My mom has a MacBook Pro (13-inch, 2019, Four Thunderbolt 3 ports) that has a broken screen and boot up issues, so I'm trying to diagnose it to see if it is repairable or truly toast.
Upon startup, the system will simply chime, then a few seconds later shut down, and then chime again, in an endless loop. As the screen is completely broken and doesn't display anything, I have managed to dock it to an external display, keyboard, and mouse and use it in clamshell mode as soon as I start it up and close the lid. An Apple logo appears, and I've tried safe mode...but no dice, just reboots. I've tried recovery (Command-R)...no dice, never loads, just reboots. I can get to the boot selector screen by holding down the Option key, and even when plugging in external boot drives that I know work fine with other systems, selecting them only causes the system to restart yet again. I've even tried to hold down D to bring up diagnostics, and it asks me to find a wifi network and enter a password, but even though that brings up Internet Recovery and says that this will take a while, the system will reboot only a few seconds later having accomplished nothing. I've reset PRAM/VRAM and the SMC, but nothing has worked to get it to boot to anything.
I've tried connecting it to my M1 Air with a Thunderbolt cable and restart it in Target Disk mode; that works, sort of...I get my Air to recognize the Pro's drive, but when it prompts with "Enter a password to unlock the disk “Macintosh HD - Data”," it won't recognize any administrative password that I throw at it (that my mom is sure would be the password, and matches the hint as well).
As such, I have no way to access the drive or get the system to boot into any sort of repair or restore setup. Before I throw up my arms and bring it to the Apple Store (it's of course out of warranty, but I was hoping I could at least order my own replacement screen if the system was otherwise operational), I thought I'd ask here to see if anyone had any other strategies I can try to get this thing to recognize any sort of boot partition or disk.
Any ideas?
Upon startup, the system will simply chime, then a few seconds later shut down, and then chime again, in an endless loop. As the screen is completely broken and doesn't display anything, I have managed to dock it to an external display, keyboard, and mouse and use it in clamshell mode as soon as I start it up and close the lid. An Apple logo appears, and I've tried safe mode...but no dice, just reboots. I've tried recovery (Command-R)...no dice, never loads, just reboots. I can get to the boot selector screen by holding down the Option key, and even when plugging in external boot drives that I know work fine with other systems, selecting them only causes the system to restart yet again. I've even tried to hold down D to bring up diagnostics, and it asks me to find a wifi network and enter a password, but even though that brings up Internet Recovery and says that this will take a while, the system will reboot only a few seconds later having accomplished nothing. I've reset PRAM/VRAM and the SMC, but nothing has worked to get it to boot to anything.
I've tried connecting it to my M1 Air with a Thunderbolt cable and restart it in Target Disk mode; that works, sort of...I get my Air to recognize the Pro's drive, but when it prompts with "Enter a password to unlock the disk “Macintosh HD - Data”," it won't recognize any administrative password that I throw at it (that my mom is sure would be the password, and matches the hint as well).
As such, I have no way to access the drive or get the system to boot into any sort of repair or restore setup. Before I throw up my arms and bring it to the Apple Store (it's of course out of warranty, but I was hoping I could at least order my own replacement screen if the system was otherwise operational), I thought I'd ask here to see if anyone had any other strategies I can try to get this thing to recognize any sort of boot partition or disk.
Any ideas?
Last edited:
