No boot condition after upgrade to 10.8.3, EFI 1.6, Mid-2009 15" MBP 2.53Ghz

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Level 1

4 points

No boot condition after upgrade to 10.8.3, EFI 1.6, Mid-2009 15" MBP 2.53Ghz

Hi,

I've got a Mid-2009 15" MBP. After I upgraded to 10.8.3, my computer got into a situation where, upon waking from sleep, it became unresponsive, and then gave me the "no entry" sign after I hard-rebooted it.

I took the drive out, put it in an external enclosure, found that it booted via USB. I then put the drive back in the computer and to my surprise, it booted and worked properly -- for about a week, at which time the problem recurred.

Some more detail: a while back I upgraded the HDD to a Seagate Momentus 7200 750GB, model ST9750420AS. I encountered poor performance, spinning beach balls, refusal to wake from hibernate, etc. I came upon the EFI 1.6 monster thread (https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2054387) and downgraded my EFI to 1.6 and kept it there. Everything worked great for more than a year, until the 10.8.3 update and no boot.

It looks like some people who downgraded to 1.6 are having issues with 10.8.3 as well, but with an HDD/SSD in the optical drive (https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4895074). I can confirm I'm having issues with it when the optical drive is intact and I'm using a SATA HDD in the HDD bay. This is a supported configuration (my owner's manual even has instructions for upgrading the HDD).

The second time it happened I tried what the folks in the second thread above did and downgraded to 10.8.0, then upgraded to 10.8.2. I can say that at this time it seems to be working. So my questions are:

1) Is 10.8.2 the last Lion update this MBP will ever be able to install?

2) Has anyone who was previously running EFI 1.6 / 10.8.2 had this issue and had success with the 10.8.3 / EFI 1.7 combination (upgrading both at the same time)?

3) Has Apple or anyone else found a definitive list of HDD/SSDs that work reliably with this rather finicky logic board/disk controller?

4) Anyone else running EFI 1.6 / 10.8.3 having a similar experience? Should I be worried about the longevity/integrity of my hardware at this point?

Thanks. Please chime in especially if you have a similar configuration/experience.

Alex

MacBook Pro, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.3)

Posted on Mar 26, 2013 5:27 PM

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Answer 1

Best reply

Scott Buchanan1

Level 1

25 points

Mar 26, 2013 7:52 PM in response to abarsam

I just four days going through this pain. I had a wd7500 drive which I had previously downgraded the EFI to 1.6 to get to work. I upgraded to 10.8.3 and the system would only boot about 1 in 10 times. Once booted it worked fine. I assumed that the drive had gone bad and had WD send a replacement under their warranty, which they did very promptly. I installed and restored from Time Machine (an amazingly painless process) and had the same problem. I then thought I had a logic board problem and was getting ready to go to the apple store when I decided to put the original disk back in. Poof, booted right up. I had resigned myself to getting a new disk. In doing so I figured I'd update the EFI back to 1.7 in preparation for that and low and behold everything is now working just fine.

In conclusion, for me, after upgrading to 10.8.3, upgrading to EFI 1.7 made everything work again.

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Answer 2

Mar 26, 2013 8:00 PM in response to abarsam

Forgot to mention the my configuration is the same as yours - MBPS mid 2009 15".

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Answer 3

abarsam Author

Level 1

4 points

Mar 27, 2013 5:34 AM in response to Scott Buchanan1

Scott,

Thanks for reporting your experience with EFI 1.7 / 10.8.3.

With the EFI 1.6 rollback and a fresh Time Machine backup of my machine rolled back to 10.8.2 in my hands, I'm going to try update both OS and EFI to 10.8.3 and 1.7 respectively. I'll let you know how it goes.

Thanks,

Alex

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Answer 4

abarsam Author

Level 1

4 points

Mar 27, 2013 9:45 AM in response to Scott Buchanan1

So far the 10.8.3 / 1.7 EFI combination is working *with the exception of hibernate/safe sleep*. My system does not wake from disk based sleep. This is as it was previously with EFI 1.7. 😐

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Answer 5

Mar 27, 2013 9:48 AM in response to abarsam

Not sure what you mean by 'hibernate/safe sleep'. If I close the lid on the system and the lift it up it wakes just fine. My previous problem with EFI 1.7 was that the system would beachball constantly as the disk re-tried things.

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Answer 6

abarsam Author

Level 1

4 points

Mar 27, 2013 9:55 AM in response to Scott Buchanan1

Even when the computer is asleep, it draws a small amount of power. Safe-sleep mirrors the contents of RAM to the HDD so that in the event that the computer runs entirely out of power while asleep, the RAM contents aren't lost:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1757

With 1.7 / 10.8.3, regular sleep works fine (shut lid and open while battery still has power). But it fails to wake if it goes to safe-sleep.

You can make it go straight to safe sleep with the pmset command:

http://www.macworld.com/article/1053471/sleepmode.html

Everything else seems to be working but this makes me nervous. I don't like things that "seem" to be working as they relate valuable data...

