Upgrading to 10.8.5 killed my cMBP

Question

Level 1

45 points

Upgrading to 10.8.5 killed my cMBP

I have a late 2011 MacBook Pro 15", 16gb ram 2 hard drives SSD in primary and swapped my DVD for the 750gb that was installed when I ordered it. It has been rock solid since I purchased it, never an issue. The ram and hard drive arrangement has been in place for over 6 months.

While plugged in, Saturday afternoon I upgraded to 10.8.5 and after it was completed shut the lid and slept the laptop. Used it for maybe 20 mins on Sunday morning and shut the lid to sleep it.

On battery this morning, opened it this morning to weird graphics gitches and an offset display, it locked hard after I entered my password. Reboot, choose not to open any apps that were open previously, and it crashed as soon as it hit the desktop with a kernel panic. Rebooted again and it seemed to work fine for a 5 minuits. I opened my daily news reader, NetNewsWire and it locked again. Shut it down,plugged it in then reset SMC and PRAM.

The FileVault preboot password screen has faint horizontal blue lines goines across the whole display. When I enter my password, the Apple logo appears and then it just stops on a grey screen. Safe mode and recovery both end on a black screen - no display but the back light is on. But the fans start going full blast and the bottom is HOT. Left it off for 30 mins but no change when I tried it again.

This has to be related to some part of the update - no other explaination. Switching from integrated to discrete triggered it I think. Now my poor mac is toast.

I have a genius bar appointment tomorrow afternoon (earliest I was able to get).

Any insights or people experiencing similar problems? Any other troubleshooting I can try on my own? I'm really really hoping Apple doesn't want me to pay for a new logic board. No Apple care.

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.7.3)

Posted on Oct 7, 2013 6:44 AM

Reply

Answer 1

nudoru Author

Level 1

45 points

Oct 7, 2013 7:32 AM in response to nudoru

I have a bootcamp partition on a separate drive, so I tried to boot to that. Windows BSODs with a error of "trying to reset video card driver failed" Sigh. Looks like the video chip gone.

Reply

Answer 2

sabatica

Level 2

231 points

Oct 7, 2013 7:55 AM in response to nudoru

http://support.apple.com/kb/TS3742. Enjoy. Doesn't necessarily mean its video related. Sounds more like the update installation caused an issue.

Reply

Answer 3

sabatica

Level 2

231 points

Oct 7, 2013 8:01 AM in response to nudoru

May also be resolved by

Repairing the disk
deleting your /System/Library/Extensions/BootCache.kext file and letting it be recreated slowly during startup.

This is dependent on what Disk Utility says.

Reply

Answer 4

nudoru Author

Level 1

45 points

Oct 7, 2013 8:55 AM in response to sabatica

Thanks. My system drive doesn't have a repair partition on it (cloned it from another source) so first thing I'm going tonight is building a repair flash drive and repairing the disk. If I do get it back up, i'll delete the boot cache kext see what effect that has.

If it's not hardware, why would Windows fail to boot complaining of video related issues and blue lines on the boot selection screen? Windows is on a separate physical disk and boot manager should be rom. Seems odd to me.

Reply

Answer 5

sabatica

Level 2

231 points

Oct 7, 2013 8:52 AM in response to nudoru

Don't jump ahead and worry about the windows partition yet Let's find out what happens first.

Reply

Answer 6

nudoru Author

Level 1

45 points

Oct 7, 2013 3:37 PM in response to sabatica

Got home, plugged it up and turned it on and behold it worked!

Fired up Disk Utility and verrified the drive no issues. Rebooted to recovery console and checked all of my drives there - no issues.

Unplugged it to boot on battery like i'd been doing on day and then BOOM - same issues returned. Plugged it back in and after a few hard/reboots it's back up now.

Windows is still broken in a regular boot but will boot in safe mode. Blue lines all over the screen however.

Any ideas?

Reply

Answer 7

sabatica

Level 2

231 points

Oct 8, 2013 9:13 AM in response to nudoru

Book a genius bar appointment and carry it instore as its probably better diagnosed in the flesh.

May be Hardware related. Not necessarily yet. The Diagnostic tool can help identify some hardware problems. Boot using the D key before the startup screen.

Reply

Answer 8

nudoru Author

Level 1

45 points

Oct 8, 2013 7:36 PM in response to nudoru

I haven't been able to get into the diagnostic tool yet ... at this point i have to reboot and reboot before I'm able to it to boot at all. Had to cancel my genius apointment due to a work conflict - probably be a week before I can go in.

I'll keep trying to get in - when I press the D key, I just get a blank grey screen and nothing else happens - no diag icon, or Apple logo.

WIth gfxCardStatus, I've isolated the issue to the discrete AMD gpu - crashes as soon as or with in seconds of switching it to discrete.

Reading over this thread, look exactly like my issue

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4766577?start=0&tstart=0

Reply

Answer 9

maiku

Level 2

190 points

Oct 16, 2013 9:54 AM in response to nudoru

Same thing here. Early 2011 Macbook Pro. After the 10.8.5 update, upon booting, the screen was shifted to one side with a big black line down the middle. I changed the resolution, the system froze. I rebooted to a white screen, the computer got very hot, fans running at full blast. I shut it off, tired to boot into safe mode, no luck. Recovery mode, no luck either. Tried to boot from my Time Machine backup, nope sorry. I keep getting to the same spot in the boot process where, I'm guessing, the graphics card switches over from using the Intel HD Graphics 3000 to the AMD Radeon HD 6750M.

Reply

Answer 10

nudoru Author

Level 1

45 points

Oct 16, 2013 10:17 AM in response to maiku

I'm starting to think my whole issue was 10.8.5. I put my hardware back to stock and did a clean install of 10.8.4 and it's been perfectly fine for over a day. Hope mavericks is better than 10.8.5!

I've put back my upgraded ram and ssd and it's still going like it used to.

Reply