Getting black screen with Folder and question mark AFTER reinstalling MacOS

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Level 1

8 points

Getting black screen with Folder and question mark AFTER reinstalling MacOS

Every time I restart or shutdown and power my MacBook back on I get the screen below. Only way to get past it is power off completely then power on and clear NVRAM [⌘CMD + option + P + R] and then it boots normally.

BACKGROUND

I was getting the above screen a few weeks ago. So I did the following:

Booted in recovery mode.
Tried to run FirstAid on the disks in disk Utility. THEY FAILED
Tried to reinstall MacOS OTA. That failed too.
Tried to install MacOS from USB. That failed too. Obviously my SSD is fried
I ordered a new SSD
Installed the new SSD
Formatted new SSD
Got a bootable Mojave onUSB and installed MacOS all over again. Throughout this process it was still doing what I described above but I managed to get it to install MacAOs.

As of now I Am able to login and use the Mac and download updates and everything. But remember it does the folder/? thing every time I have to reboot throughout that process. So from troubleshooting I noticed that when I clear NVRAM as it's rebooting/powering on it always booted and starts the OS. But if I don't clear NVRAM it gets stuck at the screen above.

Has anyone experience this? Any tips?

MacBook Pro 13″

Posted on Aug 30, 2024 9:18 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

Grant Bennet-Alder

Level 10

142,417 points

Sep 3, 2024 8:17 AM in response to rchaudry

there are TWO causes of blinking question mark.

the first and most obvious is the drive is KNOWN, but messed up and can't get going at all.

the second and FAR more subtle is that you have reset the NVRAM and not yet deliberately re-specified the startup drive, so the correct boot drive is UNKNOWN.

Be sure you re-specify that startup drive before you get too excited:

Settings/Prefs > Startup disk

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Answer 2

leroydouglas

Level 10

200,754 points

Aug 30, 2024 12:55 PM in response to rchaudry

rchaudry wrote:

This is a late 2017 model year 13” MacBook Pro with two thunderbolt ports

Apple’s proprietary SSD in that non-touchbar models of MBP 2016 or 2017—known to have a high failure rate.

There was some issue with installing macOS on replacement drives—

you do not say where this PCIe SSD (brand) came from ...

or

what macOS you are trying to install...

This is a known issue— non OEM Apple NVMe / NVMe SSD came to light trying to install Monterey.

The work around is to reinstall the OEM Apple Drive upgrade that drive which will flash the board, then reinstall your third party drive and now run the installer on your machine.

The EFI /Firmware part of the Monterey pkg is verifying for OEM Apple Drives and fails to upgrade. The EFI boot ROM is required to Flash the board and is required to successfully install Monterey.

work-a round—

https://www.reddit.com/r/MacOS/comments/qm3rv0/macos_monterey_update_without_the_original_apple/

OWC/MacSale well ahead of the curve all things Mac with excellent customer support

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Answer 3

leroydouglas

Level 10

200,754 points

Aug 30, 2024 11:44 AM in response to rchaudry

Do you ever say what exact Mac is this...?

if a 2.5" SSD it begs the questions—

did you replace the SATA cable at the same time as your SSD...?

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Answer 4

rchaudry Author

Level 1

8 points

Sep 3, 2024 9:08 AM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

My initial thought was that the system didnt know which drive to boot off of so i made sure to check that and respecify which drive to boot from andapparently that wasnt the issue

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Answer 5

rchaudry Author

Level 1

8 points

Sep 3, 2024 7:57 AM in response to leroydouglas

Thank you so much for the reply. I will look into this. But to confirm/answer your questions:

Late 2017 Macbook Pro 13 inch non-touchbar model A1708
The SSD replacement i installed is SABRENT 512GB Rocket NVMe PCIe M.2 combined with an adapter.
I initially install High Sierra from a USB drive it worked fine until a few days later i rebooted and noticed the booting issue.
When it kept having issues booting i then created a Mojave bootable USB and started all over. MojaveOS loaded well but still having the issue when restarting/booting up

I was going to try to upgrade to Ventura and see if the issue had be solved by then but based on your response this may not b worth trying. Seems like i have to find an OEM SSD (probably) to install and flash the board as you suggested and then reinstall my new SSD.

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Answer 6

Sep 3, 2024 11:00 AM in response to rchaudry

rchaudry wrote:

My initial thought was that the system didn't know which drive to boot off of so i made sure to check that and respecify which drive to boot from and apparently that wasnt the issue

... that leaves the other side of the fork -- your drive is messed up.

a drive that is only slightly confused is often able to get the first 'blob' of software, that contains the solid apple, and display that on the screen. Yours is not even getting that far.

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