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

That's discouraging, but not unexpected. Apple is notoriously slow about accepting responsibility for defects. They know about it, though. They have to.

I'm kind of stubborn about these things, so if it were me having to fork out for a new logic board, I'd probably try some reasoned argumentation first. Like collecting everything on the web about your problem, printing it out, and bringing it into the store. Somewhere in one of these threads someone recounts bringing their bricked Mac into the Apple Store and the tech remarks, "Wow, that's the fourth one today!" And they're going to tell you it's not Catalina?

Consumer advocacy groups can be helpful. And if all of that failed I might even go as far as picketing. The mall would kick me out, but in NYC the stores are right on the street. A big sign saying "Don't upgrade your Mac to Catalina; It could ruin your computer" would probably get their attention. Or, you could go with a friend and bring back "Mac" and "PC", except that this time "Mac" is unresponsive and "PC" is humming right along.

It's just completely unacceptable to have a regular-distribution OS update bricking a $2500 computer that you just bought a year ago. Apple will tell you to get Apple Care, but that's almost like extortion. You have to get the extended warranty if you want your machine to keep working after a year? It gets to the point where you start thinking about buying a PC and running Windows or Linux.

Hi, if you have startup security utility, that may be an issue. What do you mean the folder logo? Have you tried safe boot (Restart and then hold down the "Shift" key). Safe mode helps diagnose issues with the disk on your Mac. If you are convinced that it may be a firmware or hardware issue, then restart and hold down "D". This should startup the macOS Self Diagnostic. Good luck!

Holding "Shift" on boot or "D" does nothing when Mac has damaged firmware due to Catalina update.

Apple can create pretty neat hardware and software, but it also has the worst service on the market.

Now I got bricked MacBook Air, MacBook Pro 2015 with bulged battery they refused to service (due to serial number not qualified to repair program).

And last but no least MacBook Pro 13" 2017 with 'condom' on keyboard because Apple uses same faulty keyboards in service program. Apple why?

I am experiencing the same issue as others in this thread, EFI corrupted, can't boot into recovery and can't boot from an alternate disk. The MacBook does not respond to keyboard inputs and the screen shows a folder with a question mark. It was a MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Early 2015), Model Identifier: MacBookPro12,1, Part Number: MF84xxM/A

I find this absolutely unacceptable both from an engineering and a customer support perspective! We are a business customer and we spend tens of thousands of dollars a year on Apple products, only to be told from a "Genius" at the Apple Store there is nothing they can do to solve my bricked Macbook Pro.

Furthermore, we are quite meticulous with our backups, having Time Machine backup to a network share every hour. We verified that a recent backup was completed prior to the upgrade, but somehow Time Machine kicked in while the Catalina upgrade was taking place, which seems to have corrupted the backup file on our backup server as well.

So we have decided to not upgrade any of the late model MacBook pro's in our company until this issue is addressed. If it will at all...

I'm sure this will fall on deaf ears but at least I can feel better getting it off my chest. I'm now left alone to try and recover the data on the device from an untrusted third party.

Weak sauce Apple !

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/

hello you can repair the macbook youself, it's not difficult, I'm not a computer scientist by profession and I managed to repair my EFI, it cost me 70€ and no need to change the motherboard as they say in the genius bar.

Look at the messages above to find out what to order.

Good luck with that.

Hi Jean-François, we should remain cautious with this method. Out of 4 people who tried it (that I know, including myself), 3 only succeeded to flash the EFI. One is still stuck with a non functional MacBook Pro (2013 MBP as far as I know), for unknown reasons.

Where are you based? I am Unix system admin. So the tech guy has not yet totally discounted my argument. Like your work machine. It was working fine until the installation! If they can pull out the disk and assuming is still a file stream . They may see for themselves. It was working just before!

So Apple Glasgow Braehead a small surburbian store said my case is the only case they have seen. So they won’t replace the logic board. Let’s all put our official Apple case number here and let apple know that this is not fake!

my case number is 100953645162.

Also Apple technicians said if they replace the board and install Catalina and it should be fine. Ok I asked him. Did you try that?

the answer was no.

so don’t tell me that it wasn’t the Catalina installation with guess work!

called me multiple times to discuss’solution’ but won’t even escalate the issue to the Cupertino. Feedback won’t get notice!

i have exhausted my venue with Apple now. I am just going to non Apple repair shops to see if they will flash the firmware.

this is the first time I am unhappy about an Apple product. The machine did do well for 5 years. Can’t say the same for HP or dell. But still it does not leave a good feeling.

Same thing here, with my MBP 15" Mid-2014 (MacBookPro11,3). During the Catalina upgrade process, computer turned off ; I pressed space bar to wake it up, and then it was dead.

Symptom is: after pressing the power button, Nothing happens for about 15 seconds, then cover led lights up and screen gets all white (no logo, no ?). No chime, no fault beeps or blinks.

The SMC reset combination (that is performed while powered off) seems to do something (the led on the charging cable blinks). But no other key combination (performed while powered on) does anything, such as safe boot, boot selection, recovery, PRAM reset.

At this stage I'm 99% sure it's the BootROM which is faulty. Clearly the computer deos not reach a point where it will try to get more code from the disk (UEFI partition). If it was some other component (faulty RAM) there would be beep codes from the POST.

Spent some time on the phone with support, they sent mo to a repair shop ; I suggested they try to reflash the firmware, not sure they will actually try before simply saying the logic board is dead. We'll see, I should be getting news in a few days. In any case, I won't let them change the board, I will try to flash it myself if needs be.

@PhanHuy_vn the firmware that allows you to reinstall the operating system is corrupt, all that remains is a small bootstrap that loads the EFI and it can't because it is corrupt. The only solution to this is to reprogram the firmware by direct access to the system board or a system board replacement.

...unless it has a hardware encrypted volume and/or is soldered onto the board without a "Lifeboat" connector... Trust me, the simple way is to connect to the JTAG, dump the current firmware, compare it to what there should be and there will be an 0xFFFFFFFF at some point where there shouldn't be. Flashing firmware on an Intel board without killing the S-state is crazy, as who knows what the user was doing before updating the firmware? On a Dell machine, it is very obvious, the fans go to full speed as all the power saving features are disabled during the firmware update process (often there are more than one device that has their firmware updated, network controller, CPU microcode etc apart from the UEFI) Some earlier machines used the older Intel EFI system, newer machines (should) use UEFI (less chance for problems!)

Hopefully, the repair shop you go to can Google this problem and purchase the $50 adapter to get your board working again (and any others that come their way) it is a 10 minute job, they will probably charge $100 for it (still a bargain compared to a new logic board) I suspect there are a lot of repair shops who are going to have a very happy Xmas 2019! :P

@landscape_artist, apple support waste a whole of my time plus the 100miles I have wrecked up to travel to the stores! I visited the store 6 times and spoken to 6 different support staff. They just deny it. I am ok with having 5 good years out of the iMac but it worries me, should I ever upgrade from now on without warranty .