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apple hardware test (AHT) preinstalled on latest macs

hello,

it seems that apple ships it's latest mac models, with AHT preinstalled - i.e. if you hold down the 'D' key on startup a new mac boots into AHT even without any CD present.

according to another thread (which i unfortunately lost the link to) it is installed in the following hidden direcotry:

/System/Library/CoreServices/.diagnostics

which contains a whole lot of things.

this is obviously very handy to have, however if you have to do a fresh install this directory does not get recreated, thus we are wondering about the following:

• with which models has apple started to do this;

• does the .diagnostics directory contain model specific information;

• how can we recreate this directory once lost, due to OS reinstallation;

any help appreciated.

ds.

MBPro 2Ghz intel cd, Mac OS X (10.6.5), G3 - xserve

Posted on Nov 18, 2010 3:17 AM

Reply
4 replies

Nov 18, 2010 7:06 AM in response to schagemann

I found this post:
http://tech.gauravjain.org/2010/05/apple-hardware-test.html

It doesn't give specific model information, but with respect to your 3rd question, it includes the following:
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Generally the program should be present on your Mac hard drive partition when you bought your Mac. But if you're like me and you've done a fresh install of Mac OS X, you may not have it installed. EFI looks for the program in /System/Library/CoreServices/.diagnostics. This is location on your hard drive and on your install CD. If you want the diagnostics to be run without the need for a CD all you need to do is copy this directory from your install CD to the same location on your hard drive.
--------------

I have a 2010 Mac Mini. Its OS has never been re-installed, and it does have a .diagnostics directory in /System/Library/CoreServices/. It shipped with two grey-labeled discs, "Mac OS X Install DVD" and "Applications Install DVD," and for my particular computer, AHT is on the second disc. Both of my install discs have a top level /System folder, but this directory is "hidden" - you can see it if you enable Finder to show hidden items. As expected for my computer, the "Applications Install DVD" does have a .diagnostics folder within its /System/Library/CoreServices directory; the "Mac OS X Install DVD" does not.

Message was edited by: jsd2

Nov 18, 2010 3:09 PM in response to jsd2

thanks for your reply - that is exactly what i had hoped for.

now to the intriguing part, as described in your reference there is whole bunch of subfolders with seemingly similar content in /.diagnostics

after closer inspection, here is what i found...

.diagnostics AHT Version Model Identifier
? 3A130 ? MacPro3,1
? 3A131 ? MacBookAir1,1
? 3A135 ? MacBookPro4,1
Mac-F42D89C8 3A147 3.3.1 MacBook5,1
Mac-F42D86C8 3A148 3.3.2 MacBookPro5,2
Mac-F22C86C8 3A150 3.3.1 MacMini3,1
Mac-F42D88C8 3A151 3.3.1 MacBookAir2,1
? 3A153 ? MacPro4,1
Mac-F2218EC8 3A156 3.3.1 iMac9,1
Mac-F2218FC8 3A157 3.3.1 iMac9,1
? 3A158 ? MacBookPro5,1
? 3A160 ? MacBookPro5,2
Mac-F22788AA 3A161 3.3.1 MacBook5,2
Mac-F42D89A9 3A162 3.3.1 ?
Mac-F42D86A9 3A163 3.3.1 MacBookPro5,1
? 3A165 MacBook5,2
Mac-F22587C8 3A171 3.3.1 MacBookPro6,2 MacBookPro5,3
Mac-F22587A1 3A172 3.3.1 MacBookPro5,4
Mac-F2268AC8 3A173 3.3.1 MacBookPro5,5
Mac-F2268EC8 3A175 3.3.1 MacBookPro6,1
? 3A176 ? iMac10,1
Mac-F2268DAE 3A178 3.3.2 ?
Mac-F22C8AC8 3A181 3.3.2 MacBook6,1
Mac-F2268DC8 3A188 3.3.1 ?
Mac-F2268CC8 3A189 3.3.1 ?
? 3A195 ? iMac11,2
? 3A199 ? MacBook7,1
? 3A202 ? iMac10,1 iMac11,1 iMac11,3
? 3A207 ? MacPro5,1

the above is collated with information from mactracker - strangely enough my imac i7 (late 2009, iMac11,1) does not seem to preinstalled with the AHT version it requires... although it works just fine!

anyway will try to reinstate from install disk later today and report back.

ds.

Nov 18, 2010 4:00 PM in response to schagemann

A possible caveat - .diagnostics and its contents might need to be owned by system (root) in order to function properly, and if you copy it with Finder, your user account will probably own the copy. I have a "test clone" that I play with, and when I made myself the owner of .diagnostics and then ran Disk Utility's Repair Permissions, the ownership was not corrected. You could correct the ownership manually with Terminal if this happens, or perhaps use [Pacifist|http://www.charlessoft.com> instead of Finder to "install" the .diagnostics folder from the DVD to your HD.

apple hardware test (AHT) preinstalled on latest macs

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