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

I have had the same problem. I’ have made a telephone call with the apple support and they coached me how to get back mojave. This was a bitcomplicated. First they downgrade me to the first mac os when I bought my laptop. Thereafter they sent me the link to update to mojave. You must do this by that link; [because when you ckick on update (only) the system wil update to catalina.] This works!

After this I used my time machine backup to get back my contents. Now it works fine again. With thanks to apple support.

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.

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.

Actually in my case the recovery option was not available. I just had a black screen most of the time and reset password on other times.

In my case my volumes were also filevault2 encrypted, so there's that to add..

Either way, I did manage to fix the problem. First you better make sure your device is on or off (it was hard to tell in my case) so i just put in an USB drive with leds to notice easier. I first powered it down by touching power button for 5 seconds.

Then I tried to reset NVRam/PRAM by holding command-option-P-R for a while immediately after holding the power button.

(see resetting NVRam/PRAm online)

That seemed to work for me and all of the sudden the install started to continue. After that everything worked fine again.

(Note: while probably unimportant, i did have a usb-drive plugged in with the install files of macOS catalina, but I doubt they were used in the process).

Your English is just fine.

I had a similar event occur. This is how I recovered -- this may or may not work for you and I do recommend going to an Apple Store if you can.

Using a different Mac, I created a bootable installer for Mojave and placed it on a USB thumb drive.

I was able to boot into the disk utility -- and I deleted all of the volumes present. (The Catalina install does change your drive configuration.)

After that, I used the installer to get me back into Mojave successfully.

I have not tried to reinstall Catalina, though there were some changes made in the installation file since I tried this a month ago, maybe it is safe to do so now.

As best I can tell, there are several different failure modes being reported on this forum. Some see "nothing" when trying to boot, others get the ? File, and so on. Some folks have reported that flashing their EFI has worked -- I don't think this will apply to your situation, but it is hard to tell.

Best of luck.

Fixed my 2014 MBP with the above issue.

My issue was the same as the OP: Flashing ? folder and computer unresponsive- no recovery mode, not bootable from USB.

Genius Bar answer was the same as we've heard- underlying hardware problem exacerbated by the update, only option being $600 logic board and SSD replacement.

Another thread suggested a solderless EFI unlocker chip, which I obtained from macunlocks.com (to which I have no affiliation.)

I was immediately able to boot into recovery mode, so was very encouraged.

I was initially not able to install from a bootable USB installer, getting an error that the hard drive needed a firmware update.

In Disk Utility (accessible from recovery) I erased the HD, then partitioned it from APFS back to MacOS Extended (Journaled).

After that, the bootable USB installer worked perfectly.

I hope this helps others. And for some of us, at least, this certainly is strong evidence that a firmware corruption is possible during the OS update, and not always an underlying hardware defect.

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.

HERE WE GO AGAIN.

I was able to reflash the UEFI firmware, and now my MBP works again ! Proof it was not a faulty motherboard or keyboard...

I followed Stef's procedure that Jean-François provided me with. Many thanks to both.

I used a CH341a programmer with some adapter cable. I had access to the MoBo boardview to locate the J6100 connector and see its orientation. Disconnecting the battery and using the MagSafe adapter worked to power on the EEPROM and read/write to it. It happened to me that the MBP would power itself up during read/write, probably a loose magsafe connection, so I learned you should check that the Mac is still powered off after each operation (look at the fans).

The harder was to find an appropriate firmware image (.fd file). Initially I thought I could work with the .scap files provided by the OS, but this can't work. The trick is to search using the board number (as printed near the SSD), in my case 820-3787-A, and look for "clean ME" images. I found mine on some forum.

Now, after PRAM reset, the Catalina upgrade process has started again. I will probably re-install the OS from scratch.

Thanks go to forum members here but not to Apple who were unable to help me. Their willingness to ignore the sad truth that firmware upgrades can sometimes go bad (and acknowledge that) is just ridiculous.

Happened to me on October 10th .. same symptoms: black screen, no chime sound, flashing question mark folder, very erratic support for mouse and keyboard in my case (got to internet recovery, but was unusable). Called support who directed me to official Apple repair center, where MBP 13" 12.1 early 2015 was investigated for 10 days, saying "no particular issue but your motherboard has some issue, need to swap in a new one for 700€". No way for me and a > 4 years old MBP.

