The MacBook Pro with the dodgy GPU, well, it decided to update itself again, with meant it wouldn’t boot. I did have a look online to see if there was a permanent fix, the only way to do that was to do something with a soldering iron, I thought it was best to steer clear of that. I did train in electronics, but I am rubbish when it comes to physical practical stuff. I would prefer if it could be done programmatically.
This time I missed a few parts. In total, it only took about five minutes to fix it.
So how did I do it I hear you cry, good question, here is the answer…
If you having problems seeing the screen, boot into single user mode but holding down command and S when you boot the machine up.
In theory, if you have done everything correctly, you should now have a working MacBook Pro.
I booted, and it worked!
MacBook Pro – finally, it is working!
But the question is, will it reboot OK. It did. So I will shut down and leave it and take back to the owner tomorrow. I think if it keeps doing it I will suggest he buys a new one, it is 10 years old now.
Create a UEFI boot compatible USB stick for Windows 10
I needed a Windows 10 start up disk, but I didn’t have a working Windows 10 machine. You can grab one from the Microsoft website.
Once downloaded insert the USB stick into the machine and open disks:
Image of Ubuntu settings.
In the top right hand corner you will see a vertical ellipses:
Vertical Ellipses
It’s advised you format the disk first.
To make it compatible with UEFI, I am going to use some software called Ventoy, this is released as open source software and can be downloaded from their website.
I am doing this on Ubuntu, once downloaded you will see a .tar.gz file in your download folder:
Ventoy download .tar.gz
We need to extract this. Double click on the file, find Ventoy with the respective version number:
Extract Ventoy onto your machine.
Click on extract. This will be extracted into the downloaded folder in this instance:
Extracted Ventoy image
OK, now we get onto the interesting bit.
Go into the folder, right click and open the directory in Terminal:
Ventoy, open directory in terminal
OK, the terminal is now open:
Ventoy directory in terminal.
We can now run Ventoy. Run the command:
sudo ./VentoyWeb.sh
Ventoy server is running
In your browser, go to the IP address provided, in this instance 127.0.0.1:24680
Ventoy in your browswer
Click on options then partition type:
Ventoy Usage
As I am trying to create a UEFI boot disk, select GPT.
Hit the install button. You will have a couple of warning prompts, just agree to them, this will format the insetered USB stick:
Ventoy has been installed on the device
Click OK.
Check that the Ventoy disk is showing:
Check the Ventoy disk can be seen
If you can’t see it, unplug the device and re-insert it.
When Ventoy is installed it will change the disk to two partitions, VTOYEFI and Ventoy.
Ventoy partitions.
The VTOYEFI, this is a small partition with some EFI stuff in, the other partition is Ventoy.
Go into the Ventoy partition and simply drag the ISO from your downloads into this partitions:
Drag the Win 10 image into the Ventoy partition
It can take some time for it to copy over, with me it took 20 minutes:
The copying process
Don’t just unplug the USB stick, go through the correct procedure and eject the disk partitions, it can now be used to boot the Windows 10 installer.
I needed a Windows 10 start up disk, but I didn’t have a working Windows 10 machine. You can grab one from the Microsoft website.
Once downloaded insert the USB stick into the machine and open disks:
Image of Ubuntu settings.
In the top right hand corner you will see a vertical ellipses:
Vertical Ellipses
It’s advised you format the disk first, then you can restore from disk image.
Restore disk image using Ubuntu
You will get:
Restore image using Ubuntu, selection.
Click on the None:
Select the image to restore.
Click open, then start restoring:
Start restoring:
Confirm you want to restore:
Confirm you want to restore
It will start to restore:
Restore in progress
Eventually Windows 10 will be on the stick.
Win 10 is now on the stick.
In theory, we should be able to use this now as a bootable USB stick. But with newer machines it may need to have the EFI thing. I will discuss how that’s done on another post.
I know it’s been a while since I posted something, 2020 was a bit hectic!
