jrmyeh

Q: Can't access Apple Diagnostics.

Hoping someone has an idea of what's going on with my machine...

 

1) I have a late 2013 retina MBP, came loaded with Mavericks as I recall.

 

2) Did a clean-install upgrade to Yosemite shortly after the OS came out (off of a USB drive). That went uneventfully.

 

3) I have successfully, several times, run Apple Diagnostics ("D" on startup) in the past, and now can't remember if the last time I did so was under Mavericks, or if I'd ever done it under Yosemite.

 

4) Lately have noticed my machine "double rebooting" - meaning that when I reboot, I hear a start-up chime twice, and then it goes through the remainder of the boot normally. This caused me to try running Apple Diagnostics. So, pushing D immediately after pushing the power button takes me to a "Starting Internet Recovery. This may take a while." screen, which runs for less than a minute, then sends me to a language selection screen, with "power down" and "restart" selections at the bottom. Choosing English places a check-mark next to the selection, but then nothing else happens. No diagnostic option button appears at the bottom, the screen doesn't change. Nothing. The fan runs harder, so I assume something is making the CPU work harder, but I have no idea what.

 

5) I then tried doing all the other checks / fixes I could think of - resetting PRAM and SMC, booting into the repair partition and running volume checks and permissions repair on my boot volume, and booting into safe mode, followed by a restart. Trying to get into Apple Diagnostics after all this yielded the same result as before.

 

I'd love to find an answer that doesn't involve either my reinstalling Yosemite or having to schlep this thing to an Apple store, if possible.

 

Thanks for any thoughts!

J

MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Late 2013), OS X Yosemite (10.10.1), CPU 2.6 GHz, 1 TB SSD

Posted on Jan 3, 2015 7:35 AM

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Q: Can't access Apple Diagnostics.

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  • by ASCarlisle,

    ASCarlisle ASCarlisle Jan 3, 2015 7:38 AM in response to jrmyeh
    Level 2 (213 points)
    Jan 3, 2015 7:38 AM in response to jrmyeh

    Please try repairing permissions on the drive from within Disk Utility and then try again.

  • by jrmyeh,

    jrmyeh jrmyeh Jan 3, 2015 7:43 AM in response to ASCarlisle
    Level 1 (1 points)
    Jan 3, 2015 7:43 AM in response to ASCarlisle

    I already did that, with the other things I mentioned. I had "Command-R"'ed into the recovery partition and run volume check on both the container volume of my bit-lockered boot volume, as well as the bit-lockered volume itself. Also did permissions repair on the volume, and did a permissions verify after to confirm nothing left to repair. All checked out.

     

    I did briefly think of bit-lockering being the issue, but remembered that my previously successful runs of AD had been with a bit-lockered drive, and furthermore, if bit-lockering a drive prevented AD from working, Apple would have mentioned that in their support pages.

     

    Thanks,

    J

  • by jrmyeh,

    jrmyeh jrmyeh Jan 3, 2015 11:03 AM in response to jrmyeh
    Level 1 (1 points)
    Jan 3, 2015 11:03 AM in response to jrmyeh

    Now this is interesting.....

     

    https://jamfnation.jamfsoftware.com/discussion.html?id=12502

     

    It sounds like this fellow couldn't run Apple Diagnostics after he did a clean install of Yosemite. I did a clean install of Yosemite.

     

    Anyone out there linked doing clean installs of Yosemite with Diagnostics no longer working? If so, is there a way around, or does one have to do an in-place install in order to retain Diagnostics?

     

    Thanks,

    J

  • by John Galt,

    John Galt John Galt Jan 3, 2015 11:30 AM in response to jrmyeh
    Level 9 (50,369 points)
    Mac OS X
    Jan 3, 2015 11:30 AM in response to jrmyeh

    I have no explanation for no longer being able to invoke the built-in diagnostic, but you can force the Internet version to load by holding option d at startup. It performs the same actions. An Internet connection must obviously be available.

  • by iW00,

    iW00 iW00 Jan 3, 2015 11:42 AM in response to jrmyeh
    Level 4 (1,349 points)
    Jan 3, 2015 11:42 AM in response to jrmyeh

    jrmyeh wrote:

     

    2) Did a clean-install upgrade to Yosemite shortly after the OS came out (off of a USB drive). That went uneventfully.

     

     

    To what i been told, Apple Diagnostics or Apple Hardware Test (all depends which model of Mac you have) can be access as long you did not erase your HDD/SDD.

     

    Once the internal HDD/SDD is been erased, AD/AHT is also removed and in order to access these tools, you need to use Option+D at startup of your Mac.

    Using Apple Diagnostics - Apple Support

    Using Apple Hardware Test - Apple Support

  • by jrmyeh,

    jrmyeh jrmyeh Jan 3, 2015 12:53 PM in response to John Galt
    Level 1 (1 points)
    Jan 3, 2015 12:53 PM in response to John Galt

    Internet is freely available.

     

    Option-D does nothing - same result as just "D" on startup.

     

    Thanks,

    J

  • by jrmyeh,

    jrmyeh jrmyeh Jan 3, 2015 12:55 PM in response to iW00
    Level 1 (1 points)
    Jan 3, 2015 12:55 PM in response to iW00

    Option-D doesn't help me any more than just "D".

     

    I did erase the HDD when I did my clean install of Yosemite. So, if I wiped the Apple Diagnostics software, and it didn't get reinstalled by the USB installer, how can I get it back?

