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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

MaxForconi wrote:

Hi all,

I’m not sure if my problem is the same. I’ll try to explain: after catalina update my macbook pro 2016 doesn’t start, only a blinking folder after few minutes. In recovery mode I’m able to access the re-installation process but the problem is that no internal hard drive are displayed! Please help me , I’m from Italy, sorry for my bad english

No one here can help you. Take your machine to an Apple store or authorized service provider.