I bought a refurbed Macbook Pro 9,2 i7 2.9GHz Dual Core, 1TB Samsung 850 EVO SSD boot disk, 16GB RAM from OWC. It is still within the return period, so if this is something serious, I can still return it.
I previously had a Late-2010 MBP (7,1) where the keyboard had failed. When I bought this refurb, I took the SSD boot drive out of my 2010, hooked it up externally, and booted from that just to make sure everything would work correctly, and it did. So, I transplanted that SSD into the 2012, transplanted the data doubler and a second SSD to the spot where the optical drive once was, and then also installed more RAM (16GB kit from OWC replacing the stock Apple 8GB). The computer seemed to work fine for the two days after this was done.
Saturday night, my MBP (running 10.10.5 Yosemite) was acting weird. When attempting to launch Adobe Lightroom, the app would just bounce in the dock but never launch.
I tried logging out and back in as that seems to help, and when I tried to log off, it looked like it was trying to log me off, but kept failing (top bar turns blank, icons from screen disappear, then return and it tries again). So, I hit restart instead, and it tried to log me off twice before it shut down by itself. When it turned back on, it would boot a third of the way before it would get stuck.
I reset the PRAM and the SMC and tried rebooting. It booted halfway before I got a spinning circle under the progress bar. I had to force shut down. I tried booting in single user mode and it would not do it. I was able to boot into recovery mode, but it could not find the recovery partition on my SSD so it downloaded the Mountain Lion recovery from Apple. I ran Disk Utility on my boot disk and first tried to Verify Disk. That failed after a certain point. I tried Repairing the disk and after fixing the boot partition, it also failed and said that I needed to back up what I could, and format. I tried resetting the SMC again, and after that, this time, the computer booted up (either by the reset of the SMC or the fixing of the boot partition by Disk Utility)
As I was away from home, I couldn't fix anything at the time, so I just left the computer on and waited until I got home to do a Time Machine backup. After the Time Machine backup, I started using my computer again as usual, and when opening another Adobe product, Finder started to hang. All other apps worked fine (Chrome, Discord, Adobe Creative Cloud, etc) but Finder and any sort of system apps would not work. CMD+OPT+ESC did not work. The dock did not work, and I could not even bring up the Terminal via Spotlight Search to try to relaunch Finder. I tried opening Activity Monitor and it bounced once in the dock before it didn't open, and stayed "aloft" in the Dock. CMD+TAB also did not work to try to switch windows.
The top bar did continue to function, so I clicked the Apple menu and tried to restart, and that did not work. I had to force a power off via the power button. When trying to start up, I got a round "No" symbol (like the one in the no smoking signs). So. this time, I reset the PRAM, but the SMC would not reset regardless of how many times I tried. I tried booting into recovery mode, and it would not boot into recovery mode either.
That's when I had the idea of trying to boot from the Time Machine backup (which was done on an external hard drive). It booted into recovery mode from the Time Machine backup on the external drive, and I ran disk utility again - same issue as before, disk could not be verified or repaired.
So, I decided to Erase and format the SSD since I have a Time Machine backup. After erasing and formatting, attempting to verify and repair the disk still failed (It's as if the SSD didn't even format). I'm trying a time machine restore anyway, because Disk Utility didn't show anything wrong with the SSD.
Now, before I RMA the SSD and/or this machine to OWC, could there be anything else wrong with my MBP judging by the symptoms I listed above? Could the NVRAM/PRAM be failing and/or the battery on that needs replacing? SMC issue? Some sort of compatibility issue between Adobe products and my hardware?
I previously had a Late-2010 MBP (7,1) where the keyboard had failed. When I bought this refurb, I took the SSD boot drive out of my 2010, hooked it up externally, and booted from that just to make sure everything would work correctly, and it did. So, I transplanted that SSD into the 2012, transplanted the data doubler and a second SSD to the spot where the optical drive once was, and then also installed more RAM (16GB kit from OWC replacing the stock Apple 8GB). The computer seemed to work fine for the two days after this was done.
Saturday night, my MBP (running 10.10.5 Yosemite) was acting weird. When attempting to launch Adobe Lightroom, the app would just bounce in the dock but never launch.
I tried logging out and back in as that seems to help, and when I tried to log off, it looked like it was trying to log me off, but kept failing (top bar turns blank, icons from screen disappear, then return and it tries again). So, I hit restart instead, and it tried to log me off twice before it shut down by itself. When it turned back on, it would boot a third of the way before it would get stuck.
I reset the PRAM and the SMC and tried rebooting. It booted halfway before I got a spinning circle under the progress bar. I had to force shut down. I tried booting in single user mode and it would not do it. I was able to boot into recovery mode, but it could not find the recovery partition on my SSD so it downloaded the Mountain Lion recovery from Apple. I ran Disk Utility on my boot disk and first tried to Verify Disk. That failed after a certain point. I tried Repairing the disk and after fixing the boot partition, it also failed and said that I needed to back up what I could, and format. I tried resetting the SMC again, and after that, this time, the computer booted up (either by the reset of the SMC or the fixing of the boot partition by Disk Utility)
As I was away from home, I couldn't fix anything at the time, so I just left the computer on and waited until I got home to do a Time Machine backup. After the Time Machine backup, I started using my computer again as usual, and when opening another Adobe product, Finder started to hang. All other apps worked fine (Chrome, Discord, Adobe Creative Cloud, etc) but Finder and any sort of system apps would not work. CMD+OPT+ESC did not work. The dock did not work, and I could not even bring up the Terminal via Spotlight Search to try to relaunch Finder. I tried opening Activity Monitor and it bounced once in the dock before it didn't open, and stayed "aloft" in the Dock. CMD+TAB also did not work to try to switch windows.
The top bar did continue to function, so I clicked the Apple menu and tried to restart, and that did not work. I had to force a power off via the power button. When trying to start up, I got a round "No" symbol (like the one in the no smoking signs). So. this time, I reset the PRAM, but the SMC would not reset regardless of how many times I tried. I tried booting into recovery mode, and it would not boot into recovery mode either.
That's when I had the idea of trying to boot from the Time Machine backup (which was done on an external hard drive). It booted into recovery mode from the Time Machine backup on the external drive, and I ran disk utility again - same issue as before, disk could not be verified or repaired.
So, I decided to Erase and format the SSD since I have a Time Machine backup. After erasing and formatting, attempting to verify and repair the disk still failed (It's as if the SSD didn't even format). I'm trying a time machine restore anyway, because Disk Utility didn't show anything wrong with the SSD.
Now, before I RMA the SSD and/or this machine to OWC, could there be anything else wrong with my MBP judging by the symptoms I listed above? Could the NVRAM/PRAM be failing and/or the battery on that needs replacing? SMC issue? Some sort of compatibility issue between Adobe products and my hardware?
