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Beta 3 bricked my iMac?

bradley8795

bradley8795

macrumors regular
Original poster
Sep 19, 2013
163
68
Got a notification yesterday that Beta 3 was ready for install. And would be installed overnight. I had some work to do so I didn’t just immediately install it and decided to let it do it itself.

Woke up this morning and the iMac is unresponsive. I’m 99% sure it was still powered on when I sat down this morning but the screen was off. After messing with it for a few minutes I decided to do a reboot and see if that helped. Held the power button, then waited about 10 seconds and rebooted. Nothing. No chime. No screen flicker. Nothing. I can feel the fan running inside, but nothing displays.

I then tried to boot to recovery with both CMD+R and CMD+OPT+R. Same story. Nothing comes up on screen.

Then tried to reset the PRAM. Still nothing.

Reset SMC as well. Nothing there either.

Any ideas?

The iMac is a 2017 with a self upgraded 7700k if that makes any difference. Never had an issue before today.
 
Last edited:
Same thing here. My MBP turns itself off when I try to boot from anything. (Including recovery partition, internet recovery and external drives.) Not even target disk mode works.
 
Mk2 said:
Same thing here. Not even target disk mode works.
Click to expand...
I was able to get internet recovery up when I switched to a new keyboard. But it just stalled about 30 seconds in. Now I can’t get back to it.
 
Internet recovery starts, downloads the image, and powers itself down when it tries to boot from it.
 
Mk2 said:
Internet recovery starts, downloads the image, and powers itself down when it tries to boot from it.
Click to expand...
I can’t even get it to fully load. Have you tried Internet Recovery then restore from time machine backup? That’s what I’m hoping for.
 
Doesn’t work, it can’t boot from anything. Target disk mode thinks the volumes are encrypted which they are not.
 
Last edited:
Mk2 said:
Doesn’t work, it can’t boot from anything. Targed disk mode thinks the volumes are encrypted which they are not.
Click to expand...
Just spent an hour on the phone with Apple. The best they can tell me is to take it to an independent repair shop. Because all the Apple Stores are closed.

All the repair shops near me are booked for the next 2 weeks. So guess I’m SOL
 
can anyone share how old their Macs are that this is happening to? I'm downloading Beta 3 on my 2020 MBA and now I'm afraid I'll brick it.
 
As I’ve said, it doesn’t boot from external sources either. Not sure what I could have done except not installing.
 
I’ve created a bootable macOS Installer, but the whole MacBook powers down instantly as soon as I pick it from the boot menu.
 
chama98 said:
Are you using a USB keyboard? Do you take a video and see what it does? Is the fan working?
Click to expand...

Yes. Using USB keyboard. Yes the fan kicks on.

antisomnic said:
can anyone share how old their Macs are that this is happening to? I'm downloading Beta 3 on my 2020 MBA and now I'm afraid I'll brick it.
Click to expand...

Mine is a 2017 27” iMac

Bandaman said:
You guys should really make bootable clones of your working non-beta drives ... as well as having Time Machine backups ... before you start playing around with Betas. Or just don't play around with Betas.
Click to expand...

I have time machine backups. And a bootable clone. Target disk mode isn’t recognized. Recovery won’t load. And internet recovery is dead as well. Whatever the issue is no amount of backups is fixing it.
 
Last edited:
I have the same issue.
on a 2015 MBP.

i can get to the log in screen, but it crashes from there.
i will be watching this thread carefully, hoping someone may find a work around fix.
 
bradley8795 said:
Yes. Using USB keyboard. Yes the fan kicks on.



Mine is a 2017 27” iMac



I have time machine backups. And a bootable clone. Target disk mode isn’t recognized. Recovery won’t load. And internet recovery is dead as well. Whatever the issue is no amount of backups is fixing it.
Click to expand...
Maybe it borked your motherboard firmware or something.
 
Bandaman said:
You guys should really make bootable clones of your working non-beta drives ... as well as having Time Machine backups ... before you start playing around with Betas. Or just don't play around with Betas.
Click to expand...
Unfortunately, with T2 equipped Macs, it's not so easy.

The T2 chip has its own firmware (BridgeOS) which is updated with the beta but cannot be reverted. If something goes wrong with that, you're screwed.
 
TETENAL said:
Unfortunately, with T2 equipped Macs, it's not so easy.

The T2 chip has its own firmware (BridgeOS) which is updated with the beta but cannot be reverted. If something goes wrong with that, you're screwed.
Click to expand...
the poster imac 2017 like me which dont have t2 chip
 
Mk2 said:
I’ve created a bootable macOS Installer, but the whole MacBook powers down instantly as soon as I pick it from the boot menu.
Click to expand...
Just curious if you figured anything out yet? With no Apple Stores open and no appointments available at any authorized repair shops looks like this won’t be resolved for quite a while for me anyways.
 
I've taken it to an Apple authorized repair shop today. (there are no first-party Apple Stores in my country).
I'll post an update when they'll get back to me about it.
 
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bradley8795 said:
Got a notification yesterday that Beta 3 was ready for install. And would be installed overnight. I had some work to do so I didn’t just immediately install it and decided to let it do it itself.

Woke up this morning and the iMac is unresponsive. I’m 99% sure it was still powered on when I sat down this morning but the screen was off. After messing with it for a few minutes I decided to do a reboot and see if that helped. Held the power button, then waited about 10 seconds and rebooted. Nothing. No chime. No screen flicker. Nothing. I can feel the fan running inside, but nothing displays.

I then tried to boot to recovery with both CMD+R and CMD+OPT+R. Same story. Nothing comes up on screen.

Then tried to reset the PRAM. Still nothing.

Reset SMC as well. Nothing there either.

Any ideas?

The iMac is a 2017 with a self upgraded 7700k if that makes any difference. Never had an issue before today.
Click to expand...
Had the issue, I unplugged USB devices from mine and it loads fine. Plug them back in after I log in.
 
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