Catalina bricked my 2015 MacBook Pro. What to do now?

My story has a happy ending.

I had bricked my 2018 MacBook Pro 15 trying to revert to the original OS (High Sierra) after installing Catalina. My screen looked exactly like the one in this post.

I took the computer to the Apple Store with one day remaining on the warranty. They replicated the problem but were unable to restore the OS immediately. I had to leave the computer.

The solution involved removing the computer from iCloud. A security feature in iCloud was preventing their recovery software from accessing the computer. They called me and asked me to go to iCloud and remove the computer, which I did. After that it was only an hour or two before I got a call saying that they had recovered the machine. I picked it up the next day and put it through its paces, upgrading to Mohave, and downgrading back to High Sierra. I'm relieved to report that all is well.

Lessons

1. I would stay away from Catalina until this is fixed. I had installed 10.15.1. Don't assume that this version is safe.
2. Work with Apple, even if your computer is out of warranty. This is a known problem now. This post from an Apple community specialist makes that clear. The Apple Store techs I worked with advised me that they had seen a number of cases like mine. And there are surely many others in this thread alone.
3. If your computer is out of warranty, I would still try to get Apple to fix this for you free of charge. It's not your fault if a an official-release OS upgrade bricks your computer. Apple encourages you to upgrade. You trusted them.
4. I wouldn't pay for a new logic board. There are a lot of reports on this thread of people being charged for new logic boards. In my case at least, that step wasn't necessary.

It's just nuts that this is happening to people. I got my computer fixed for free, but if you count the number of hours and miles driven getting this fixed it was anything but free. Something in the beta process broke down with Catalina. Or, maybe it was just rushed out the door.

Wait six months before upgrading to an new OS

The final lesson may be to just be patient and wait. Don't be the first to install a new MacOS on your machine. Wait six months or so until the bugs are worked out. Check the discussion forums to make sure the OS is stable. Then upgrade.

Your kids will laugh at you. But they'll learn their own lessons. And you'll save yourself a lot of trouble.

Hey, me too. 2014 MacBook Pro 13. Same exact issue. It seems the update must have corrupted the firmware on the logic board since it no longer recognizes key combos. I had a call with Apple support last night. Couldn’t get anything to work. He said it was a hardware problem not caused by the update. But I don’t agree at all. My computer was perfectly fine until I attempted to install Catalina.

I am not sure at this point. The first step would be calling Apple Support, but like I mentioned, they were not able to help me. I have a feeling they will say the same to you. I think the next logical thing would be to take the machine to an Apple store. I think that they will quote a costly hardware repair, which is not fair to the consumer since the malfunction was caused by their 'improved' software upgrade. I posted here so you know I am experiencing the EXACT same issue. I also found another user who had the same issue during Catalina Beta 7 here.

I am going to try and schedule and appointment at an Apple store and see what they say. I will update here and the post I made here when I know anything new. Please do the same, as we need to document the issue for ourselves and other consumers!

This thing happened in beta testing:

https://forums.developer.apple.com/thread/117193

But:

EFI / Boot ROM updates are only done when installing updates on internal drives. If you install catalina on a external drive the Boot ROM is not touched.

I assume many beta testers installed catalina on external drives without updating their Boot ROM.

First, let me say that I am not an expert, but the exact same thing happened to me (same machine, same condition). In restoring my machine -- which thankfully had no business critical information stored on it, I had to bring it back to its original condition. In other words, I had to wipe the hard drive. IF you have critical information stored on your machine, please take it to someone who can recover data.

The fact that your fan is running suggests that your machine may be running. You can turn it off by pressing the power on key for 5 seconds or longer. Once your MBPro has cooled off, you can try to recover. Try to boot normally (eg, just turn it back on). My guess is that it won't boot.

There are a bunch of options in this link that can help you in recovery mode -- https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201314

In addition, here is the link to keystrokes used in startup -- https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/ways-to-start-up-your-mac-mh26785/mac

In my case, I had to use a bootable installer as described this link -- https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201372

Best of luck.

Here’s my original thread. https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250715174?answerId=251542984022#251542984022

Hi. I seem to have made some progress in getting my logic board replaced for free.

I visited the Genius Bar a couple of weeks back. The engineer checked my mac over and confirmed that he was not able to get it working and that it did look like the logic board was the problem.

He raised a ticket with the Apple engineering team and provided them with the tests that he had performed along with the description of what my mac was doing after the failed upgrade to Catalina.

I got a call from the engineer last night at the Apple store saying that the engineering team had come back to him advising that it was at the discretion of the store whether they wanted to replace my logic board without charge.

