Already I have discussed how to get this Mac working on Arrrggggggghhhhh, my Mac won’t boot, into anything and Install a new hard drive in a Mac. I was fast running out of options.

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

Click on utilities, then terminal:

You will get:

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.

To unlock, replace the line

diskutil coreStorage unlockVolume UUID

to

diskutil corestorage unlockVolume UUID -stdinpassphrase

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:

Select your language and the arrow button. You will get:

Do an extended test:

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.

To be continued…

So, after some heart ache over at ARRRGGGGGGGHHHHH, my Mac won’t boot into anything! I thought the only thing left was to try another hard drive.

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.

Click on erase. Give the drive a name, the format is Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and scheme is GUID partition map.

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:

So I went back to the macOS utilities and decided to try and install it using the time machine.

Select the time machine:

Then the backup:

Select the target drive, in this case Paddy:

The restore process will start

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.

I selected United Kingdom as the location.

Then the keyboard layout:

Select my network and stick the password in.

I now get:

For now, I’m not going to transfer any information.

Sign in with your Apple ID:

You’ll be logged in, for now, I’m not going to enable two factor authentication. Click continue:

I decided not to upgrade to two factor authentication.

Agree to the terms and conditions.

Now we need create an account, this case admin

The account will be created and iCloud will be set up.

I don’t want to set up the keychain yet

When you get to express set up, continue.

I don’t want the files on the Mac in the iCloud, continue

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….

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:

nvram fa4ce28d-b62f-4c99-9cc3-6815686e30f9:gpu-power-prefs=%01%00%00%00

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:

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:

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:

I selected the hard drive and got the error:

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:

I selected the time machine, eventually I got:

In my case, I selected English, then continue. I then got this familiar screen:

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:

Click on continue. I got:

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:

Finally, click on restore.

The time machine will restore the machine:

It will start to erase and prepare to restore from the time machine.

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:

Eventually, the restore will come to an end:

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.

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.

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.

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.

Once done, close the disk utility and start the reinstall:

You will get:

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.

To be continued…

Head over to install macOS on a new hard drive.

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.

As detailed in the post over there, a friend had an issue with MacBook pro with the GPU AMD failing. A few months later it  wouldn’t even boot. Couldn’t even get it into single user mode.

So, how did I get it working again. Well first of all I had a USB stick with a non-GUI version of Linux, I used ArchLinux. I won’t go into the details here, but I did have issues copying the ISO of ArchLinux onto a USB stick using my own Mac. You can see how I did this here.

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.

OK, now to get this MacBook pro working again. Stick the USB disk in with ArchLinux on into the MacBook pro.

Power on the machine, ideally it needs to have the power cable attached to the machine. As soon as you hit power, press down the alt key at the same time.

You will get an option to either boot from the Macs hard drive, or UEFI. Select UEFI, you will see something like this:

Ensure you have the top item selected for ArchLinux and press e. As you can see at the bottom of this image you will see a line, at the end of that line add nomodeset and hit enter.

You will be booted into ArchLinux:

Change the directory by running the command:

cd /sys/firmware/efi/efivars

You will see something like this:

Run the command:

ls

That is an L not an I. Hit enter and you will something like:

What we are interest in is those GPU lines in the bottom left hand corner, they may not necessarily be there, you just need to look for something like this. But don’t worry if you can’t see them.

Now we have to unmount the efivars folder

Run:

cd /

umount /sys/firmware/efi/efivars/

mount -t efivarfs rw /sys/firmware/efi/efivars/

cd /sys/firmware/efi/efivars/

Then run:

run

chattr -i “gpu-power-prefs- then press tab and close it with a “
chmod ugo+w gpu-power-prefs- then press tab
rm gpu-power-prefs- and press tab to get the file

This will look something like this.

We now need to create a new gpu file that we can mute, run:

printf “\x07\x00\x00\x00\x01\x00\x00\x00” > /sys/firmware/efi/efivars/gpu-power-prefs-fa4ce28d-b62f-4c99-9cc3-6815686e30f9

Now to mute it, the chattr command makes it accessible only to the superuser, so in theory when you boot it won’t mess up, run:

chattr +i “/sys/firmware/efi/efivars/gpu-power-prefs-fa4ce28d-b62f-4c99-9cc3-6815686e30f9”

Now to flush the efivars cache by running:

cd /
umount /sys/firmware/efi/efivars/

In theory, we can now reboot, type in reboot. Initially I had issues booting, it got stuck and kept restarting. So I booted into recover mode by holding down command and R down on boot.

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

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

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.

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.

I just hope this is a better solution than what was shown in method 1 which kept failing without the SMC or NVRAM being reset.

There is a permanent solution I have found on YouTube, but due to knowing how bad I am at soldering, I think I will pass on that one. But if you want to look at the permanent solution check this out.

But if you do that, you are on your own.