[SOLVED] MacBook Pro Boot Issue

[Mike McCall]

So, I do a little Mac support but have not seen this before. It starts to boot then black lettering appears before rebooting. Goes by too quick for me to catch it so I took a pic. It's a MacBook Pro 6.2



EDIT: I did try Disk Utility First Aid, but it didn't help. I suspect a bad HDD.

 

[DataMedics]

Could be a bad HDD or just a corrupt OS. DiskWarrior is likely to be your friend here. I'd give that a go and see what it finds.

 

[Mike McCall]

From the Disk Warrior License Agreement:

"This License allows you to install and use the Alsoft Software on any computer owned by you for the purpose of performing its functions on any disk owned by you."

They are very clear about this on their web site as well as their license agreement.

 

[Markverhyden]

That's a kernel panic. Could be any number of things. If you can't boot into recovery mode time to backup and try a nuke and pave. If you have a problem with the built in drive repeat on a USB drive.

 

[Mike McCall]

I can get to recovery mode, but not safe boot. Attempted to repair using Disk Utility First Aid, but no improvement. Can I reinstall the OS on a 32GB thumb drive and boot from it and get a look at the drive from there? I think Recovery will wipe personal apps & info. I need to speak with the client regarding any backups/personal info they may have anyway.

 

[DataMedics]

From the Disk Warrior License Agreement:

"This License allows you to install and use the Alsoft Software on any computer owned by you for the purpose of performing its functions on any disk owned by you."

They are very clear about this on their web site as well as their license agreement.

Given that they don't even sell a technician license of their product, I'm sure they assume repair techs are using the software on client drives. That's probably just a legal disclaimer to avoid liability if the software really botches up a filesystem with no backup and it was on a client's drive.

 

[Markverhyden]

By default an OS reinstall in recovery mode does not erase data. You need to erase or repartition the drive. Of course any service work should be preceeded by a known good backup.

That's a pretty old machine. Original drive? Probably toast. An SSD would be a great upgrade/repair.

 

[Mike McCall]

Given that they don't even sell a technician license of their product, I'm sure they assume repair techs are using the software on client drives. That's probably just a legal disclaimer to avoid liability if the software really botches up a filesystem with no backup and it was on a client's drive.

I'll respectfully disagree. The fact that they specifically state one must own the device/disk the software is installed on seems quite clear. Further, the complete paragraph from their Terms of Sale goes even further:

"You may install and/or run the software on only one computer at a time but you may install and/or run the software on any computer owned by you. To install and/or run the software on more than one computer at a time, you will need a separately purchased copy of the software for each of those computers."

So, if you own two Mac's you must purchase a separate copy for each device. Not what I call user friendly.

 

[Mike McCall]

By default an OS reinstall in recovery mode does not erase data. You need to erase or repartition the drive. Of course any service work should be preceeded by a known good backup.

That's a pretty old machine. Original drive? Probably toast. An SSD would be a great upgrade/repair.

I'll see if they have a backup of any sort (doubt it), and see what they want to do.

 

[DataMedics]

I wasn't suggesting you install disk warrior on the client computer. But, they include a bootable USB thumbdrive with it (which you own). Alternately you can remove the client drive and connect it to your own computer with it installed on your computer.

It's up to you what you want to do. I'm just suggesting it's a program that can likely fix your issue. Do what you want.

Image the data onto a drive you do own, run disk warrior, then clone it back after the file system is fixed up if it makes you feel better.

 

[cyabro]

In my experience those errors are caused by faulty RAM.

 

[Mike McCall]

In my experience those errors are caused by faulty RAM.

Alright, but why then would I be able to boot into recovery mode and run Disk Utility without issue, but not boot normally or even into safe mode?