A few years ago my old MacBook failed, turned out to be an issue with the hard drive so replaced it, I had to re-heat sync the CPU as well. When it initially started working again I had already purchased a new laptop, a MacBook Air, so thought I would stick a Linux OS on the old one. Initially, I did Fedora, but over the years I got fed up of that with issues upgrading. So this year I decided to stick Ubuntu onto it. This is how I did it:
The first thing I needed to do was to download a copy of the operating system, I did that on the Fedora operating system. I then used a USB stick that I had not doing anything and restored the stick using the image I had downloaded.
Next was to get any files off Fedora that I wanted to keep. I copied these files onto a external hard drive, no need to do a full back up, there weren’t that many.
A shut Fedora down for one final time. I inserted the USB stick into the MacBook. I booted up the machine holding down the Alt/Command key, I let go and got this:
Boot options to install Ubuntu
I selected the first EFI Boot. This will take you to a screen asking what you want to boot into. I couldn’t get a photo of this, it was quick. When you see the screen I chose Ubuntu and pressed the letter “e”. This took me to:
Ubuntu edit screen.
Where you quiet splash, take your curser down and add nomodeset
Ubuntu edit screen with nomodeset
This reads:
linux /casper/vmlinuz file=/cdrom/pressed/ubuntu.seed maybe-ubiquity quiet splash nomodeset ---
Press F10 to proceed. Eventually you will get a screen like this:
Ubuntu error check
Once Ubuntu has done its thing you will be asked if you want a demo or install:
Ubuntu selection
This time am going to install Ubuntu. Now you will be taken through the install process.
The first thing to do is select your keyboard. My MacBook is a English UK Macintosh keyboard:
Select a keyboard
Click on continue.
In theory you should be able connect to your network on the next screen. But I had issues with that so I selected the WiFi network at the top right hand corner, select the network and stick your password in.
Click on continue, you will now be asked what type of install:
What to install?
I want a normal installation, download updates during install, I also checked the install third-party software. Click continue:
Where to install?
You may see something different, in this case I am going to erase the disk and instal Ubuntu, click continue, you will get a prompt:
Prompt on what it will do with erasing the disk.
Click continue. Select where you want the timezone, for me, I’ll stick that as Melbourne Australia.
Select timezone.
Click on continue once done.
Nearly done, enter your name, what you want to call the machine, your username and password, continue. Ubuntu will install.
Install Ubuntu
When the install is complete, you will be asked to restart your machine:
Install complete.
Click restart now. The machine will spin down and you will be asked to remove the install media:
Remove install media.
So now is the moment of truth, remove the media and hit enter.
When booting, I got the error:
Error on boot.
After digging around online, I read that this is a common issue when installing Linux on older machines. But the good news, there is a work around.
Stick the install media back into your machine and repeat the process to get into the install screen:
Install media reinserted.
This time select “Try Ubuntu”.
Open the documents file structure and navigate to “Your_Hard_Drive/boot/efi
Ubuntu EFI directory
As you can see, nothing is there. We need get a shim64.efi file in it.
Navigate to /boot/grub/x86_64-efi, find the grub.efi
Grub EFI directory.
What we need to do is move this as root, right click in this directory and open it in terminal.
Run the command:
sudo cp grub.efi ../../efi/shim64.efi
EFI copy terminal command
For those eagle eyed viewers, will notice the screenshot doesn’t have the sudo, you need the sudo to run it as a root user.
Press enter. Now check that it has been copied, go back into the efi directory to make sure it’s there:
EFI directory after.
Job done. Now reboot the machine. I got the same error when rebooting, but after a few seconds, maybe 10 seconds or so and it will start to boot up.
Good luck!
MacBook Pro – AMD GPU issues – how I finally fixed it… WOOOOOHOOOOOO!!!!!!
So, after several weeks, I finally found a way of fixing it. A few days OK I was ready to give up. But then I found that with the operating system the Mac was using I had to do things differently. The operating system in question, High Sierra.
