MacBook Pro stuck at Apple logo startup

Question

MacBook Pro stuck at Apple logo startup

Yesterday I started the MacBook and got to the loading bar with the Apple logo, loaded really slowly then it got stuck on the last bar and nothing happens, left my computer like this for 6 hours.

Restarted again, in safe mode, that didn’t work, loading bar still stuck. Restarted again with holding shift-control-opt key for 10 seconds to restart smc, then restarted with the p-y buttons followed by restarting again in safe mode. Still nothing. Stuck at the end of the loading bar.

Then I did the command-r to scan my hard drive in disk utility, it says it’s fine, restarted again, still nothing.

Did the command-r again, now reinstalled the high Sierra, first time it took me 11 hours to install, restart and still nothing. Reinstalled high sierra once more, this time it took only 2 hours, however still stuck in the loading bar, and safe mode still won’t start.

whats the problem? I have over 120 gb of free space, never had a problem with my computer before this. Should I open up my computer and clean the inside? Disk utility says nothing is wrong but it just won’t start. It’s 4 years old.

i don’t want to wipe the whole computer, I didn’t do a backup before this And I have important files that I can’t loose.

What do I Do?

MacBook Pro, iOS 11.2.6

Posted on Mar 25, 2018 4:37 PM

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Answer 1

Lanny

Level 6

13,207 points

Mar 25, 2018 4:57 PM in response to andreasnorling

It sounds like your hard drive is failing. That's why you should have been making backups. Make an appointment with the Genius Bar at the nearest Apple Store.

I'll have your post moved to proper forum area for MacBook Pros in case anyone else wants to respond. This forum area is for 12" Retina MacBooks.

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Answer 2

Mar 25, 2018 5:07 PM in response to Lanny

It didn’t say that in the disk Utility though? Also how could I install a new copy of high sierra if the hard drive is failing. Made a backup 4 days ago but did a lot of important work yesterday. Genius Bar isnt an option since we don’t have apple store in my country.

what else can I do?

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Answer 3

Lanny

Level 6

13,207 points

Mar 25, 2018 5:19 PM in response to andreasnorling

Also how could I install a new copy of high sierra if the hard drive is failing.

How can you make the determination that the install was successful, if it doesn't startup?

what else can I do?

Buy an external hard drive, install macOS on it. Then see if you can use Setup Assistant to migrate your data from the internal drive to the new bootable external drive.

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Answer 4

Mar 25, 2018 5:50 PM in response to Lanny

Well doesnt the Disk Utility tell you if something is wrong? As well as give you some kind of warning messages while trying to use the hard drive to install an os on it?

however, my plan was to get a Mac mini so I’ll try to migrate my files. In the mean time, do you think it’s possible to still use my MacBook Pro if I have installed high sierra on the external hard Drive? Can I boot from the hard Drive? Would I need thunderbolt to do so?

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Answer 5

Mar 26, 2018 1:59 PM in response to andreasnorling

Update:

I tried using disc utility to make a new partition on my Macintosh HD harddrive, with about 64 gigabytes which is half of the space that I had empty. I closed out the disc utility to install high Sierra and selected the new partition I had just made. It took about 2 hours and I was able to now use my computer through this partition. For anyone who might end up having the same issue as me, I would suggest doing what I did and then from there you can find your other old partition in your finder on the left side. Right click on the icon and scroll down to change the settings and authorities, (read/write) to be able to access this partition. At the bottom you should also see a box with something like "ignore authorization on this volume" (I don't know what it exactly says, mine is in Swedish) but something along those lines. Make sure you mark that option. Click on the lock icon if you need to, and enter your username/password to have full access. You can now manually copy your files, before wiping your harddrive to reinstall or install from a time machine. Hope this will help someone else having the same problem as me. Good luck

It seemed like there was nothing wrong with my hard drive, but the Sierra that was installed causing some problem. It is still quite strange and I wonder why this happened. Does anyone have an idea?

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Answer 6

y_p_w

Level 6

17,654 points

Mar 26, 2018 2:57 PM in response to andreasnorling

Your symptoms are typical of a corrupted boot volume. Sometimes Disk Utility marks that as fixable while sometimes it says there's nothing wrong. In my case it would always shut down at the same point in the progress bar. For some it restarts or just hangs indefinitely.

If it's an older Mac with a SATA drive, I think a reasonable choice is to just replace the drive if the data on it is important. For most people it is more important than a hard drive that can be replaced for $50. The newer ones are trickier because they're more expensive or can't be replaced. Then once the new drive is in place the old drive can be accessed to try and recover data.

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MacBook Pro stuck at Apple logo startup

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