antdude
Level 1 (34 points)
Mac OS X

Q: A 13.3" MacBook Pro (MBP) gets stuck during its boot ups and tests...

Hi.

 

As of a few hours ago after travelling far away (somewhere in Europe) and using it briefly in his hotel room, my client's 13.3" MBP no longer boots up fully to its updated Mac OS X v10.8.5. It gets stuck at the gray Apple logo with its spinning indicator as shown in his blurry iPhone photo(graph): http://i.imgur.com/uOP2XkC.jpg ... It never gets to the login screen.

 

Over the phone and e-mails, we briefly tried safe mode but it showed the same results but at slower speeds which is expected. I told him to boot it up with D key held down for its hardware test. He ran the tests, but he said it got stuck too as shown in http://i.imgur.com/VQ6Yy8s.jpg since the status bar and time werne't changing. I told him to let it run longer just in case it is slow like when he is asleep (night time now). If it is indeed stuck, then it seems like his RAM went bad based on that screen?

 

According to https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204156 web page, "... Mac is reading files from the OS X System folder." Maybe a data corruption on HDD (yes, he has a Time Machine backup before he left home).

 

My next idea is to have him do a Command and V keys. I basically want to see its boot up screen show all of its technical texts on his screen and where it gets stuck at if any. If it does show them and getting stuck after a while, then to get a picture and send it to me so others and I can read and plan what to try next. What else to try remotely for him? He's not a technical computer user so it needs to be simple and share with his iPhone's camera for us.

 

Ironically, his AppleCare just ended after getting it over three years ago (late summer of 2012) so it will probably be expensive to repair or buy a new MBP if I can't fix it next week.

 

Thank you in advance.

MacBook Pro, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.5), 13.3" (9,2/MD102ll/A)

Posted on Sep 23, 2015 4:20 PM

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antdude

Q: A 13.3" MacBook Pro (MBP) gets stuck during its boot ups and tests...

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  • Helpful answers

  • by antdude,

    antdude antdude Sep 23, 2015 8:42 PM in response to antdude
    Level 1 (34 points)
    Mac OS X
    Sep 23, 2015 8:42 PM in response to antdude

    No one knows?

     

    Anyways, bad news after about five/5 hours of the test running with his e-mailed "Same result, frozen, the screen shot is the same as before..." comment.

     

    I also got the verbose text log from my client when I told him to command+v keys for verblose log: http://i.imgur.com/t9EdqFO.jpg but it is a bit small, but readable. It looks like there is a problem with the HDD due to its I/O error. Is this a physical problem or a data problem (run Recovery's Disk Utility?)?

  • by leroydouglas,Helpful

    leroydouglas leroydouglas Sep 23, 2015 8:53 PM in response to antdude
    Level 7 (23,923 points)
    Notebooks
    Sep 23, 2015 8:53 PM in response to antdude

    Did you try booting into   Recovery  http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4718 and running repair Disk, repair permission from the Disk Utility

     

    http://osxdaily.com/2014/12/14/reinstall-os-x-mac-internet-recovery/

     

    You can reinstall the operating System, if the Hardware checks out.

  • by antdude,

    antdude antdude Sep 23, 2015 8:54 PM in response to leroydouglas
    Level 1 (34 points)
    Mac OS X
    Sep 23, 2015 8:54 PM in response to leroydouglas

    leroydouglas wrote:

     

    Did you try booting into   Recovery  http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4718 and running repair Disk, repair permission from the Disk Utility

     

    http://osxdaily.com/2014/12/14/reinstall-os-x-mac-internet-recovery/

     

    You can reinstall the operating System, if the Hardware checks out.

    Mac OS X v10.8.5's Utilities does boot up and shows Restore from TM's backup (can't do that until he returns), Reinstall OS X (not going to
    try that remotely), Get Help Online, and Disk Utility. We will try Disk Utility to see what's up with the HDD when he is ready to leave his MBP running for hours. It seems the HDD is physically connected if we can get to this recovery area.

  • by antdude,

    antdude antdude Sep 24, 2015 4:36 AM in response to leroydouglas
    Level 1 (34 points)
    Mac OS X
    Sep 24, 2015 4:36 AM in response to leroydouglas

    leroydouglas wrote:

     

    Did you try booting into   Recovery  http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4718 and running repair Disk, repair permission from the Disk Utility

    ...

    Does Disk Utility have a SMART utility? I don't see it? We will try verify and repair tests later when he sleeps in his hotel room or so since this might take hours to finish.

  • by antdude,

    antdude antdude Sep 27, 2015 5:35 PM in response to antdude
    Level 1 (34 points)
    Mac OS X
    Sep 27, 2015 5:35 PM in response to antdude

    Hello again. I finally got the broken MBP to deal with.

     

    I did a quick test. During Apple Hardware Test, it showed 1 minute and 50 seconds left this time. This never changes. It is always stuck at this time in phase 1. I noticed the trackpad mouse cursor was very lagged by about three seconds seconds. I don't think that is normal. Also, I was unable to stop the test with the laggy trackpad and shortcut keys (command/Apple+T). I had do a manual power button method to shutdown and reboot.

     

    I booted up to the local Mac OS X Recovery and ran two verifications and a repair due to problems and failures. You can see http://imgur.com/a/UytFX for three iPhone 6's camera shots for those results. Speaking of taking pictures, can Mac OS X's Recovery do screen shots to an external USB drive or so?

     

    So, I did a Time Machine restore from an external USB2 HDD. It already erased the 750.16 GB HDD, and it is currently taking over 1.5 hours to complete. So far, no problems with over 26.7% done. I hope this works since this is all new to me with Macs. :/