How did I do it, good question, here is the answer…
Before we go into Arch Linux, I did some preparation on the MacBook pro. At this point the graphics on the Mac was bad, you could barely make out what was going on. Boot in single user mode by holding down command and S.
When rebooting hold down command R down until you hear the chime.
You will then be able to select which drive you want to boot from. Insert the USB stick with Arch Linux on into the machine. Select the EFI boot. Select Arch Linux archiso x86_64 UEFI CD. Press the E key. At the bottom of the screen you will get a line of code. At the end at nomodeset
MacBook pro – Arch Linux
Run the command:
cd /sys/firmware/efi/efivars
Then
ls
You will get:
MacBook pro – Arch Linux list
At the bottom right hand corner you can gpu-power-prefs-
We need to remove it do this use the command
rm gpu-power-prefs-
Then hit the tab key, this should automatically populate the rest of the filename. I did have a few issues where it didn’t populate the full name so had to type in the last section.
If you don’t have one of these, don’t worry, go to the next section.
Sometimes when removing you may get an error that says
“operation not permitted”
If that’s the case, then the efivarfs has been mounted as read only. You will need to remount it with read write permissions and repeat the rm command. To do this run the command:
cd / umount /sys/firmware/efi/efivars/ mount -t efivarfs rw /sys/firmware/efi/efivars/ cd /sys/firmware/efi/efivars/ rm gpu-power-prefs-
Again, after the gpu-power-prefs- hit the tab key which should populate the rest of the filename.
Now we have to create a new gpu-power-prefs file, run the command:
If this works, unmount the efivars using the command:
cd / umount /sys/firmware/efi/efivars/
This basically flushed the efivars out. Now to reboot.
reboot
For some reason chattr wasn’t found. So I went to basics and changed the owner of the file /sys/firmware/efi/efivars/gpu-power-prefs-fa4ce28d-b62f-4c99-9cc3-6815686e30f9 using chown.
But for some reason, the chown didn’t work, I couldn’t even figure out what the user permission was.
But it still didn’t work. I rebooted the machine, still got stuck half way through.
So I forced shut it down.
If you have done this already, boot into single user mode but holding down command and S when you boot the machine up.
And reboot. On the reboot, hold down command and R when you boot the machine up, let go when you get the Apple logo.
macBook pro – macOS utilities
Click on utilities and terminal:
MacBook pro – macOS utilities
If you have more than one partition run the following lines, if you only have one partition you can skip this bit:
diskutil cs list (find UUID for drive)
diskutil coreStorage unlockVolume UUID
Now, we all need to do the following, run the command:
cd /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD
MacBook pro – terminal change the the directory
Now, we need to remove the AMD Kexts, first create a directory where we can stick them on the off chance you need them in the future using the line:
mkdir AMD_Kexts
Because I had done this a few times, I have now started to create the directory on the date, so this one I called 13Dec19_AMD_KEXTS
Now, lets move those AMD Kexts:
mv System/Library/Extensions/AMD*.* AMD_Kexts/
then type in reboot:
reboot
In theory, if you have done everything correctly, you should now have a working MacBook Pro.
I booted, and f**k me, it worked!
MacBook Pro – finally, it is working!
But the question is, will it reboot OK.
But I still want to want to set that files so it is only accessible to the superuser (technical term – immutable). I have decided not pursue this, it’s December, I need to get this Mac back to her owner before Christmas and fast running out of time.
After looking online, sometimes if the USB stick that you use isn’t formatted correctly that seems to be an issue. So will give that ago if it comes back to me.
After sleeping on it, thought I would go back to basics. There is something that is conflicting, but what.
I stuck the time machine in again, held down the Alt/Option key and booted into macOS utilities
MacBok Pro -macOS Utilities
Click on utilities, then terminal:
MacBook Pro – macOS Utilities Terminal
You will get:
MacBook Pro – Terminal
Most of what I am going to do is over at MacBook Pro GPU AMD failure method 3, although this Mac isn’t encrypted, if yours is, there is some other stuff to do some extra stuff with this time as the hard drive was encrypted.
