Macbook Pro Problem - help needed

It should be possible to have the Mac show detailed boot messages by pressing and holding command-v during boot. Perhaps the messages can tell you where it hangs? 

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201573

What Apple Year is the MacBook Pro; eg Late 2011?

KR, J

Hi Richard,

Not sure if booting into recovery HD partition aplies to OS High Sierra as its APFS - hold down Command & R as it attempts to boot & you will get a limited number of tools, you can repair disc permissions.

Once you get sorted I recomend a copy of Carbon Copy Cloner which makes an exact copy of your Mac, hidden partitions aswell.

Bon chance

Or indeed;

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204904

which will help with;

Command (⌘)-R
Install the latest macOS that was installed on your Mac, without upgrading to a later version.*

Option-Command-R
Upgrade to the latest macOS that is compatible with your Mac.**

Shift-Option-Command-R
Requires macOS Sierra 10.12.4 or later Install the macOS that came with your Mac, or the version closes

If it’s an SSD Mac, ie recent, it may be a problem with the SSD itself, booting from a usb copy of High Sierra might allow you to recover some/all of your files but given the recent OS changes, I would guess the OS should match.

As others have said, best of luck!

KR, J

Does this describe your problem?

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/8158292

If so, it sounds like a tough problem affecting many users. Some users seem to have had to reinstall the OS. One user (Jan 19 2018 11:37) managed to repair the disk with First Aid using a second computer and then booting from USB stick. Nina R on the same page suggests yet another solution.

And I will check the backup of my High Sierra Mac Mini tonight...

JFritzen,

yes, that thread opening post describes exactly the same issue I am having. The recovery dialog just tells me it's getting" too many corpses", whatever that means. I was having to use the hotel's open (and probably rather insecure) network to do work, so i do wonder whether it has let in something malicious.

My Macbook Pro is a 2014/15 model, 500GB HDD. I will try the option command R and see what happens...

If you do succeed in getting restarted, the recommendation to run Malwarebytes (malwarebytes.com) is worth following up.......

Regularly finds professional malware other miss.

KR, J

Richard Dane posted:

JFritzen,

yes, that thread opening post describes exactly the same issue I am having. The recovery dialog just tells me it's getting" too many corpses", whatever that means. I was having to use the hotel's open (and probably rather insecure) network to do work, so i do wonder whether it has let in something malicious.

I've not had problems with malware affecting Macs so far (knocking on wood). I'd rather guess it's the fault of a buggy High Sierra installer or something like that.

From the security point, once recovered check the firewall is turned on under system settings, security & privacy. Something I consider essential to run in a web browser these days is NoScript, it controls Javascript and stops all manner of malware. Whilst Malwarebytes is good, I use Sophos Home on  my Mac, most 'home' programs are crap but Sophos is rather good.

Richard, check out this link (https://discussions.apple.com/thread/8132544) from the Apple Support, someone has exactly the same issue and he managed to fix.

Richard,

all the replies you had are variably spot on. The 'too many corpses' thing is suspicious. Keep in mind that now HighSierra is susceptible to viruses. Once per year I save my files on a USB pen (I have little stuff on my 2011 MacBookPro) and format it from scratch, using the various cmd-R booting system, re-installing OS and everything.

It is not risky nor difficult. The Carbon Copy Cloner is a good suggestion. It's what I used when I substituted an SSD for my HD (I did it myself!) and now I use the original HD as backup and crisis-boot tool.

Best wishes, you'll sort it. P.S. I don't think HighSierra has bugs, but it has been updated a couple of times lately due to malware of some sort.

Max

Thanks everybody.  A quick update.  I backed up the disc via Recovery mode.  I then applied the Time machine backup that I had made just prior to the upgrade to High Sierra. This worked fine and the MBP is now back up and running normally.  I should now be able to take any more recent files from the recent backup disc.

Of course, it does now leave me in a quandary - I'm back on Mavericks but I want to upgrade the OS so I can run Malwarebytes etc.. but it looks like I'm only being offered High Sierra.  Is there a way to only upgrade to Sierra? Or is it safe to go for High Sierra again?

