Prohibitory sign, Then Boots Fine

lyonmissions wrote:

So, I am working on a MacBook Pro Early 2011. The Hard Drive broke and I switched it out for an SSD. I have had lots of problems since then.

I used macOS High Sierra, since that is the latest possible one, and I created the installer using a thumb drive. The installer worked fine, I formatted the SSD with Mac OS Extended (Later on with APFS), and everything installed fine, until the Mac rebooted.

Then, it gave me a prohibitory sign, and eventually booted back into the thumb drive. After experimenting with it for multiple days, I got the installer to work by pulling out the thumb drive, and forcing the Mac to boot from the SSD. Now that High Sierra is happily running on the new SSD, I still have problems!

Every once in a while, The Mac will chime and come on, show the Apple Logo for a split second, then switch to the prohibitory sign. I can let it stay there for about five seconds, then it will boot normally.

Unfortunately, I am working on this MacBook for someone else, and I do not want to give it back acting like this. I have searched all over the internet, asked questions on iFixit, and still do not have an answer.

Any support would be nice!

2011...

possibly a SATA cable—It sound like an intermittent generic failure/ fault in electrical continuity of a cracked trace

Can you boot without an issue an external bootclone

or better yet put your SSD in an external enclosure and boot from there this would bypass the internal SATA

MacSales.com has excellent customer support, ask them about a SATA cable replacement if it proves to be your issue

I agree with @leroydouglas. Either the internal hard drive SATA Cable is bad or this SSD just isn't compatible with this laptop, or possibly both. I don't know anything about that Kingston SSD, but a few years ago I was trying to assist several users on these forums and from what I recall most of the Kingston SSD models are just low end models, however, it is really hard to determine this. In my experience low end SSDs tend to cut corners and not perform very well. It is really hard to find good SSDs these days since even Crucial has one model which is absolutely terrible (the Crucial BX 500 series is awful).

The Crucial MX500 SSD is good (or it was last time I purchased one a few years ago....unfortunately most SSD manufacturers are making silent changes to the internals without changing the model number, so who knows). The OWC Mercury Electra/Extreme 6G SSDs are probably Ok as well and should work here because OWC tests their SSDs with the various Macs. Samsung SSDs are a mixed bag, but the EVO series (low end model) tends to have the most issues, although the higher end models are not without their own issues at times.

If the SSD works fine when the SSD is connected externally (booting the SSD externally), then it means either the internal hard drive SATA Cable is bad or the SSD is incompatible. If the SSD does not boot the laptop when connected externally, then either the OS/file system on the SSD is bad or the SSD is bad.

What make & model SSD did you install?

Is this the 13", 15", or 17" model?

So the drive is now partitioned and formatted as GUID partition with APFS file system?

Did you get the OS installer directly from Apple?

Have you tried an SMC Reset and a PRAM Reset? Make sure to hold the PRAM Reset for at least three chimes. After the PRAM Reset you will need to reselect the default Startup Disk.

Edit: Do you have a USB to SATA Adapter, drive dock, or enclosure so you can remove the SSD and see how it boots & works when connected externally?