The -stdinpassphrase will prompt you for a password in the command line.
This still didn’t fix it though.
I have already run a diagnostic check, but nothing came up with that. So I am going to do it again but using the internet hardware test. To get into this hold down option/alt and D, you will get this:
Apple Internet Diagnostics
Select your language and the arrow button. You will get:
Apple Internet Diagnostics
Do an extended test:
Apple Internet Diagnostics
It did’t come back with anything.
Lets go back even more to basics, I reset the NVRAM and SMC
To reset the NVRAM, hold down Alt/Option, P and M down, wait until you hear three chimes. To be on the safe side I did it for six chimes, may as well make sure.
Still nothing. Reset the SMC, I thought I needed to press shift, command and alt/option. But I had misread it, it was actually shift, control and alt/option.
Does it boot into safe boot? No. This is very peculiar.
I can only think of one more thing. Otherwise, I am going have to admit defeat.
This is for High Sierra, I can’t guarantee that it will work for you. By doing this all your files will be deleted. If you can try and take a back up first.
I took the hard drive that was in the Mac out, I had just literally bought a new external hard drive that I am going to be using for back up purposes. The original hard drive in the Mac was a 500GB drive. The hard drive I am going to use for this check is a WD 2TB hard drive.
First of all, the hard drive I had came with an NTFS partition. We need to make this so it is accessible on the Mac. Two ways of doing this, all depends on what macOS you are using.
Normally, the ideal way of dealing with this is to use installation media, you can download a copy on the App Store, but if you don’t have that, don’t worry, I am going to use Internet recovery, hold down Command, alt/option and R when booting, when you hear the chime release.
For some reason, I couldn’t do this on the Mac that isn’t working, so I had to plug it into my personal machine. Open disk utility and select the drive.
Disk utilities – MacBook Pro
Click on erase. Give the drive a name, the format is Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and scheme is GUID partition map.
Erase – Mackbook Pro
Click on erase.
I still couldn’t get the thing to install. I was getting the error:
you may not install to this volume because the computer is missing a firmware partition
This is what it looked like:
MacBook – Firmware issue
So I went back to the macOS utilities and decided to try and install it using the time machine.
macOS utilities
Select the time machine:
Restore Time Machine
Then the backup:
Time Machine Restore Point
Select the target drive, in this case Paddy:
Time Machine – Target Drive
The restore process will start
Time Machine – restore
After 6 hours, I tried to boot, nothing.
Hmmm, I put the original drive back in, initially it wouldn’t boot. So I thought I would try something different. I held down the alt/option button down and selected the Macintosh HD, this time I got this.
A surprise development with with the original hard drive.
I selected United Kingdom as the location.
Then the keyboard layout:
Select Keyboard
Select my network and stick the password in.
I now get:
macOS installation
For now, I’m not going to transfer any information.
Sign in with your Apple ID:
iCloud login
You’ll be logged in, for now, I’m not going to enable two factor authentication. Click continue:
Two factor authentication one
I decided not to upgrade to two factor authentication.
Two factor authentication two
Agree to the terms and conditions.
Install T&Cs
Now we need create an account, this case admin
Install T&Cs agree
The account will be created and iCloud will be set up.
Create account
I don’t want to set up the keychain yet
iCloud keychain
When you get to express set up, continue.
Install, Express set up
I don’t want the files on the Mac in the iCloud, continue
Disk encryption
I don’t want to set encryption up yet, continue. The Mac will now set up.
Eventually it will reboot. But it won’t boot, still. So I forced reboot holding the alt/option button down and select the hard drive.
It still gets stuck on the Apple screen and shuts down.
To be continued….
