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Macbook Pro shuts down randomly, Touch Bar doesn’t work

Hello all,


This morning my MacBook Pro (13-inch, 2018, 4 Thunderbolt 3 Ports) started shutting down randomly. It won’t stay on for more than 5 minutes at a time with or without the charger plugged in. I’ll try to list as much possible info below so as to help with diagnostics as well as so anyone else with a similar problem can decide if their case is the same as mine.


  • Powers off within 5 minutes of being powered on
  • Restarts automatically after a power off
  • When powering off the fans seem to rev up to max speed for about a second
  • Does not restart automatically when manually Shut Down
  • The random power offs occur in Safe Mode and Password Recovery Mode
  • Touch Bar is completely black from power on until shut off. Interestingly, it does seem to register input. “ESC” works as it should though I can’t see anything, as does the brightness slider (when I can find it)
  • I have tried resetting the SMC... I’m currently trying my best to drain the battery to 0% and recharge back to 100%.


Any tips would be great. I’ve been Googling this issue but almost every result has to do with resetting the SMC (which I’m working on) and even fewer-to-none mention the Touch Bar being blacked out.


EDIT: I included some system info if that’ll be useful in any way


MacBook Pro 13", macOS 10.15

Posted on Feb 16, 2020 1:11 AM

Reply
Question marked as Best reply

Posted on Feb 16, 2020 8:16 AM

The SMC htthttps://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201295

is also the go to way for re-setting the touchbar.


Your only other keyboard action in an effort to resolve this —

Try resetting NVRAM/PRAM http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1379



With or without the touchbar coming back to life,

you can try booting off an external bootclone if you can get to it (and if you made one as backup.)

Boot clone https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-10081


Internet Recovery maybe out of the question depending on your user settings:


Recovery: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204904


Boot into Internet Recovery (Option Command R) and from the dropdown menu: Utilities>  Disk Utility> run the First Aid on your Macintosh HD (and the "Macintosh HD-Data" volume as well if Catalina) If errors are found and repaired, run again until no errors reported.


From Internet Recovery you can reinstall macOS on top of your existing macOS leaving your user data untouched.



Similar questions

3 replies
Question marked as Best reply

Feb 16, 2020 8:16 AM in response to Loitoomah

The SMC htthttps://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201295

is also the go to way for re-setting the touchbar.


Your only other keyboard action in an effort to resolve this —

Try resetting NVRAM/PRAM http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1379



With or without the touchbar coming back to life,

you can try booting off an external bootclone if you can get to it (and if you made one as backup.)

Boot clone https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-10081


Internet Recovery maybe out of the question depending on your user settings:


Recovery: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204904


Boot into Internet Recovery (Option Command R) and from the dropdown menu: Utilities>  Disk Utility> run the First Aid on your Macintosh HD (and the "Macintosh HD-Data" volume as well if Catalina) If errors are found and repaired, run again until no errors reported.


From Internet Recovery you can reinstall macOS on top of your existing macOS leaving your user data untouched.



Macbook Pro shuts down randomly, Touch Bar doesn’t work

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