On October 10th there was no significant information (that I found) about the possible issue, 10 days later it was suggested on the web that EFI could be the issue. This particular story http://netkas.org/?p=1488 (BTW which happened prior to official Catalina release) suggested me that flashing the EFI could be something to try. So (long story made short here) I gathered information on MB EFI, how to flash it .. my MBP has a so called SAM/J6100 connector on the mother board, so I bought a programmer (CH341A) and adequate cable on the bay, manage to find a suitable EFI image for my MBP (used a fd file MBP12.1 0176.0.0.0 from a combo update) and flashed the EFI last Monday (October 28th). You have to manage to restore your serial number in the EFI image.

And boom ! MBP started again. It resurrected from its 2 weeks and a half coma.

Faulty EFI (in my case, that I dumped and saved before changing anything) is EFI MBP12.1 187.0.0.0.0 (analyzed with UEFItool, this is known as EFI brought by Catalina for this MBP). I flashed a MBP12.1 176.0.0.0.0, and after re-installing Mojave, MBP12.1 186.0.0.0.0 was re-installed.

Beware: I'm not claiming that this is "the solution", not even that EFI is for sure the culprit in all cases that look like this ... I just don't know. I'm just describing what looked reasonable for me to try, for a limited amount of cash and for a > 4 years old machine. I add that I have a strong technical background. This is not something I would recommend to anyone without some good understanding of what is involved in flashing an EFI chip ... But there are companies that probably can do it for you, if you think (at your own risks) that it could possibly fix your issue, then look for a professional who offer services to fix your EFI passwd for example, they could be a good candidate.

Well, given this happened during the Catalina upgrade, and given you can still write to the internal HD, it's probably not the HD. Question is whether you have access to a spare HD just to perform a swap test. If not, then I guess your only other bet is to reflash your Boot ROM.

The UEFI BIOS is actually quite complex, and contains multiple parts : code for the Management Engine (aka "ME region"), the BIOS itself (e.g. Internet recovery), some data area (including serial number etc). In my understanding, as part of a regular upgrade, MacOS does not rewrite the ROM in whole, but extracts the BIOS region, applies some patches, repacks and then rewrites everything. So even though you reinstalled MacOS, I believe the ME region was not necessarily rewritten.

At this stage, I think either you find some spare parts to do some swaps and isolate the problem, or you try to rewrite the Boot ROM. Rewriting the Boot ROM requires having a programmer with the appropriate cable, and a reference full ROM image for your exact motherboard. Count up to $100 for the programmer+cable, and make sure you find a proper image before ordering.

Let me know if you want to go this route, I can probably help to some extent.

I have been dealing with the Cambridge branch. I would recommend you ask your store to raise a ticket with engineering. I believe the senior advisors that call you via Apple support are also able to raise tickets with engineering.

The ticket with engineering is the key thing here as they are the team that see the global picture of what’s going on. A local store simply doesn’t have all the information to deal with the issue at this point in time.

To recap, my symptoms were.

mac working fine prior to upgrade of Catalina.

started upgrade via software update, not via usb or any other fresh installation methods.

battery was at 100% during upgrade and was connected to mains.

no usb devices or external peripherals were connected during the upgrade.

mac rebooted twice during upgrade.

on 2nd boot, Mac hung and eventually showed flashing folder.

no options to get in to recovery or boot from other devices worked.

no chimes or Apple logo on power on.

Apple tech at the store tried resetting everything including disconnecting the battery internally.

they also disconnected ssd

report of actions and results was sent off to engineering team.

Hi,

Maybe there were some problems during your update. You can make a clean install of macOS 10.15 on your MacBook. Refer to this instruction:

https://howtomacos.com/2019/10/15/how-to-clean-install-macos-catalina/

Read this article to see if it applies.

https://www.imore.com/scattered-reports-suggest-efi-firmware-issue-may-be-bricking-some-macs-when-updating-catalina

Some users are reporting that Apple Store technicians have manually updated the firmware to resolve the issue.

I've become an expert on backgrading to Mojave, but read this article carefully before proceeding:

https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/downgrade-macos-version/

Having a Time Machine backup beforehand will make your life a lot easier.

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.