Arrrggggggghhhhh, my Mac won’t boot, into anything
Well, a bit of a fib, it’s not my Mac, it’s someone else’s. He’s had several issues with the same machine over the last year or so, mainly with GPU AMD failure.
So, what did I do to fix it? It was a long winded process. Initially I thought the hard drive or the motherboard had failed. Basically when I booted the machine up it just went to a white screen.
WARNING – these worked for me, they may not work for you. The only way this will work fully, your Time Machine is needed. The author of CheekyFactor.com will not be held liable for loss of data or broken machines. Do not perform these tasks if you are a novice.
Initially, the GPU AMD had failed again, so I followed the instructions on GPU AMD failure – method 1. The machine wouldn’t boot into Verbose, safe or recovery mode. I had a few issues with the single user mode, but finally managed to get in. It didn’t look normal, but it did the job. In this instance when I typed in:
When I got to the = part, it decided to process the command that I hadn’t finished writing yet. I hit enter and I was able to write the full command in without issue.
I was then able to turn verbose on.
Type in reboot. This time I was able to get the Apple symbol:
MacBook Pro with Apple symbol
But it failed, it just shut down.
I thought is it a hardware issue. I went into diagnostic mode and did a full test. To get into diagnostic mode when you turn the machine on hold down the D key. When running the diagnostic it will look something like this:
MacBook Pro, diagnostic screen
As you can see with this, the screen is not entirely clear, that was due to teh GPU AMD failure, again.
So, what other options did I have? It just wouldn’t boot.
I decided to hold down the Alt/Option key on the keyboard when booting. This allows me to select the volume I want to boot into:
MacBook Pro – volume selector
I selected the hard drive and got the error:
MacBook Pro – error with update
Although this may not look good, it is fantastic news. It actually tells you what the issue is. This shows the update of the Mac was corrupt.
Two ways to resolve this, if you search for MacOS update download, you can find the official Apple image. You need the combo update.
If you download it on an Linux or Windows machine you will need to convert the image to an ISO. You can do this using dmg2img. You can then burn the image to either a USB or DVD.
In theory, you should be able reinstall the MacOS update from the disk. But for some bizarre reason when I went to the select volume screen it didn’t show the USB drive. When I put a DVD into the drive it kept getting spit out.
I was running out of ideas. What else could I try?
I plugged the time machine into the machine. I went into the select volume, voila, I could see the time machine:
MacBook Pro – volume selection – time machine
I selected the time machine, eventually I got:
MacBook Pro – time machine
In my case, I selected English, then continue. I then got this familiar screen:
MacBook Pro – macOS utilities
I could do several things here, if needed I could install a new version of the MacOS, but I wanted to restore it. So I selected the Restore from Time Machine Backup, next I got:
MacBook Pro – Restore from Time Machine
Click on continue. I got:
MacBook Pro – Select a Restore Source
Select the back up source, in this instance, Back up.
Click on continue and select the time machine back up you want to restore the machine to:
Click on continue, then select the destination:
MacBook Pro – time machine – Select a Destination
Finally, click on restore.
The time machine will restore the machine:
MacBook Pro – Restoring
It will start to erase and prepare to restore from the time machine.
MacBook Pro – Erase and Prepare
Once it has done all that, it will start to restore. With this restoration, it took close to four hours, this is what it will look like:
MacBook Pro – Restoring
Eventually, the restore will come to an end:
MacBook Pro – Finishing restore
The machine will automatically reboot. But, it still wouldn’t boot. It just shut down again.
I decided to try and boot into Safe Mode, to boot into Safe Mode, hold down the shift key when you first turn it on until you hear the chime. It booted.
MacBook Pro – after restore in safe mode.
I decided to boot the machine into normal mode. It still failed to boot correctly. So back into Safe Mode.
I tried to reset the NVRAM, you do this my holding down the Command, Option/Alt key and P and R simultaneously. Release when you hear the chime.
In this case, still no look. The next thing to try is to reset the SMC.
To reset the SMC, hold down Shift, Option/Alt, Command and the Power button simultaneously, make sure that your power supply is plugged in.
