You can make a difference in the Apple Support Community!

When you sign up with your Apple Account, you can provide valuable feedback to other community members by upvoting helpful replies and User Tips.

Looks like no one’s replied in a while. To start the conversation again, simply ask a new question.

Apple.com/support -5101F

iMac 21.5″, macOS 10.14

Posted on Dec 13, 2021 12:39 AM

Reply
2 replies

Dec 14, 2021 9:31 AM in response to Leandro44

Hi Leandro44,


Thank you for participating in the Apple Support Communities. It appears that your Mac is starting up to a globe with an alert symbol. We're happy to point you in the right direction.


We suggest trying the steps under "If you can't start up from macOS Recovery" in this article: About macOS Recovery on Intel-based Mac computers


There you will find steps specific to the screen you are seeing.


Should the issue persist, contact Apple Support.


Have a great day.

Dec 14, 2021 9:57 AM in response to Leandro44

My notes on that error...


Error 5101...

So, according to the articles, I have an incompatible Boot ROM version (or commonly known as BIOS). (To check it, go to the Apple logo - About My Mac- System Report - Hardware and see the number of Boot ROM version)

And that was right! I have two other MBPs and the Boot ROM versions were 428 for the 2014 and 424 for the 2015. The problem one was still at 192. My speculation is macOS has something similar to a compatibility mode so it could run on older BIOS versions but couldn’t boot from the Recovery Partition, especially Big Sur. I bought this Mac with no SSD and put in an SSD with Catalina pre installed, so the BIOS was probably not updated.

So how I solved this was pretty time consuming, but it worked! I used Shift Cmd Opt R to get Yosemite back on the SSD. Then I went to App Store and updated to Big Sur. After a longer than usual update and many more restarts that took about 3 hours total, my Boot ROM version was updated to 424 and the problem was solved.

EDIT: I got another one with ver. 180 firmware and when I trigger IR it doesn’t error out anymore, but the latest OS it could go up by IR is Catalina. From there I could manually update to Big Sur 11.1 but the firmware version stays the same. And of course, no access to Recovery partition. They fixed it in a half-assed way.


https://www.reddit.com/r/macbookrepair/comments/kab0an/error_5101f_on_macbook_pro_2015_and_how_i_solved/

Apple.com/support -5101F

Welcome to Apple Support Community
A forum where Apple customers help each other with their products. Get started with your Apple Account.