M3 Max Macbook Pro suddenly uncontrollably crashes & reboots

My 16" 36GB M3Max Macbook Pro is a little over a year old (almost 13 months) with no apple care. I always used macbooks for almost 8 years with no issues so I figured it would be the same. Hopefully someone can help me cause I am desperate!


So I was editing in Lightroom when suddenly the macbook restarted. All computers do that sometimes so I thought nothing of it. Except after that, it crashes with everything. Loading Lightroom, plugging in HD, sometimes just on the login screen. So I figured I would reinstall sequoia. I did. Nothing changed.


So I decided to erase the macbook from Recovery and just fresh install Sonoma (which is what it came with and what is on the RecoveryOS). I did and it crashed even during the install. It seems to have crashed around the same spot.


I tried every possible reinstall after that. Including trying APFS case sensitive formats, etc. At one point, it worked and installed Sonoma. It actually worked for about two days and started crashing. It seems to do a crash loop and definitely crashes when awoken from sleep. There was one time it gave me a third party kernel error and it disabled third party kernel. But only once.


Anyway, many install attempts in variety later... like no power plugged, nothing plugged in, only power plugged in, trying with a hard drive plugged in, etc. I just can't seem to get it to install the OS again. I thought maybe the copy on the Recovery is bad so I created a boot installer drive for Sequoia and Sonoma. They crashed even sooner. Like the bar would go about 2-3 min before it reboots. For both OS install attempts.


So I used the DFU and connected to another mac. I decided since the SSD is erased anyway, I'd go straight to RESTORE instead of REVIVE. Good news is, this worked to install Sequoia and seems to have updated the firmware. Bad news is, it mad crashes still. I can't even get through the prompts on the welcome screen before it restarts by itself. Now it says it seens to reinstall the OS (i guess it detected the restart on the prompts?). Well the reinstall from the recovery once again will not work cause it restarts around the same spot.


Unless someone has an idea or this is a known issue with a fix coming soon, I dread taking it to the apple store cause i spent so much money on this to replace my 2017 macbook and it has been such a hard year that I might not be able to afford the repairs.


I am praying someone has some kind of an idea.

MacBook Pro (M3 Max, 2023)

Posted on Mar 18, 2025 5:58 PM

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Posted on Mar 18, 2025 8:53 PM

If all external devices are disconnected from the laptop and you get that system crash during setup after a DFU Firmware Restore, then you have pretty much confirmed a hardware issue with the laptop.


Having the system fail like this on initial setup after a DFU Restore should make it easier to get repaired since Apple doesn't like replacing parts without being able to replicate the failure. A failure with a clean install is the best case scenario (DFU Restore is actually even better) since the Apple Diagnostics rarely detect hardware issues.


Good job troubleshooting, although it did not end in success like you had hoped.

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Mar 18, 2025 8:53 PM in response to myhomepage72212

If all external devices are disconnected from the laptop and you get that system crash during setup after a DFU Firmware Restore, then you have pretty much confirmed a hardware issue with the laptop.


Having the system fail like this on initial setup after a DFU Restore should make it easier to get repaired since Apple doesn't like replacing parts without being able to replicate the failure. A failure with a clean install is the best case scenario (DFU Restore is actually even better) since the Apple Diagnostics rarely detect hardware issues.


Good job troubleshooting, although it did not end in success like you had hoped.

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M3 Max Macbook Pro suddenly uncontrollably crashes & reboots

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