Bricked My Laptop

[groovyd]

Woke up this morning to the 'updates ready to be installed' for the latest public beta... clicked to update and it rebooted into a brick. 75% of the progress bar, beach ball spinning forever. Tried every option, cmd+s, opt whatever, shift, safe mode, internet restore, restore from time machine backup, nothing worked. Ended up the entire day down at the Apple store trying to get them to re-image with 10.10. At first they wouldn't do anything to help me as soon as they found out I was using El Cap but eventually they did the deed and set me back a generation forcing me to re-install El Cap beta just to get my latest backup off time machine. What a mess, not at all what i was hoping to do all day.

Anyone else have issues with this latest public beta?

 

[fisherking]

might want to backup, then check out your hard drive...certainly not a typical experience. which mac/how old is the drive?

 

[jbarley]

Nor exactly "Bricked", bricking is something that cannot be recovered from, in other-words, gone forever!

 

[groovyd]

I know what bricked is but for all intents and purposes it was bricked for me, meaning none of the normal user recovery options did anything. It had to be entirely reset by Apple.

I think I found the issue. Having eventually worked my way back to where I was before the problem I was careful to backup everything and have an installation flash on hand just incase and tried the public beta 6 upgrade again and the same thing happened. This is with the Apple imaged Yosemite and the App Store Public Beta pre-6 back in place. Gave it a good long wait to see that it would go no further and the beachball was spinning and this time I simply disconnected my main display LED Cinema display and it presented me with a login screen. Logged in and it finished the install a few minutes later. Plugged the display back in and it recognized it and assigned it as my main display as usual. Leaving it plugged in I did a restart and once again I got the same never ending beachball. Again without my cinema display and it logged in no problems and reconnected it.

So what it appears like is this latest version no longer boots while my main display is plugged in. This display has absolutely nothing wrong with it and never had any problems like this as long as I have owned it. It is the 27" LED Cinema display with the display port connector, not the newer one with thunderbolt. Looks like they are messing with the graphics/display drivers and may have mangled up something during boot which can't handle this display anymore. It does work fine as long as I unplug it during boot and then plug it in.

Really hope they fix this driver issue before final release. This was not a fun bug to discover whatsoever and I believe the bricking was caused by rebooting the laptop during the beachball spinning where it wasn't quite finished with the installation yet and thereafter it could not recover. Had I just unplugged my main display the first time it might have let me login the same and finished without incident.

 

[dhlizard]

Nor exactly "Bricked", bricking is something that cannot be recovered from, in other-words, gone forever!

Agreed - electronics that are "bricked" cannot be restored or recovered - all it did was lock up your laptop !

/drama

 

[groovyd]

Bricked electronics can always be restored or recovered, just not by the user.

 

[mikecwest]

Bricked electronics can always be restored or recovered, just not by the user.

I wouldn't say always....Maybe sometimes.

 

[groovyd]

As an embedded developer I have never seen any bricked hardware the designer couldn't restore that wasn't physically damaged in the process.

 

[mikecwest]

As an embedded developer I have never seen any bricked hardware the designer couldn't restore that wasn't physically damaged in the process.

That may be correct, I wouldn't know for sure, because I am not a software or hardware designer. I do know its not likely that a MacBook Pro could be "bricked," the only way I can think of, would be if you removed power in the middle of a firmware update. If you have just a bad/corrupt/incomplete install of OS X, you can, in most cases boot from another device. That would not be brick.

I think if a device was truly "bricked" the geniuses at the apple store would not be able to handle it. They will most likely try to "fix" it in the same ways that you or I would. (Boot from external drive, try tools like Disk Warrior, or worst case scenario, format and reinstall.)

 

[crjackson2134]

The device wasn't bricked, the OS boot sequence was borked. Yes, there is a difference in the end.

The title of this thread goes to a panicked state of mind and would lend itself to scaring off potential upgraders.

It would show kindness and responsibility on the part of the OP if he were to change the title to something that doesn't lead someone to believe the laptop was ruined by an OS install.

 

[groovyd]

but it was ruined... the device was bricked... they had to use a special cable and apple only software to reload it.

 

[matreya]

The most recent Public Beta of El Capitan had a firmware update included... perhaps that 'bricked' the Mac?