     

    Thanks,

    J

  • by John Galt,

    John Galt John Galt Jan 3, 2015 1:06 PM in response to jrmyeh
    Level 9 (50,369 points)
    Mac OS X
    Jan 3, 2015 1:06 PM in response to jrmyeh

    You must remove the firmware password, if one has been set, before you can run Apple Diagnostics. If that's not a factor, you will need to schlep your Mac to an Apple Store.

     

    You originally wrote that you installed Yosemite "off of a USB drive". I'm not entirely sure what you mean by that, but since it's not the usual way of installing OS X, the effects of using that method are unknown.

  • by jrmyeh,

    jrmyeh jrmyeh Jan 3, 2015 1:19 PM in response to John Galt
    Level 1 (1 points)
    Jan 3, 2015 1:19 PM in response to John Galt

    I have File Vault enabled for the HDD (I said "bit locker" before, but I meant "File Vault").

     

    That's drive encryption, rather than a firmware password, so I assume firmware password is something different? How does one set it - I've never learned about it?

     

    If you mean firmware password to be synonymous with File Vault, then I can report that, at least under Mavericks, I definitely and successfully ran Diagnostics with File Vault enabled.

     

    If I remember right, I used Disk Maker to create the Yosemite install on a USB flash drive.

     

    Thanks,

    J

  • by John Galt,

    John Galt John Galt Jan 3, 2015 1:30 PM in response to jrmyeh
    Level 9 (50,369 points)
    Mac OS X
    Jan 3, 2015 1:30 PM in response to jrmyeh

    If you don't recall configuring a firmware password, then you didn't do it. FileVault won't prevent Apple Diagnostics from running.

     

    I don't know what effect Disk Maker would have on a Yosemite installation. The right way to install OS X would be from the option provided in Internet Recovery. Try that.

  • by jrmyeh,

    jrmyeh jrmyeh Jan 3, 2015 1:32 PM in response to John Galt
    Level 1 (1 points)
    Jan 3, 2015 1:32 PM in response to John Galt

    I think that's where I'm headed.

     

    I'm going to try a shortcut first.

     

    Installing Yosemite on an external USB-3 drive (not using Disk Maker, but the bona fide Apple installer app), then will make its recovery partition visible and see if there is a "/com.apple.recovery.boot/.diagnostics" folder that I can copy over to my internal HDD's recovery partition.

     

    If this works, it will save a whole lot of time.

     

    Will let you know what happens.

     

    J

  • by John Galt,

    John Galt John Galt Jan 3, 2015 1:44 PM in response to jrmyeh
    Level 9 (50,369 points)
    Mac OS X
    Jan 3, 2015 1:44 PM in response to jrmyeh

    ... if there is a "/com.apple.recovery.boot/.diagnostics" folder that I can copy over to my internal HDD's recovery partition.

     

    According to my notes AHT resides in /System/Library/CoreServices/.diagnostics

     

    ... at least it did for Mavericks. I don't happen to have it on the Yosemite system I'm using, but I'm not expecting it to be there since I've performed a lot of modifications on it.

     

    If it does though, that should work.

  • by jrmyeh,

    jrmyeh jrmyeh Jan 3, 2015 3:11 PM in response to John Galt
    Level 1 (1 points)
    Jan 3, 2015 3:11 PM in response to John Galt

    Man, I just can't make this work.

     

    So, I thought I found a clue as to the location of Apple Diagnostics (as opposed to AHT), over at Stack Exchange....

     

    http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/123617/replacing-apple-hardware-test-wi th-apple-diagnostics

     

    The aforementioned /com.apple.recovery.boot/.diagnostics folder, within the recovery partition, made visible by terminal commands to make all partitions visible, invisible files visible, etc.

     

    So...I installed Yosemite onto an external USB drive. There was a recovery partition, but no .diagnostics folder within.

     

    I installed Mavericks onto VM Ware (my VM Ware version doesn't support Yosemite - but how different can the layout of the recovery partitions in 10.9 and 10.10 be?). Same story as the USB Yosemite install.

     

    So...if I reinstall Yosemite onto my main HDD, either as an in-place, or a fresh, I don't have much confidence at this point that a .diagnostics folder would be re-created.

     

    Simply put, when I installed my Yosemite cleanly, from the USB drive, it recreated the recovery partition, but didn't place a .diagnostics folder within it. I'm not sure why that happened.

     

    It would be soooo much easier if Apple would just allow users access to Apple Service Diagnostics, which is far better than AHT/AD, whereby I could investigate the weird machine behavior that sent me down this diagnosis path in the first place (without having to find a genius bar).

     

    Any thoughts on how to restore the diagnostic software to a recovery partition in Yosemite?

     

    Thanks!

  • by DaMacGuy,

    DaMacGuy DaMacGuy Oct 15, 2015 8:20 AM in response to jrmyeh
    Level 1 (55 points)
    Oct 15, 2015 8:20 AM in response to jrmyeh

    This isn't so much an OS issue as a hardware issue. Machines from Mid-2013 forward use Apple Diagnostics. Pre-Mid-2013 machines use Apple Hardware Test.

     

    Apparently AHT and AD are only installed at the factory and not reinstalled on re-imaging. For some stupid reason.

     

    You can find many AHT's (based on your hardware) through google, but here a good list for many of them.

    https://github.com/upekkha/AppleHardwareTest

     

    If you need AD though... I'm still looking. At best you can find an Apple Certified tech who can download a version you can install onto a USB stick and run from there. Again, these are based on the model machine you have - it's a "one doesn't fit all, although many work for several".

     

    I'm still looking for a way to replace the Apple Diagnostics.