My mid 2010 MacBook Pro randomly restarts whilst in the middle of using it. I've run disk utility verify but seems to be OK, I have plenty of space on the hard drive and have no peripherals attached. I can be using it for a while without a problem then it restarts, on another occasion it restarts minutes after start up. I took it to a local repair shop and they had it on, using my lead & adapter, for a couple of hours without a problem! Any ideas please?
Several things. A mid-2010 Macbook Pro can go up to High Sierra, 10.13.6. I know this works, I have a 2010 Macbook Air on High Sierra.
The earlier MacOS had more bugs and the latest MacOS always works better.
That said, involuntary restarting is pretty severe. A laptop that old is likely wearing out. First things to suspect might be memory and SSD. If you have a model with a rotating (mechanical) drive, that's even more likely to be failing. DriveDX, as suggested by HWTech, can evaluate the physical health of your internal drive.
Older Macs will have solder joints start to wear out from repeated thermal cycles experienced in use, metal expands and contracts and eventually the connections wear out and have intermittent lack of electrical connection. Never letting a Mac sleep or shut down is not a solution because then it is always hot, which also wears out electronics.
There is always a chance of software causing your problem, in that case Etrecheck would help (which you can run after going to High Sierra). You can boot into Safe Mode to see if the problem goes away, Safe Mode operates with only minimal Apple built in extensions. I am suspecting it is a symptom of your hardware wearing out. This would not be worth fixing on a Mac that old, parts are hard to find and they are used when they can be found.
Several things. A mid-2010 Macbook Pro can go up to High Sierra, 10.13.6. I know this works, I have a 2010 Macbook Air on High Sierra.
The earlier MacOS had more bugs and the latest MacOS always works better.
That said, involuntary restarting is pretty severe. A laptop that old is likely wearing out. First things to suspect might be memory and SSD. If you have a model with a rotating (mechanical) drive, that's even more likely to be failing. DriveDX, as suggested by HWTech, can evaluate the physical health of your internal drive.
Older Macs will have solder joints start to wear out from repeated thermal cycles experienced in use, metal expands and contracts and eventually the connections wear out and have intermittent lack of electrical connection. Never letting a Mac sleep or shut down is not a solution because then it is always hot, which also wears out electronics.
There is always a chance of software causing your problem, in that case Etrecheck would help (which you can run after going to High Sierra). You can boot into Safe Mode to see if the problem goes away, Safe Mode operates with only minimal Apple built in extensions. I am suspecting it is a symptom of your hardware wearing out. This would not be worth fixing on a Mac that old, parts are hard to find and they are used when they can be found.
For some unknown reason macOS software update seems to have a bug where it will only see the newest version of macOS available and realize it is not compatible with your Mac and disregard that there may be an intermediate OS available as compatible & upgradeable.
Before you attempt to upgrade to macOS 10.13, I recommend you run DriveDx to check the health of the hard drive since an OS upgrade install can easily put the drive over the edge it is probably already teetering. If the upgrade fails for some reason, then you won't be able to check the health of the hard drive as easily to know if that was the ultimate source of the problem.
I also highly recommend you have a good backup before attempting the upgrade. If the hard drive is beginning to fail, then the upgrade process will likely make the failure worse where you may not be able to easily access the data on the drive.
I would also recommend creating a bootable macOS 10.13 USB installer while you can still boot this laptop normally. This way if the drive is bad you will have a method of reinstalling macOS onto another drive if you want to continue using this laptop.
Since the Apple Diagnostics won't boot, If you want to try checking the memory, then you can use a bootable Memtest86 USB stick. Use the downloaded Memtest86 .img file as a source for Etcher (Mac/Windows/Linux) which will create a bootable Memtest86 USB stick for you. Option Boot the Memtest86 USB stick and select the orange icon labeled "EFI".
The current version of Memtest86 only allows testing for four loops. If no errors are reported and the test does not freeze up, then try running modifying the Memtest86 CPU settings and change it to "Sequential" and "Round Robin" to test again. Recently I have discovered Memtest86 seems more likely to detect hardware issues with these CPU settings. In fact it will usually cause Memtest86 to freeze fairly quickly & regularly which would indicate some sort of hardware issue (most likely bad memory, but it could also be the Logic Board)...it rarely shows an actual memory error.
Edit: Forgot to include a link to an Apple article with instructions for creating a bootable macOS USB installer:
Create a bootable installer for macOS - Apple Support
Are you using the power adapter when this happens or just the battery? If just the battery, then try using the power adapter to see if it makes any difference.
Run EtreCheck and post the report here so we can examine it for clues. This app does require macOS 10.13.
You can try running the Apple Diagnostics to see if any hardware issues are detected. Unfortunately the diagnostics don't detect most issues.
So if no issues detected, run DriveDx to check the health of the hard drive. Usually any "Warning" or "Failing" notices indicates a worn out or failing hard drive respectively meaning the hard drive should be replaced. If the laptop uses an SSD instead, then please post the full DriveDx text report here using the "Additional Text" icon which looks like a piece of paper. Feel free to post the report even if you are using a hard drive especially if there are no "Warning" or "Failing" notices...it is possible I may see something in the report.
Make sure to disconnect all external devices from the laptop just in case one of them is causing a problem.
Has anything recently changed with this laptop?
macOS High Sierra - Technical Specifications
Check you Mac carefully, it has to meet the above requirements. If it is mid-2010, it does.
This article has links to get High Sierra:
How to download and install macOS - Apple Support
Be sure to back up your Mac before doing a MacOS upgrade.
Thanks for taking the time to reply, the MacBook restarts randomly regardless of whether it's running on battery or when plugged in to the mains. The first thing I did after the problem started was buy & fit a new battery (I did get a message come up about it) so I know that's not the problem. The OS is 10.10.5 Yosemite which is as far as I can go with upgrades on this Mac so can't use EtreCheck as suggested, also when I tried Apple Diagnostics it appeared to work with Option-D but all I got was a world globe with an exclamation mark in the centre with "apple.com/support 34030" beneath it? I know my Mac is old but it hasn't had lots of use and I now use it mainly for hosting quizzes (for free) so I would like to sort this out myself (or with the help of nice people like you!) Thanks again, if you think of anything else please do comment.
Thanks again for your help, when I go to 'About this Mac' and click on software updates it tells me there are no updates available? With regard to keeping the Mac on, this isn't something that's been done at all, I always shut down and it hasn't had a lot of use, perhaps I haven't used it enough!
alexfromtollesbury Said:
"mid 2010 macbook pro randomly restarts?: My mid 2010 MacBook Pro randomly restarts whilst in the middle of using it.[...]"
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Refer to the link prided atop this thread.
mid 2010 macbook pro randomly restarts?
