catalina killed my MacBook pro

@DaveGarratt, I am in the same boat. I tried to unsolder the chip. It’s made of some interesting alloy the solder iron’s temperature went up to 450C and still won’t melt! I give my hat to Apple. The motherboard is beautiful and strong. But there is apparently a simpler solution. I am buying a eeprom programmer and SOIC8 clip to try to reprogram to onboard EFI. You still need a good ÉPI chip which means the unlock chip you bought is not wasted.

i am waiting for thé kit to arrive so I can get my board back. Meanwhile I already accidentally cracked my glass. So be care about opening up the case. It’s not difficult but need to be careful. Also buy the screen glue strips in preparation. You would need them to reglue the screen.

i refuse to give up on a good machine.

and having encountered this problem, I expect these kits would come in handy in the future. It is bound to happen again.

Look at this video which seems to offer a way to fix the problem

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywvDgn7JR_c

A software update could've not caused these hardware problems. I'm willing to wager that these hardware issues were in the making before the update even occurred. If your computer doesn't turn on at all, even plugged in - then the issue is with the battery or the main logicboard.

Do you get the boot menu when you hold option at boot? Does the USB installer that you created show up there?

If so, what happens if you try a different bootable USB medium? You could try making live Linux USB, for instance, and seeing if that behaves any better. I suspect it may just be a problem with the USB Mac installer you made at this point.

I see! Maybe it did suffer some kind of hardware failure at a very inopportune time, then, or one that didn't really manifest itself until the upgrade process. Might be time to shop around for repairs.

Have you tried seeing if the MacBook will run a version of OSX or Mac OS from an external drive. This would then allow you to see if the POST runs properly and the computer operates in a normal way. This might rule out almost everything but your PCIe bridge, and therefore you will know if its worth possibly getting a replacement SSD to test?

Guys you are not alone, Catalina update is making a lot of computers unusable. Here is a collection of the cases all over this forum:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250713279

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250736933

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250720326

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250713143

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250719221

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250716157

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250716026

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250728927

The flashing question mark really does render the Mac useless. It is a dead screen with nothing to use. Ive been there (not with Catalina). I did recovery mode and luckily got it back to normal. Took a few hours to reinstall MacOS Mojave to how it was. I had no back up to use.

Not sure this is of any help, being your situation is different, mine was an accidental erase from find my iPhone. Total disaster.

A folder with a question mark means that the selected startup disk isn't available or doesn't contain a Mac operating system. Learn how to resolve a flashing question mark.

I hope you can get it fixed, or take it Apple and there’s no charge. I’ve seen a couple of other Catalina posts re the question mark.

I believe the focus that people lack in this thread is that you can have underlying hardware problems before upgrading your software. Just because it was running "perfectly fine" doesn't mean that there wasn't a hardware problem.

And it does not mean that there was either. My money in on a faulty firmware being applied as the link I posted above shows dozens of people all having the exact same "coincidental hardware" malfunction just when then tried to update the OS. I have to say that I'm not even trying to update to Catalina for several months as past experience has shown Apple just don't test themselves these days relying on those people have spare kit to try the beta test program.

Vancouver22 wrote:....

Not sure this is of any help, being your situation is different, mine was an accidental erase from find my iPhone. ...

I was reading through this thread and saw your post. You may be right that

all these issues may be related to the new "Find My" app in Catalina.

I was getting constant notification badges o System Preferences to update

my "AppleID settings" by entering my AppleID password which was eventually followed

by asking me to enter my iMac user password. I finally figured out that

every time I would wake my iPhone 11 Pro, or any other iDevice with

iOS 13.1.2, I would get a notification badge on System Preferences prompting me

to my Apple ID on my iMac to "update" my settings by verifying my AppleID Password

and it was followed by needing to enter my iMac user password. After disabling "Find My"

in my iCloud settings it finally stopped.

So, I wonder if some of these "brickings" are the result of false erase messages from iDevices

thinking these Macs were stolen/lost and commanded to brick through the new "Find My" app?

A remote lock down and erase message could create just these kinds of scenarios.

BTW to RReinhardt93 again.

If we all had a pre-existing hardware problem that has been uncovered by trying to upgrade to Catalina, that is, in itself, a reason to ask Apple to rectify the problem.

Clearly, there was an underlying hardware defect hitherto unknown.

None of us has done anything “wrong” except follow Apple’s upgrade path.

Same here, after the upgrade to Catalina, my late 2012 MacBook Pro (working perfectly after all those years) now only shows a black screen after installation and restart. Fans are running. Unplugging and disconnecting the battery brought it to life again. Cmd-Option-R only resulted in an internet restore. Whatever I do Catalina keeps returning its ugly head. From what I read it seems we are not the only ones having the same problem. Is this a strategy to force people to replace their computers?

Another same experience here, with a 2013 MacBook Pro. Our dead version looked like: blank screen, no recovery or boot options available. Only sign of power-on was a quiet fan blowing. Took it into the Apple Store, and their opinion was that the machine just died - this is actually plausible in our case, as it was running hot beforehand, and certainly an OS update is a resource-intensive operation. But I think the firmware part of this Catalina update is the more likely suspect. If we can convince Apple, there might be some sort of compensation...