In this case, it still didn’t fix the thing. It just went to white then rebooted.
I have to say, now, I am really scratching my head. What’s wrong?
I tried to back into safe mode, no luck. I had to go back to the start and set the power preferences for the AMD GPU.
Tried to reboot in normal mode. I just get the Apple logo.
MacBook Pro stuck on Apple screen
I tried again to get into safe mode, this time it worked.
With this machine I had created an admin account the last time I did some work on it. I logged in, opened disk utility.
Clicked on first aid, then continue.
Reboot to see if it’s work……. no, still no good. I thought I would even try and to a full reset on NVRAM, to do this you hold down Command, Option/Alt key and P and R simultaneously and wait until you have heard three chimes. But this still didn’t fix the damn thing!
This is getting serious. What else could it be? I thought what the hell, why not go back to basics, don’t restore the machine, do a complete reinstallation of the macOS. Plug in your time machine, hold the alt key and select the time machine volume as explained above. When you see this select reinstall macOS.
So it went through the install process, reboot, and it booted into normal more, woohooo….. but the trackpad wasn’t working correctly.
Basically, when you move the mouse it’s fine. But when you try and click, nothing. To resolve this minor issue I went into settings then accessibility, disabled the mouse then enabled it again. It worked.
Reboot to make sure everything is working, it won’t boot again, arrrggghhhhh.
There must be something that is conflicting with the boot. But what?
First thing I checked, is the hard drive connected correctly? Checked that tried to boot, no nothing. I found some software called EtreCheck.
EtreCheck MacBook Pro
But nothing obvious when I get the report.
This is getting serious. My next thought is to format the hard drive and do a clean install. Plug in the time machine disk. When you start the machine hold down the command button until you hear the chime. Once booted head over to disk utility, erase Macintosh HD.
MacBook Pro – disk utility
Once done, close the disk utility and start the reinstall:
macOS utilities – MacBook Pro
You will get:
MacBook Pro – first install screen.
Go through the install process. In this instance I chose to migrate the information from the time machine.
After a few hours it was ready. Let’s boot. I won’t swear on here, but a few choice words came to mind, it still didn’t fscking boot!!!! But it did boot into safe mode.
Who said Macs just work? So this is the third time a friends Mac has failed, and again, it is the GPU AMD. This time it wouldn’t boot, and it wouldn’t boot into recovery or disk selection. So what I had to do was a mix of method one and two.
WARNING – these worked for me, they may not work for you, ensure you take a full back up before performing any of these tasks, the read only disk image will be faster, but the read-write is better, it still took me two days to perform a backup for a 500GB disk. If your Time Machine is available, use that. The author of CheekyFactor.com will not be held liable for loss of data or broken machines. Do not perform these tasks if you are a novice.
So first, I went into single user mode and followed the instructions over here.
I rebooted, but I still couldn’t get it to boot, it just got so far and then rebooted. I tried to start ArchLinux as detailed in method 2, but no go. So I decided to go into recovery mode.
Go to Utilities and open terminal and performed the second part of method 2.
Once in recovery mode I opened the terminal:
If you have more than one partition run the following lines, if you only have one partition you can skip this bit:
diskutil cs list (find UUID for drive)
diskutil coreStorage unlockVolume UUID
The UUID is the logical volume.
Now, we all need to do the following, run the command:
cd /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD
Now, we need to remove the AMD Kexts, first create a directory where we can stick them on the off chance you need them in the future using the line:
mkdir AMD_Kexts_BU
Now, lets move those AMD Kexts:
mv System/Library/Extensions/AMD*.* AMD_Kexts_BU/
then type in reboot:
reboot
In theory, if you have done everything correctly, you should now have a working MacBook Pro.
BUT, please have in mind, this is not a permanent fix. When you upgrade or if you need to reset the SMC or NVRAM you will get the same error and you will need to perform the tasks above again.
