Major Problems; is it MP 5,1 or High Sierra?

[Josiana]

I've had nothing but problems with High Sierra, and I'm not sure if it's a hardware or a OS problem. I've not used the OS för nearly a year because of all of the issues I've had with it, but I thought I'd give it a go because of seeing the link speed for Sapphire Mac ATI HD7970 being upgraded to 5GT/s from 2,5 in an update (10.13.6).

Problems I've had with HS:

• Boot loop with AFPS bios update for SSD. I wound up installing HS on a 7200rpm hd instead because of this
• Graphical artifacts with 7970. The login screen has multiple artifacts, and during the 10.13.6 update no progress bar just a screen of artifacts. Artifacts have been an ongoing problem for me in HS
• iCloud login loop. Every few minutes it asks me to sign in again. I've tried signing out of iCloud, restarting, and signing in again, but...
• The OS seems frozen in time? After the update, every login is met with "setting up your Mac". iCloud remains logged in, any changes I've made in my last session revert (including the dock)
• Extremely slow performance.. both on processes and network speed
• Apps won't launch. Chrome refuses to open
• I've just tried restarting the system again to hopefully rid of the bloody iCloud login loop, and the display has stopped working
• Since updating to HS, I no longer have display on boot. The display only pops up on login

I've had absolutely no problems on my SSD running Mavericks.

I'm at a bit of a loss on what could possibly be wrong and what to do. Is my graphics card going? Is Mojave obligatory for an ATI Rx580? Is it my hd? SMART tests are passing. Do I need to revert to Sierra?

 

[Alex Sanders74]

Did you do a clean install of High Sierra on the platter HD? If you migrated data from the previous to the new, problems may have migrated as well. Based on your diagnosis, I'd guess it was a clean OS install but it would be good to know.

Did you try an SMC reset and a PRAM clear and see if the problems persist. Perhaps the battery on the board needs replacing.

Are your firmware updates current?

Is your 7970 a PC card or a Mac Edition? This might explain the black screen on boot if it's a PC card. If it worked on boot previously, this doesn't make a lot of sense.

 

[Josiana]

Did you do a clean install of High Sierra on the platter HD? If you migrated data from the previous to the new, problems may have migrated as well. Based on your diagnosis, I'd guess it was a clean OS install but it would be good to know.

Did you try an SMC reset and a PRAM clear and see if the problems persist. Perhaps the battery on the board needs replacing.

Are your firmware updates current?

Is your 7970 a PC card or a Mac Edition? This might explain the black screen on boot if it's a PC card. If it worked on boot previously, this doesn't make a lot of sense.

Thank you for the response! It was a clean install, so that's why I'm thoroughly confused. I've read there were others with all of these problems, but it's odd I seem to have all of them. And apparently there's a number of complaints with the 10.13.6 update getting stuck in a install loop as well. I just find all of this odd. I've never had these problems on Mac before.

The 7970 is a "Mac Edition", and I've had no trouble with the boot selector, or restore tools, in the past.

I've not tried a SMC reset, or a PRAM clear. I suppose I should have tried that already, but forgot it was a thing. And I've never replaced the battery. Thank you for the suggestion!

 

[Alex Sanders74]

I hope that helps. If the computer will boot to the desktop, I would take note of what the boot ROM version is as well. One of the wizards on the forum may be able to help with more info based on that. Especially if the problems persist.

 

[bsbeamer]

If you've never replaced the battery on MP5,1 it would be a good idea to do so. Reports they last 5-7 years maximum, which is basically beyond the range for machines purchased in 2012 or prior. (Likely not related to this issue, but easy troubleshoot to cross off.)

 

[TheIguana]

It sounds like this could be a few things.

1) Graphical glitches may be indicative of a faulty graphics card (the other symptoms fall in line with that). Do you have another graphics card that you can test with the Mac?

2) You may have corruption in your bootrom. Issues with iCloud can be related to this as it relies on certain values in there for hardware verification. Did you have Windows installed on this Mac before?

You can try dumping and doing a rudimentary analysis of the bootrom looking for extra certificates per: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/mp5-1-bootrom-thread-140-0-0-0-0.2132317/page-100#post-26839178

If you do have bootrom corruption the expert on repairing it is tsialex, it is not the kind of repair you can do by yourself.

 

[Josiana]

Sorry for the delayed response!
I have replaced the battery, reset the SMC, and cleared the PRAM. It seems to be working just fine now.

Current bootrom is MP51.0085.B00. I'll likely be holding off on bothering with HS until I get a new ATI RX580.