Help-Sierra not starting

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Help-Sierra not starting

Hello, I am having a serious issue with my laptop As it won’t start. I hear the chime but nothing happens afterwards. the screen is dimly lit, but will not advance. I have tried to boot in single mode, reset PRAM and SMC with nothing that goes much further past the chime. Also tried to use the startup manager and even that doesn’t come on. Here is where it gets bizarre though. I tried to start in safe mode and it worked. But since my I got pulled to run an errand, I shut down, and when I can back safe mode no longer will work. Anyone have ideas how I can access this laptop short of a visit to the Apple store?

Mac mini, OS X Server

Posted on Jul 4, 2018 12:35 PM

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Answer 1

Best reply

Patrick Abuzeni Author

Level 4

2,703 points

Jul 6, 2018 11:29 AM in response to Patrick Abuzeni

Quick update:

If you recall every prior attempt failed. During my several rescue attempts, I succeeded once to bring up the system in Safe mode, but then died again when I re-opened the lid. The whole time I suspected my screen but couldn't imagine what would cause it to go all dark like that and did not have a thunderbolt to HDMI adapter to test on another screen. In any case, I took the laptop over to a local repair shop and there we managed to bring up the laptop on an auxiliary screen, but barely. Opened up the case, cleaned it up (found a dead bug in there), unplugged and re-plugged the screen (after unplugging/plugging battery) and viola problem solved.

I can't be too sure what caused this. perhaps the dirt and the dead bug, or perhaps something jarred the laptop while in my bag as I was traveling the day before. Either way and thankfully it was a simple fix.

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Answer 2

Jul 4, 2018 3:43 PM in response to Old Toad

I’ve tried both booting to the recovery volume and a usb attached bootable volume. (Don’t have a dvd drive). That’s what is so weird. I’m stuck right before anything can happen. Nothing even happens when I tried target mode either.

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Answer 3

Eric Root

Level 10

684,045 points

Jul 4, 2018 7:30 PM in response to Patrick Abuzeni

If you are only concerned with accessing the hard drive, you can remove it from the computer, and get a USB or Firewire hard drive enclosure that would enable you to mount/access the drive on another computer.

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Answer 4

Old Toad

Level 10

207,619 points

Jul 4, 2018 1:01 PM in response to Patrick Abuzeni

Have you tried booting into the Recovery volume (boot with the Command + R keys held down)? If you can you can try to run First Aid on the drive or reinstall the system.

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Answer 5

Jul 4, 2018 12:39 PM in response to Patrick Abuzeni

Have you tried booting from the install DVD?

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Answer 6

Eric Root

Level 10

684,045 points

Jul 4, 2018 5:29 PM in response to Patrick Abuzeni

If you can't boot from a USB attached bootable drive, then you need to take the computer in for testing/repair. Something is wrong with the computer besides your hard drive.

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Answer 7

Jul 4, 2018 6:23 PM in response to Eric Root

I figured that much. I was hoping that there might be some “off-label” help out there somewhere. I was hoping to find out if there was some way to access the drive besides all the known ones.

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Help-Sierra not starting

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