The store has agreed to this so my mac has gone in today to have it’s logic board replaced without charge to me.

i am a UK customer. My mac is long out of warranty and I do not have any Apple care support in place.

When reviewing the repair email, Apple have stated that the logic board will be replaced under consumer law which I guess is a UK specific thing.

Hopefully I will be back up and running with my 2014 MacBook Pro within a week.

Happy days.

My advice would be to be careful about going back. That's where I bricked my 2018 MacBook Pro. The upgrade to Catalina went okay, but when I attempted to downgrade back to the original OS, which was High Sierra, I got an error that I couldn't recover from. My computer was only one day from being out of warranty. It's at the Apple Store now and I'm awaiting word.

Your computer is well out of warranty and probably even AppleCare, if you had it. You may not have a problem downgrading. But, if you do, you're stuck paying for your own repairs or fighting with Apple to cover the cost. Instructions for downgrading are here. The command to downgrade is Shift-Option-⌘-R. That will take you back to your original OS. If, from there, you want to go to Mohave, you can find it here.

If you're happy with Catalina and if your only problem is MS Office, maybe upgrading to the Office subscription is your safest option. Alternatively, the native MacOS applications -- Papers, Numbers -- should be able to read your Office files. And if they can't do it, you can also look at free alternatives like Open Office.

It's horrible to have to give this advice -- to not attempt to downgrade for fear of bricking your computer -- but as you can see in this thread the problems are real. And if you don't have free Apple support the risks might be greater going backward than they are going forward.

I'd like to agree with Len.

Office 365 is "relatively" inexpensive IF you need it for compatibility with co-workers.

I've personally been migrating to the "free" Apple Pages (and Numbers), and it has gone well. Pages can do all that I need it to do.

Numbers has also worked well for me. However, it is clear that if you are a high end user of Excel, there is no substitute for business or scientific modeling. That applies to a very small group of users, however. I'm not talking about normal spreadsheets, which Numbers handles just fine.

If Catalina is working well, I would not downgrade. I have done this, and it is painful. You SHOULD be able to do it, however.

One tip is to make a bootable USB thumb drive with Mojave on it. When you use this to install you MUST delete all of the partitions that Catalina has made (it is different from Mojave and earlier), using the disk utility. Once this is accomplished, re-installing Mojave should work well.

To create a bootable drive, go here https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201372

Best of luck

Lycoming

One additional thought on restoring an OS when you get the error shown here:

You might try removing your computer from iCloud and then retrying the restore. I had to remove my computer from iCloud in order for the Apple Store to recover it. It's possible that this might be all you need to do to get the restore to work. If everything else has failed, maybe this is worth a try. Instructions for removing your device from iCloud are here.

We just had the same issue happen to our 2013 MacBook Pro 15".

We carried out the upgrade (from macOS Mojave to Catalina) using System Preferences > Software Update. The installer was downloaded and it started fine, the MacBook restarted in order to complete the installation, then we got a black screen with the dreadful grey folder with an exclamation mark.

Before we did the upgrade we made sure that:

• The machine is listed on the Catalina supported hardware (MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Late 2013))
• The machine was operating just fine prior to this upgrade attempt (Mojave 10.14.6 with latest updates).
• The battery was fully charged
• The charger was plugged in and the green LED was on
• We had enough space on the internal SSD (more than 100GB of free space)

We tried the following to revive the MacBook, to no avail:

• Resetting SMC (The MacBook charger light would go Orange then Green).
• Booting from multiple external macOS USB installation media (Catalina, Mojave, Yosemite).
• Booting from an external Thunderbolt installation media (Catalina).
• Booting from another MacBook Pro set in Target-Mode.
• Booting into Recovery Mode (Nothing happens. Goes straight into the black screen).
• Draining the MacBook battery (By letting the machine run at the black screen)

Regardless of what we do, the MacBook simply wont boot. It no longer detects its own internal SSD nor can it detect any type of external boot/installation device. We always get the black screen with the grey folder.

Simply put: The Catalina upgrade bricked our MacBook Pro's EFI.

This is a business laptop that we use in our daily production pipeline, and we are more than familiar with Apple hardware. We need a solution to this issue from Apple.