 

[Mike McCall]

So, prior to contacting the client I pulled the drive to check its condition as I've not been able to accomplish that with the drive in the laptop. I attempted to run the Apple diagnostic, but it failed to load giving a 3403D error. Found this thread which seems to address the issue.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6852196?start=0&tstart=0

After testing the drive (Hitachi date code 2009) this is the result:

SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 16
Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds:
ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME FLAG VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE UPDATED WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate 0x000b 100 100 062 Pre-fail Always - 0
2 Throughput_Performance 0x0005 100 100 040 Pre-fail Offline - 0
3 Spin_Up_Time 0x0007 140 140 033 Pre-fail Always - 2
4 Start_Stop_Count 0x0012 090 090 000 Old_age Always - 16595
5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct 0x0033 100 100 005 Pre-fail Always - 0
7 Seek_Error_Rate 0x000b 100 100 067 Pre-fail Always - 0
8 Seek_Time_Performance 0x0005 100 100 040 Pre-fail Offline - 0
9 Power_On_Hours 0x0012 090 090 000 Old_age Always - 4517
10 Spin_Retry_Count 0x0013 100 100 060 Pre-fail Always - 0
12 Power_Cycle_Count 0x0032 099 099 000 Old_age Always - 2269
160 Unknown_Attribute 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0
191 G-Sense_Error_Rate 0x000a 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 1855425871872
192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 253449601047
193 Load_Cycle_Count 0x0012 052 052 000 Old_age Always - 488861
194 Temperature_Celsius 0x0002 250 250 000 Old_age Always - 22 (Min/Max 7/45)
195 Hardware_ECC_Recovered 0x000a 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0
196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0
197 Current_Pending_Sector 0x0022 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0
198 Offline_Uncorrectable 0x0008 100 100 000 Old_age Offline - 0
199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count 0x000a 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 0
223 Load_Retry_Count 0x000a 099 099 000 Old_age Always - 65536
254 Free_Fall_Sensor 0x0032 090 090 000 Old_age Always - 8589937341

Clearly the drive needs to be replaced, but I'm not sure it's the root cause. I won't suggest the client replace the drive unless I'm sure it's the problem. I'm conflicted because performing First Aid via Disk Utility has no effect, won't boot into safe mode but will into recovery mode. If It will properly display the screen in recovery mode it seems to rule out a GPU problem.

 

[Computer Bloke]

Clearly the drive needs to be replaced

Why? What is there in the SMART information that tells you this?

 

[Mike McCall]

What? What is there in the SMART information that tells you this?

There's nothing in the SMART information that demands the drive be replaced. I would suggest the client replace the 8-year old drive due to age alone, wouldn't you? Their choice, of course, but it's a solid recommendation. Nevertheless, my main concern is identifying the root cause of the problem as I said above.

 

[Computer Bloke]

There's nothing in the SMART information that demands the drive be replaced. I would suggest the client replace the 8-year old drive due to age alone, wouldn't you? Their choice, of course, but it's a solid recommendation. Nevertheless, my main concern is identifying the root cause of the problem as I said above.

Oh, OK - I thought I'd missed something!

Yes, assuming that there are no other problems and you have the machine stripped down anyway then it's sensible to pop a new SSD in there and the client will be justifiably thrilled. But you still haven't tracked down the cause of the original issue and you can't assume that it's caused by a faulty drive (because so far you haven't shown that the drive is faulty, just old), so supplying new components at random seems a bit premature.

What happened when you followed @cyabro's suggestion and replaced the RAM?

 

[Mike McCall]

What happened when you followed @cyabro's suggestion and replaced the RAM?

I don't have the proper tool (Tri-point Y1 Screwdriver) to pull the battery so haven't swapped the memory. Never needed the tool before this.

 

[Mike McCall]

Oh, OK - I thought I'd missed something!

Yes, assuming that there are no other problems and you have the machine stripped down anyway then it's sensible to pop a new SSD in there and the client will be justifiably thrilled. But you still haven't tracked down the cause of the original issue and you can't assume that it's caused by a faulty drive (because so far you haven't shown that the drive is faulty, just old), so supplying new components at random seems a bit premature.

What gave you the impression I was prematurely doing anything?

 

[GTP]

I don't have the proper tool (Tri-point Y1 Screwdriver) to pull the battery so haven't swapped the memory. Never needed the tool before this.

I don't have that tool either, but upon seeing this post it looks like a must have for MAC work, so I will endeavour to procure one! Pronto!

 

[Mike McCall]

I don't have that tool either, but upon seeing this post it looks like a must have for MAC work, so I will endeavour to procure one! Pronto!

Just ordered one myself.