 

[perezr10]

No issues for me.

 

[nontroppo]

groovyd: did you report this, sounds if you have a clear repro steps and otherwise Apple will know nothing about this...

 

[cjmillsnun]

but it was ruined... the device was bricked... they had to use a special cable and apple only software to reload it.

I suspect I could've restored that Mac without any of that. I would've needed an internet connection (wired or wireless) and nothing more.

 

[groovyd]

I suspect you couldn't have as I tried that. Internet recovery wouldn't even open.

 

[thirdeyeopen666]

but it was ruined... the device was bricked... they had to use a special cable and apple only software to reload it.

Sounds like you had a Genius with an overactive imagination. There's no special cable.

 

[groovyd]

lol

 

[dontpannic]

I've not logged in here for a while but I had to log in when reading this just to say that I dearly wish people would stop mis-using the term 'bricked'.

The term is used on consoles/tablets/mobile phones where the software has been deliberately messed around with and as a result of this the device cannot be used for anything, turning them, metaphorically speaking (given the shape of tablets and phones), into a brick. It's used when your cock up is so bad that 9 times out of 10, the device is permanently unusable.

A laptop that won't boot is a laptop that won't boot. It is not a brick. Unless you attempted to flash your BIOS and cocked it up, it's recoverable, notwithstanding the fact that as a laptop, it doesn't resemble a brick.

 

[mikecwest]

I've not logged in here for a while but I had to log in when reading this just to say that I dearly wish people would stop mis-using the term 'bricked'.

The term is used on consoles/tablets/mobile phones where the software has been deliberately messed around with and as a result of this the device cannot be used for anything, turning them, metaphorically speaking (given the shape of tablets and phones), into a brick. It's used when your cock up is so bad that 9 times out of 10, the device is permanently unusable.

A laptop that won't boot is a laptop that won't boot. It is not a brick. Unless you attempted to flash your BIOS and cocked it up, it's recoverable, notwithstanding the fact that as a laptop, it doesn't resemble a brick.

The OP states that Apple used a "special cable" and "Apple only" software to fix this... I have never hear anything like this before. Other posters state that a "brick" can always be recovered by the hardware designer. I do believe that there may be "someone", who is involved in hardware development that can fix a brick.

I also think that the term "brick" is very often misused. To me a "brick" is a device that is damaged beyond user or "in store" repairs, that require physical hardware replacement. (replace motherboard, etc..) I stand by my belief that the only was to possible "brick" a macbook pro would be to remove power during a firmware update.

 

[cjmillsnun]

lol

He's right, there is no special lead. I'm guessing it's an Ethernet connection, perhaps through a thunderbolt adapter.

The only special software that would be in an Apple store is Apple Service Diagnostics. None of which would make a non booting system boot.

I'm guessing he booted from the network (they have various versions of OS X available) and installed

 

[mikecwest]

He's right, there is no special lead. I'm guessing it's an Ethernet connection, perhaps through a thunderbolt adapter.

The only special software that would be in an Apple store is Apple Service Diagnostics. None of which would make a non booting system boot.

I'm guessing he booted from the network (they have various versions of OS X available) and installed

Yes, I noticed that when I was at the apple store, and rebooted while holding option key, it showed like 20 yellow drives (network drives)....They were numbered and not named, I assume that they were all network installs of various forms of OS X, possibly for iMac, MacPro, etc...so they can install with the preinstalled software easily. I was only there to "borrow" their charger for a bit. ( I had forgotten my charger 400 miles away.)

 

[groovyd]

I have a thunderbolt to ethernet adapter and functional network at home and it wasn't able to do what they did. Holding option didn't bring up anything and internet recovery did nothing, wired or wireless. Call it whatever you want but there was simply no way possible for a user to restore this device. To me that is a brick.

 

[matreya]

I have a thunderbolt to ethernet adapter and functional network at home and it wasn't able to do what they did. Holding option didn't bring up anything and internet recovery did nothing, wired or wireless. Call it whatever you want but there was simply no way possible for a user to restore this device. To me that is a brick.

Next time you might consider having a secondary bootable OS X drive on hand, even a USB stick, just in case

 

[groovyd]

didn't help