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).

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.

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.

Your EFI is fried. Find a 3rd party repair place that can re-flash the Main Board chip.

Hi rkcomp,

I went to the Apple store today, and just as I feared, they quoted me to replace the logic board and SSD. $475 for something their software "upgrade" caused. Needless to say, I declined. They will probably tell you the same. Unless you have apple care (expired by now I am sure), you are out of luck as I am. That is, unless they declare this a known issue, and issue free repairs, which I doubt they will. I will probably buy a used logic board and replace it myself for 50% less.

If you need to install 10.15 Catalina on your 2012-2015 Mac, please wipe the drive and install fresh from a 10.15 bootable disk. Do not take the chance and end up with your Mac bricked as I, OP, and many others have. I have read this may be a way around the issue, but I am not sure 100%. I would recommend waiting until later releases to install 10.15 Catalina.

I wonder if there are any shops near me that can do that EFI repair. It definitely seems like the Catalina installer is compromising that part of the system. Everyone is arriving at the same conclusion.

Alex, read this post: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250728927?page=1

My assumptions were right, Catalina is ruining the EFI while upgrading.

This "Bricking after upgrading Catalina" is spreading like the plague, it happened to my 2014 MacBook Air and I have two other friends with MacBook Pro 2015 that have the same issue. No keys are recognized by the device and 5 minute after turning it on the flashing question mark folder. Everything points to be a BIOS-EFI firmware corruption by the catalina installer.

the exact same happened to my 2015 MBP Retina 13”. I took it into the Apple store where the genius couldn’t diagnose it, so they kept the MB for a week or more. Apparently they claim the logic board to have become faulty during the update, but said I’m liable to pay around £600 for a replacement logic board. It’s evident to me now that this is occurring much more than Apple care to accept. To be absolutely honest, both Apple’s customer service and product refinement have stooped into the dumps.

Is it less than six years old? If so, print out a few URLs in this support forum and claim that the defect was either in the product from manufacture or was created by the OS update. The key piece of legislation is the Consumer Rights Act that gives you six years of protection from manufacturing faults. I suspect the logic board will then be replaced for free (as it doesn't cost Apple UK anywhere near that much)