I'm curious if safe sleep works or not with your configuration.

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Answer 7

Mar 27, 2013 10:05 AM in response to abarsam

I did a'sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 1' and then put the system to sleep. Took about 30 sec for the disk drive to stop spinning. I waited about 20 more seconds and hear no activity. I press the power button and got a dim screen with an image of the screen when I put it to sleep with a crude progress bar at the bottom. About 30 seconds later all was well and working. It appears to work.

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Answer 8

abarsam Author

Level 1

4 points

Mar 27, 2013 10:12 AM in response to Scott Buchanan1

Thanks. Yes, it does sound like safe sleep is working properly for you. I've opened a support case with Seagate (something I should have done a long time ago).

Maybe it's time for me to trade my Seagate for a WD7500, or an SSD.

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Answer 9

abarsam Author

Level 1

4 points

Mar 27, 2013 10:32 AM in response to Scott Buchanan1

Out of curiosity, what exact model of "WD7500" have you got in your MBP? There are at least a few model numbers that start that way, Scorpio Blue, Scorpio Black, etc, etc. If you can confirm that ONE of them works, I'll feel better about placing an order...

I think you can get the model number out of the Serial-ATA section of the "System Information" App (Apple Menu > About This Mac... > More Info... > System Report..."

Thanks again.

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Answer 10

Mar 27, 2013 10:34 AM in response to abarsam

WD7500BPKT which I believe is the Scorpio Black but that is the model number.

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Answer 11

Eric Root

Level 10

684,027 points

Mar 27, 2013 1:18 PM in response to abarsam

Try booting into the Safe Mode. Shut down the computer and then power it back up. Immediately after hearing the startup chime, hold down the shift key and continue to hold it until the gray Apple icon and a progress bar appear. The boot up is significantly slower than normal. This will reset some caches, forces a directory check, and disables all startup and login items, among other things. If the system operates normally, there may be 3rd party applications which are causing a problem. Try deleting/disabling the third party applications after a restart. For each disable/delete, you will need to restart if you don't do them all at once.

Safe Mode

Safe Mode - About

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Answer 12

Mar 27, 2013 4:22 PM in response to abarsam

I´ve got exactly the same problem with my MBP mid 2009 (2,53 Ghz).

I upgraded my harddrive to WDC WD7500BPKT an downgraded EFI to 1.6.

Everything worked great with 10.8.2. Since 10.8.3. my MBP won´t boot.

I upgraded to EFI 1.7 again. 10.8.3 works (and boots) perfektly. BUT the the harddrive hangs again and the beachball problem persists. EFI 1.7 still doesn't work. I have to use my Time Machine backup to go back to 10.8.2

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Answer 13

Mar 27, 2013 4:33 PM in response to siebenundzwei

Sorry to hear that. After re-installing EFI 1.7 and simply putting my original drive back into the laptop everything has been working just great. I used the system today - email, web browsing, Excel, Xcode, etc with now issue. So for me everything is normal. No beach balling different than for the last few years which occurs when, for example, I start a build income, flip though a number of web pages while checking email and looking at an excel spreadsheet basically at the same time :).

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Answer 14

Mar 27, 2013 11:32 PM in response to Scott Buchanan1

@Scott

replacing my 750 GB drive with my original drive (320 GB) isn´t an option. I need ab bigger drive.

It seems, I have to downgrade to EFI 1.6 an 10.8.2. I´m afraid 10.8.2 is the last OSX update for my MBP

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Answer 15

abarsam Author

Level 1

4 points

Mar 28, 2013 6:01 AM in response to siebenundzwei

siebenundzwei, sorry to hear that. Scott, glad to hear everything is working out for you. Eric, if you'll review the threads that have been made of this issue I think this problem goes way beyond troubleshooting 101, but thanks anyway 🙂

I'm out of warranty so I'm running out of options. I'm starting to think rolling back to 10.8.2 /1.6 and holding back updates might really be the way to go for now.

I talked to Apple and Seagate yesterday. It was what you'd expect when company A makes a widget that's incompatible with company B's widget, while both sold them under the pretense they were... both were saying it wasn't their fault. Seagate confirmed no firmware updates available or in development for the drive. Apple confirmed that they don't "recognize an issue" despite my pointing them to this thread and the linked threads that are just full of people having similar / same issues.

Apple rep wanted me to update to EFI 1.7 again and do a clean install of 10.8.3. I did; no improvement on the fail-to-wake-on-hibernate issue.

He also suggested I could go to an Apple Store / Apple Auth Service center, have them order a replacement drive *from Apple*, and then they'd be on the hook to support making sure it works on my computer under all circumstances. That's an idea, but I'm rather skeptical about the cost of this option.

It's a shame that Apple thinks it OK to EOL products that came out less than four years ago, and that it's OK to claim broad support for an industry-wide standard like SATA but then have the support be so spotty.

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