDuper! to clone the drives, this fries the recovery partition - i.e. doesn't copy it onto your new drive
- Recently, I upgraded to the latest OSx version (El Capitan) and everything was working fine for quite a long time (weeks)
- Just yesterday, my MBP no longer wanted to boot up, it turns on, but doesn't go past the initial progress bar (with the apple logo)

Things I tried...

- Recovery mode (partition no longer exists on this MBP so no luck)
- Safe boot (no luck, gets stuck on progress bar)
- Single User Mode (checks return ok results, but after reboots it still gets stuck)
- Reset NVRAM (no luck)
- Reset SMC (no luck)
- Internet recovery partition (this was the closest I got to getting it to work again, but it goes as far as the wifi selection, logs into network, downloads something, then gets stuck...)

I don't have another Mac, so I can't attempt target disk mode, but I was hoping you guys could suggest something else for me to do. What about things such as ...

- USB recovery?
- Taking SSD out of mac and installing OSX extended from my PC?
- Anything else?

Any advice highly appreciated, I am completely stuck :(
Click to expand...

Sounds like the SSD has died it happens occasionally.
 
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Do you have an external USB enclosure you can ut the SSD in to see if it will boot from there? That would tell you if the SSD still works. If it works in the external emclsoure but not when mounted internally, that tells you you have a bad drive cable. Fairly common issue with these.
 
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Weaselboy said:
Do you have an external USB enclosure you can ut the SSD in to see if it will boot from there? That would tell you if the SSD still works. If it works in the external emclsoure but not when mounted internally, that tells you you have a bad drive cable. Fairly common issue with these.
Click to expand...

This may be a good idea actually thanks. I don't have an external USB enclosure sadly, so can't try it, but I have tried to swap the drives around and it still gets stuck on net recovery off the HDD so it can't be the SSD's issue it seems.

Apart from diagnostics on the drive cable, does anyone have any other advice? Or a different way to diagnose the HDD cable which doesn't involve the use of a USB external drive perhaps?

Thanks again guys, feel like maybe we are getting there.
 
Internet Recovery boot can take quite a long time, sometimes 10 minutes or longer.
How long did you let the internet recovery boot (with the spinning world on the screen)?

A bad hard drive (or a failed SSD) can sometimes prevent any boot from completing unless you remove that drive first.
 
DeltaMac said:
Internet Recovery boot can take quite a long time, sometimes 10 minutes or longer.
How long did you let the internet recovery boot (with the spinning world on the screen)?

A bad hard drive (or a failed SSD) can sometimes prevent any boot from completing unless you remove that drive first.
Click to expand...

Hi Delta Mac,

Thanks for your reply. I have actually waited until the timer ran out, there was a progress bar, which I think took 8 minutes. Right after the progress bar finished, the mbp autorebooted and it was then stuck on a blank/gray screen for 25 min+ so I don't think that was the issue.

In addition, the SSD which may potentially have been faulty was indeed removed (and replaced with the HDD from the optical bay) so I doubt that's the issue either. Althoigh you have given me the idea that the HDD may have actually been the fault one all along and prevented booting, so I will now try to leave the SSD only in there and try again.

I know we are running out of options here, but any other ideas at all? I'd really like to try to avoid taking it into a shop if I can save the cash.

Thanks!
 
It's certainly not normal for an unrequested reboot during the boot to internet recovery system.
Still likely a failed hard drive. Could even be the SATA ribbon cable.
 
DeltaMac said:
It's certainly not normal for an unrequested reboot during the boot to internet recovery system.
Still likely a failed hard drive. Could even be the SATA ribbon cable.
Click to expand...

Ok guys thanks a bunch - I've ordered a cheap USB 3.0 esata enclosure and will attempt to boot from USB when it arrives tomorrow.

In case it is the ribbon cable, I'll just grab one from eBay and see if that fixes it.

If anyone can think of anything else, again, any advice much appreciated!

Thanks
 
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Update: I have now tried booting from an external USB enclosure, but it still hangs on boot.

Now my question is.... If the ribbon cable is not the problem, why would OSX Internet recovery hang when I try to execute it? As per replies above, I've tried osx Internet recovery on both ssd and HDD, but no luck.

Now I'm starting to worry my ram or something more serious may have gone wrong here...

Any thoughts?

Thanks!!
 
Gowardo said:
Update: I have now tried booting from an external USB enclosure, but it still hangs on boot.

Now my question is.... If the ribbon cable is not the problem, why would OSX Internet recovery hang when I try to execute it? As per replies above, I've tried osx Internet recovery on both ssd and HDD, but no luck.

Now I'm starting to worry my ram or something more serious may have gone wrong here...

Any thoughts?

Thanks!!
Click to expand...
Are you repartitioning and formatting the drive before you try internet recovery?
 
Gav2k said:
Are you repartitioning and formatting the drive before you try internet recovery?
Click to expand...

NO - i assumed osx Internet recovery would do that? If not, can I do it by hooking the SSD to a pc? Although I think at this stage it's unlikely it's the drive as I've tried both...

Thanks
 
Kinda surprised you haven't used Command-V yet (right after the chime) to try to see how far it gets in the boot process before tanking, considering everything else you've done already.
 
duervo said:
Kinda surprised you haven't used Command-V yet (right after the chime) to try to see how far it gets in the boot process before tanking, considering everything else you've done already.
Click to expand...
I did actually - but it goes way to fast for me to make any sense of it! Is there a block screen button equivalent on a mac?
 
Not that I know of. I'd try to record a video of it with a smartphone and then pause playback of the video to try to see what it says. Probably will take a few tries to get it though.
 
Gowardo said:
NO - i assumed osx Internet recovery would do that? If not, can I do it by hooking the SSD to a pc? Although I think at this stage it's unlikely it's the drive as I've tried both...

Thanks
Click to expand...
Ssd's can be finicky if there not formatted/partitioned first hence why i usually just use disk ustility to partition> format and copy the OS over. No third party crap needed
 
If you are trying to get El Capitan to boot and getting stuck on the black and white apple screen without any progress showing at all, it's more than likely a bad KEXT problem, with the most likely one being Eltima, which does not get checked by the apple code and causes a hang. The apple dev forum is full of this. The fix for this is tricky, while in recovery mode I ran this command:

cd /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD/Library/Extensions/ ; mkdir Unsupported ; mv BJ* Unsupported ; mv FT* Unsupported ; mv CIJ* Unsupported ; mv SO* Unsupported ; mv Si* Unsupported ; mv Wa* Unsupported ; cd /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD/System/Library/Extensions/ ; mkdir Unsupported ; mv BJ* Unsupported ; mv El* Unsupported ; mv iv* Unsupported ; mv NoS* Unsupported ; rm -Rf /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD/Library/Filesystems/*fuse* ; rm -Rf /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD/Library/Application\ Support/Hots* ; rm -Rf /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD/var/folders/*

But this was tailored just for my machine; milage may vary on yours.
 
Did you reformat your HDD? If not put that back in and either boot from it and prove all is good except your SSD,or if you did some form of format see if the recovery partition is still on it. (incidentally Carbon Copy Cloner DOES create the recovery partition for you if the boot drive doesn't have one, for that reason alone I would use it over SD but I don't think it would have helped you in this scenario).

As the SSD fails in both locations then it isn't likely to be a cable as different cables are involved and the chances of having the same issue occur on two cables at the same time is very low...
 
Turns out it seems to have been a video card issue, Apple are gonna fix it for free as this particular model was already on a recall for this exact issue. What a huge weight off...

Thanks super much to everyone for the help, really appreciated!
 
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