I just came back from the Apple Store. There seems to be a discrepancy regarding OSX 10.11 (El Captain). While that version of OSX was all the rage there was an update for Safari. The update made Safari 11.(something) this is me right here right now if I've ever seen it:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/8098586

I'm being told by the Apple Store that because I won't update to Sierra or High Sierra that my version of Safari can't be updated yet this is untrue. There was actually a Safari update for 10.11

https://www.computerworld.com/article/3227168/apple-upgrades-safari-for-older-versions-of-macos.html

Now why would they deny a security update for a machine regardless of what version of macOS or OSX it is running? No matter what you should be able to obtain any security updates that were published for a particular OSX version at that time. This doesn't mean that they're continually supporting it it just means that you can obtain the patches that were released for that OSX version at the time. There's no stand alone installer for Safari this means that they're rendering computers obsolete by refusing to supply access to patches that were released prior.

I need to operate 10.11.6 due to hardware limitations that some equipment that I have experiences. My equipment is incompatible with anything higher than 10.11.6. Why in the world would I update this MBP 2012 to Catalina when I would need to pay an additional $200usd to purchase another hardware device of the same type that's just a later version. My hardware works just fine under this environment. I only purchased this MBP 2012 to be able to run Native Instruments Traktor 2 Pro, Audio 6, X1 MK1 Kontrol, & F1 Kontrol. It's the X1 MK1 controller that's incompatible with newer versions of OSX.

*I understand that Apple is proprietary and they don't support downgrading. What I don't comprehend is how and who are they to tell me or force me to do things with a machine that I do not wish to do that I paid for? I now fully comprehend make no mistake we do not own these machines Apple does we just lease them. When Apple feels that the lease has expired they render the machine inoperable by doing underhanded things to cause them to malfunction.

**As for Linux I've been working with it for several years. It's the coding part that I need to become acclimated with. I can fully operate a Linux machine with no issues. The only deterrent that I have currently is that some hardware is difficult to configure under a Linux environment. Drivers for certain hardware devices on my PC's just don't seem to work. I have workarounds for this but until I can pinpoint how to make this all come together I will continue to have a fleet of machines. I've got MACS, Windows, and Linux machines all running on my home network. I need to figure out how to make Linux more driver friendly and stable in that way before I can totally do the switch. I feel your pain. Apple is being very shady. Why would anyone want to run a system where this is transpiring and damaging their hardware that was so costly from the beginning?

******I don't care if the machine is 2 or 22 if you make a product stand by it don't flip flop and say one minute you don't support it but here you are pushing out updates like Itunes and random updates. Then once they've successfully crashed your EFI/PRAM they tell you that they don't support the device as it has reached EOL (End of Life). Either you support it or you don't there's no grey area here for them to wiggle out of & thus avoid responsibility.

What worked for me so far. Had the same problems.

1. Get a friends/wife/son's Mac and create a USB installer for MacOS Catalina
2. Plug USB into your Mac and boot the OS in recovery mode from the USB.
3. With little luck you should be in the Mac. Do not unplug the USB!
4. Make a backup or copy the data to an external drive, if you haven't yet.
5. Restart the Mac and reinstall Catalina from USB.

So far it works for me until Apple releases some official fixes.

Another option is if you want to be on the safe side to create another bootable USB with Mojave MacOS, repeat the first 4 steps as above and in the 5th step install Mojave instead of Catalina. This should fix the problem as, as far as I know it is Catalina related issue.

Hope that helps.

I wish I had seen all of these reports before I, too, bricked by 2018 MacBook Pro 15 installing Catalina.

Here’s what happened to me this week:

1. Installed Catalina
2. Had some issues and decided to go back to High Sierra, which is what my machine shipped with.
3. Pressed shift-cmd-opt-R to get the original OS reinstall
4. MacBook connected to Internet and downloaded the installer
5. Failed with triangle and exclamation
6. Opened chat with Apple support, who tried to convince me that this was a problem with my Internet connection
7. Insisted on Genius Bar appointment, which I got.
8. Genius at Apple advised me that they had seen a number of cases like mine, and that they had been having “fairly good success” at recovering them.
9. With these confidence inspiring words, he then asked me to sign a release to have my computer serviced. It’s there at the Apple store tonight as I write this (on my iPad).
10. I’m now doing the homework I should have done before upgrading. Turns out that the web is full of stories about bricked Macs after installing Catalina.
11. But who would have thought that you could brick your computer by installing an OS update from Apple. No dodgy Hackintosh hardware or beta OS releases here. Just stock Apple hardware and distribution software.
12. My computer is 1 day from being out of warranty. Thank God I don’t have to worry about paying for this. But what about the people who do? They can’t be held responsible for damage caused by Apple’s own software, can they?

Sorry to hear that. Have you tried:

1. Holding down ⌘-R while restarting?
2. Making a bootable flash drive and holding down the option key while restarting?