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

This also just happened to my MacBook Pro 2018 AND MacBook Pro 2012. Both computers, both updating, both with now failed logic boards. The tech tried to tell me it was a coincidence— now this thread says otherwise!!

I'm not sure, but I guess your Mac has lost recovery partition so your computer failed to boot up. You can refer to this post and check if it could help you

https://howtomacos.com/2019/11/27/fix-lost-recovery-partition-on-mac/

A new high in clueless creativity by the repair shop here. Their current diagnostics is that the topcase (keyboard + battery) needs to be replaced.

Because, you know, if the ke combinations at boot don't work, it must be that the keyboard's broken. And if the SMC combination still works, it must be that not all keys are equally broken. And if the screen does not display anything, well, better fix that pesky keyboard first, one problem at a time.

This is both very funny but also tragic given that it's actually my machine there :-)

Anyway, they will receive a spare top case tomorrow, and then "we should be able to tell more". Well, needless to say I'm not holding my breath.

I received a CH341 with adapter and some more details from J-F, I will now setup all the tools because it looks more and more like I will have to reflash the bootROM myself.

Hi 1984bb, there's no "one way for all" to fix this problem for all kinds of macbook .. Jean-François and myself were lucky, with respect to two points: finding an fd file as the replacement EFI for our motherboards, and those motherboards were kind enough to go through a simple power process to allow both reading and writing the EFI ..

For the first point, if you can't find an fd file, there are plenty of EFI dumps for almost all kinds of Mac available on the internet. Fixing the serial number in this case (before flashing the EFI) may require some more hex edit in this image file. Just carefully select one image file for your motherboard, possibly not too old. nN every operation you will make with EFI files, efiItool will be your best friend (as well as an hex editor).

For the second point, the method we used with Jean-François (often described in forums ..) may or may not work for your machine. You may have to try other power combination (mag safe with or without battery ...) to be able to read and write the EFI. I tried to help two other people with 2013 and 2014 MBPs. One was able to read the EFI with mag safe only but not write (the battery and mag safe were mandatory to successfully write the EFI), the other one never found a combination allowing even to simply read the EFI. You'll have to try to know if it does work for you or not .. at your own risks.

If you want more details, drop me an address or something here, and I'll contact you.

Catalina just bricked my 2014 Macbook, so the latest build did not fix the problem. I did a clean install last five days ago and the Genius at the Apple Store told me today that he couldn't restore my Macbook. He said he will try overnight with older OS X versions, but I doubt they will fix it as it seems to be an EFI corruption issue.

Poor you!

I'm not sure if this guide helps you, but you should still try it. This guide can help you recover recovery mode on your Mac.

https://howtomacos.com/2019/11/27/fix-lost-recovery-partition-on-mac/

@ PhanHuy_vn

Thank you for your suggestion but, unfortunately, it is irrelevant to our machine. That procedure is for newer MacBook Pros with USB-C.

Also, if you read through my post, you will see that we have tried the Target-Mode (using Thunderbolt-to-Thunderbolt cables) because, obviously, we want to rescue the data that is on the internal SSD. It did not work. The machine is simply in a loop and will not boot into Target-Mode nor into Recovery.

The EFI has been corrupted by the Catalina installer and, so far, there is absolutely no way we can exit the dead loop this catastrophic update has caused.

sorry to see more people having the same issues.

I coudn't rescue mine so gave in and paid apple to £520 to fix my 2017 mac book pro after getting the folder? icon after the catalina update. It came back with mojave installed and i've updated to catalina now and so far all good .

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.

I'm glad it worked for you, it's true that I didn't provide you with the EFI image of stef and I should make it available if people want it. It's a real shame that a show like Apple doesn't recognize the problem, I find it shameful to have charged more than $500 to people when we could have just flashed their Bios.

Hey, glad to hear it worked for you.

May I know what was your problem? did you see a blinking folder with question mark and you could not install OS on your machine?

If our problems are the same, it is worth I give it a try.

When I try to install any kind of OS on my machine, it gets so hot and restarts in about a minute.

Hi if you can't do anything, no boot possible on another disk, the key combination doesn't work to go into recovery, when you turn on the mac it takes more than 20 seconds before the apple light turns on (macbook pro) and after several minutes you have a folder with an exclamation mark so you can try. But stef told me that unfortunately the procedure doesn't work for everyone.

Thanks for the information.

my problem is different(I dont know if it is good or bad:) ) So, now the question is:

if I can install OS on a usb, so the efi version of my device is updated, I can see my internal HD in recovery mode but I cannot see it in internet recovery and whenever I try to install any version of OS on my internal HD(using recovery mode and bootable usb), the top part of my keyboard gets so hot and kernel panic happens,

my problem is not EFI CORRUPTION?

I wouldn't rule out EFI corruption, but it's far from certain. Could be the internal HD itself.

Also when the computer gets hot, do the fans run faster ? If not, then it might be the management engine not doing its job properly (hence reflashing might help).

I'm assuming you did an SMC and PRAM reset as first diag tests, if not then that should be the first thing to try.

Symptoms in my case was that nothing would be displayed on the screen, no chime, no key combination would work at boot. Hence, no interaction with the computer was possible anymore.

Still, slightly different symptoms were reported here, and given the complexity of the EFI bios, I would expect anything is possible following bios corruption.