Yeah, they did something to the controller.

[revelated]

Was toying around with the 2011 today at work during a customer call. Saw no issues, everything felt nice, so I figured I would go ahead and swap over my SSD to see what the boot time was. Imagine my surprise to see the thing not want to boot at all. Not regular, not safe mode, not CD, nothing. It just sits at the apple logo.

Now this could be attributed to either a driver issue - given the SSD came from my Big Apple this is a distinct possibility - or something with the controller itself not liking the SSD. Mind, this SSD has been in two other Mac notebooks without an issue.

NVRAM - no go. PRAM - no go. Didn't try fsck or the SMC - at this point I figure it's got to be something related to the hardware or the OS. Unfortunately, if I can't boot into the CD, I can't verify that.

Anyone else successfully migrated an existing SSD into the new MBP?

 

[TheHoff]

Yes.

Same experience but there is nothing fundamentally wrong with it except that you can't just slide it over from an existing installation.

So insert your SL disk and hold down C -- you need to re-install SL over your current installation. Resetting the PRAM wasn't enough. I moved my OWC SSD over from a C2D unibody and the same thing happened to me. If you do a verbose boot you will see it hangs when it first tries to load the kext extensions.

45 minutes later, it installed and rebooted and it worked perfectly. All existing user files were still in place and it acted like nothing happened. But it didn't want to move over without a re-install.

 

[calderone]

The new MBPs ship with a custom build of 10.6.6. If your SSD had vanilla 10.6.6 on it, it won't boot.

That is why a re-install "fixes" it. Pretty typical stuff.

 

[TheHoff]

The new MBPs ship with a custom build of 10.6.6. If your SSD had vanilla 10.6.6 on it, it won't boot.

That is why a re-install "fixes" it. Pretty typical stuff.

Yup. And when it came back I also had the Facetime app.

 

[calderone]

Yup. And when it came back I also had the Facetime app.

Cool story.

 

[revelated]

Unfortunately, holding C does not boot the CD. Holding Option and selecting the CD doesn't work either. The CD attempts to load, but then spins down and sits at a gray apple. Same with safe mode.

I'm wondering. If I slave the SSD and do an Archive and Install - assuming that's possible, never done it - that should achieve the same dock objective, yes?

 

[TheHoff]

Unfortunately, holding C does not boot the CD. Holding Option and selecting the CD doesn't work either. The CD attempts to load, but then spins down and sits at a gray apple. Same with safe mode.

I'm wondering. If I slave the SSD and do an Archive and Install - assuming that's possible, never done it - that should achieve the same dock objective, yes?

Did you try a Verbose boot (cmd-V) to see where it is hanging? Oh you said it doesn't safe-boot either so probably not.

I can't imagine why C wouldn't boot the DVD. That should happen no matter what. This is weird -- what brand SSD is it? My OWC went over fine once I re-installed to get the new drivers.

 

[revelated]

Did you try a Verbose boot (cmd-V) to see where it is hanging? Oh you said it doesn't safe-boot either so probably not.

I can't imagine why C wouldn't boot the DVD. That should happen no matter what. This is weird -- what brand SSD is it? My OWC went over fine once I re-installed to get the new drivers.

Intel X-25M. And I did do verbose. It locked up on Extensions.kxmt or some odd name.

I'm going to use my previous Big Apple to run one last Time Machine backup. Then I will format and reinstall Snow Leopard from the Time Machine backup using the 2011 DVDs using the SSD on a USB SATA cable.

 

[TheHoff]

Intel X-25M. And I did do verbose. It locked up on Extensions.kxmt or some odd name.

I'm going to use my previous Big Apple to run one last Time Machine backup. Then I will format and reinstall Snow Leopard from the Time Machine backup using the 2011 DVDs using the SSD on a USB SATA cable.

Yup that was exactly where mine hung, too. Except holding down C worked for me and I was able to reinstall over it.

I think your new plan will work.

 

[alphaod]

I have an Intel X25-M as well; I just performed an Archive & Install to install all the new drivers and everything booted up fine.

 

[Dalton63841]

@revelated
Extensions.mkext is the extensions cache in the Mac filesystem. It is located at /System/Library/Caches/com.apple.kext.caches/Startup/

The kextcache can be rebuilt with the command:

sudo kextcache -v 1 -a i386 -a x86_64 -m /System/Library/Caches/com.apple.kext.caches/Startup/Extensions.mkext /System/Library/Extensions

 

[edifyingGerbil]

Would this affect USB devices too?

I had the MBP 2010 last week and I was able to install a three mobile USB dongle. Today I returned the MBP 2010 for a 2011 and when I tried to install the dongle it wasn't spotted by the setup software (ie it said device not found).

I can see it's connected because on my desktop is a CD icon with 3Connect written on it but the driver must not be installing correctly.

I should add that last week I updated OS X to the 10.6.6 version and the dongle still worked on that.

Should I reinstall the OS like someone suggested earlier?

 

[TheHoff]

@revelated
Extensions.mkext is the extensions cache in the Mac filesystem. It is located at /System/Library/Caches/com.apple.kext.caches/Startup/

The kextcache can be rebuilt with the command:

sudo kextcache -v 1 -a i386 -a x86_64 -m /System/Library/Caches/com.apple.kext.caches/Startup/Extensions.mkext /System/Library/Extensions

You can also trash the whole Library/Caches folder contents and it will be rebuilt, right? I probably should've tried that first but went with the re-install.

 

[revelated]

Would this affect USB devices too?

I had the MBP 2010 last week and I was able to install a three mobile USB dongle. Today I returned the MBP 2010 for a 2011 and when I tried to install the dongle it wasn't spotted by the setup software (ie it said device not found).

I can see it's connected because on my desktop is a CD icon with 3Connect written on it but the driver must not be installing correctly.

I should add that last week I updated OS X to the 10.6.6 version and the dongle still worked on that.

Should I reinstall the OS like someone suggested earlier?

Possible.


Update, so I just did the slave method. Slaved it with the original hard drive installed using my USB-SATA adapter, that got me to the DVD. Just told it to do an install and pointed it at the USB drive. Took 45 minutes.

It wasn't all flipping monkeys and balloons though. The Startup Disk got screwed; booting to the USB took like 40 seconds - way too long for an SSD. When I connected it directly internally and started up, it threw up the flashing question folder. A few more restarts - now it comes up fine, but compared to the Big Apple, my boot speed is doubly slow which is irritating. I'm hoping that after a few more restarts that it will "learn" me and get back to the 10-12 second boot time I'm accustomed to.

But it worked. Now I need to do a small Boot Camp and run that Final Fantasy XIV benchmarking program to see if I can smack that benchmark around since it made my i7 iMac feel impotent...somehow.

 

[andrew086]

Cool story.

doing it wrong