Error!!! Could not find APFS system volume handle

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Level 1

5 points

Error!!! Could not find APFS system volume handle

Hey guys, this ones a bit of a novel but I’d appreciate any help as I’ve spent all evening troubleshooting this and am lost.

Model: Early 2011 MacBook Pro 15”, put in a SSD + 8GB RAM about 3 years ago. Also have taken the DVD Drive out, other than that it’s stock.

Situation:

Just bought myself a new 16” and was in the process of formatting the drive on the 2011 so I can sell it. My 2011 has the infamous failing graphics card issue which didn’t happen until this year so I wasn’t in the timeframe with Apple to get it covered. I’ve managed to have the computer work great bypassing the dedicated GPU and using the integrated one but every time there’s a software update it overrides where I’ve placed the GPU kexts and I have to do it over again. Not a big deal.

I’ve moved all my data over to my new MBP via migration assistant and went ahead to format the 2011. Went into Recovery mode erased the drive, reinstalled the latest OSX and went to go and setup the GPU bypass so the next person wouldn’t have to do it. All went well except the when I was trying to unmount the disk the permissions weren’t allowing me to. I looked through forums, tried reinstalling OSX again, etc. But couldn’t get the drive to unmount so I could flush the changes to it.

Somewhere I read to reset the PRAM and for some reason this was the straw that broke the camels back. Every time I start up my machine now whether it’s Single User Mode or Verbose Mode or anything that has the potential to access Terminal I get:

“Error!!! Could not find APFS system volume handle” And my machine simply goes to a grey screen with a prohibited Apple logo 🚫

Here’s what I’ve tried and the results:

Recovery mode: automatically boots to Internet Recovery. Gets 100% of the way and then just sits at a grey screen. Have to manually power off.

Single User Mode: boots to a terminal looking screen but just says “Error!!! Could not find APFS system volume handle”. Proceeds to Prohibited Apple logo grey screen, manual power off.

Verbose Mode: same as above

Startup Utility: I had an El Capitan bootable drive laying around which I tried to boot from. It will get 100% of the way and then proceed to sit at a blank grey screen. Have to manual power off.

I got on chat with Apple Support and they’re useless, basically just dodged my questions for an hour and sent me unrelated articles from apple.com.

Anybody have any insight on what to do/I should try next? Essentially if I can get to Terminal or Disk Utility I can make it happen. Really would hate to just junk this rig, It’s been good to me and would like to sell it or pass it on to one of my cousins.

I appreciate it if you took the time to read this, and if you have any insight at all please let me know.

Thank you!

MacBook Pro 15", macOS 10.13

Posted on Jan 2, 2020 12:34 PM

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Answer 1

Best reply

duugee_ Author

Level 1

5 points

Jan 3, 2020 10:43 AM in response to BDAqua

Hi there,

Thank you for the reply. I managed to make some progress last night with some help from someone on Reddit.

Here's what I did:

remove internal hard drive
boot from el cap bootable USB in text recovery mode (CMD + S + R) which allowed me to access terminal since the HDD was not connected.
ran the dedicated GPU bypass to get it back onto the integrated GPU
shut it down. Put internal hard drive back and removed the el cap USB.
started up in Internet Recovery mode (option + CMD + R) which allowed me to install the latest OSX. Got past the grey screen ordeal because it was running the integrated gpu rather than the dedicated.

Once again, I appreciate your reply. Will be trying this if it happens again.

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Answer 2

BDAqua

Level 10

239,351 points

Jan 2, 2020 4:26 PM in response to duugee_

Have you tried formatting the drive HFS+ Journaled instead of APFS?

If for some reason you can't use the keyboard method to start in Safe Mode (the keyboard is missing or not working, for example), and you already have remote access to the computer, you can configure the computer to startup in Safe Mode via its command line

1. Access the command line by either opening Terminal remotely, or by logging into the computer from another via SSH.

2. Execute the following command in Terminal or on the command line:

sudo nvram boot-args="-x"

(If you want to start in Verbose mode as well, use sudo nvram boot-args="-x -v" instead )

3. After using Safe Boot, to return to a normal startup, execute this command in Terminal or the command line:

sudo nvram boot-args=""

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1455

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