Hello,
I decided to take a punt on a 2020 i3 “scissor switch” Macbook Air on eBay listed “for parts”, got it £100. I figured that, best case scenario I could easily figure out what’s wrong and get a working laptop out of it, worst case I could resell as it or for parts, as it is in quite good physical condition, no major dents I can see, powers on, screen works etc.
Here is what happens:
- If I try to boot normally, I get the Apple boot logo, and then it boots to the flashing question mark icon (indicating no valid OS).
- If I try to boot into recovery or internet recovery (via Ethernet), it either shows the spinning globe for ages and says it will take 24 hours or something, and/or it seems to load very slowly and after a long time it gives me an error code - I forget what the code was, but when I looked it up it indicated an issue with logging to Apple’s servers
- If I try to boot off a Mac OS Sequoia USB installer (created using my intel Mac Mini, using the createinstallmedia Terminal prompt), it shows up on the boot screen but when I press enter it then seems to try to go into internet recovery. (This indicates that the machine is set to disallow booting from external drives, but as I can’t get into recovery I of course can’t disable this).
- I am also not sure the battery holds any charge anymore, as it seems to power off immediately after I disconnect the charger.
Any ideas on what could be going on, and if it is fixable?
Many thanks!
I decided to take a punt on a 2020 i3 “scissor switch” Macbook Air on eBay listed “for parts”, got it £100. I figured that, best case scenario I could easily figure out what’s wrong and get a working laptop out of it, worst case I could resell as it or for parts, as it is in quite good physical condition, no major dents I can see, powers on, screen works etc.
Here is what happens:
- If I try to boot normally, I get the Apple boot logo, and then it boots to the flashing question mark icon (indicating no valid OS).
- If I try to boot into recovery or internet recovery (via Ethernet), it either shows the spinning globe for ages and says it will take 24 hours or something, and/or it seems to load very slowly and after a long time it gives me an error code - I forget what the code was, but when I looked it up it indicated an issue with logging to Apple’s servers
- If I try to boot off a Mac OS Sequoia USB installer (created using my intel Mac Mini, using the createinstallmedia Terminal prompt), it shows up on the boot screen but when I press enter it then seems to try to go into internet recovery. (This indicates that the machine is set to disallow booting from external drives, but as I can’t get into recovery I of course can’t disable this).
- I am also not sure the battery holds any charge anymore, as it seems to power off immediately after I disconnect the charger.
Any ideas on what could be going on, and if it is fixable?
Many thanks!