Apparently you cannot upgrade to Sierra anymore, unless you had the Sierra installer downloaded before High Sierra was launched: 

https://forums.macrumors.com/t...high-sierra.2073277/

I guess, now that you know the recovery procedure, you could give High Sierra another try, perhaps with another backup to another disk immediately after the High Sierra installation, so that in case of trouble you could reinstall High Sierra and keep your files. But I'd keep the Mavericks TM backup for the worst case.

So, I have bitten the bullet and done the High Sierra upgrade again.  So far so good...  If it remains stable for a day or two I will do another TM backup as is and then cross my fingers all remains well. I really hope that Apple can fix whatever it is that causes this problem.

And all this futzing about with the MBP has had me wondering whether I should go further and upgrade to a SSD drive like a Samsung 850 or similar...

Take a look at the Crucial website and run the survey program that will tell you what upgrades will work.

I have used the Crucial SSDs in a MacBook Pro and a Mac Pro and their memory upgrades in both types of machines.  I use an external drive (which is an SSD to clone my main drive to so that I can boot from the external drive - why use an SSD in the external drive, once you get used to the speed of the SSD you do not want to be booting a machine from a spinning disk - it is so slow.

Richard Dane posted:

So, I have bitten the bullet and done the High Sierra upgrade again.  So far so good...  If it remains stable for a day or two I will do another TM backup as is and then cross my fingers all remains well. I really hope that Apple can fix whatever it is that causes this problem.

And all this futzing about with the MBP has had me wondering whether I should go further and upgrade to a SSD drive like a Samsung 850 or similar...

I used SuperDuper about a year ago to clone my spinning drive to a Crucial SSD.

Swapping was easy to do, and it has worked perfectly for my 2013 MBP. 

Hook posted:

Richard Dane posted:

So, I have bitten the bullet and done the High Sierra upgrade again.  So far so good...  If it remains stable for a day or two I will do another TM backup as is and then cross my fingers all remains well. I really hope that Apple can fix whatever it is that causes this problem.

And all this futzing about with the MBP has had me wondering whether I should go further and upgrade to a SSD drive like a Samsung 850 or similar...

I used SuperDuper about a year ago to clone my spinning drive to a Crucial SSD.

Swapping was easy to do, and it has worked perfectly for my 2013 MBP. 

+1 for that

An update: On fellow forum members recommendation (see above) and assurances from some of you in person last week that even an idiot can do it without problems (thanks), I've just upgraded my 2013 model MacBook Pro with a Crucial SSD and some bigger RAM.  Almost all has gone without a hitch; the time machine back-up reloaded and it's now really flying.  The SSD upgrade is strongly recommended so far.

However, I say "almost" because one little glitch has arisen, and it's an annoying one; On opening up a Word document to edit, MS now says I need to validate my product (again).  I entered the product code and it says I've used it too many times (?!).  A very long and rather frustrating call to MS support and I'm told that MS Office 2013 is obsolete and they can't help me. Which has left me somewhat peeved.  I only really use Word and not that often, but it's useful, if not indispensable.  And now it seems they would like me to buy it all over again.  Hmmm.. sounds familiar. Harrumph!

Richard Dane posted:

An update: On fellow forum members recommendation (see above) and assurances from some of you in person last week that even an idiot can do it without problems (thanks), I've just upgraded my 2013 model MacBook Pro with a Crucial SSD and some bigger RAM.  Almost all has gone without a hitch; the time machine back-up reloaded and it's now really flying.  The SSD upgrade is strongly recommended so far.

However, I say "almost" because one little glitch has arisen, and it's an annoying one; On opening up a Word document to edit, MS now says I need to validate my product (again).  I entered the product code and it says I've used it too many times (?!).  A very long and rather frustrating call to MS support and I'm told that MS Office 2013 is obsolete and they can't help me. Which has left me somewhat peeved.  I only really use Word and not that often, but it's useful, if not indispensable.  And now it seems they would like me to buy it all over again.  Hmmm.. sounds familiar. Harrumph!

Hi Richard,

Of course, the current versions of MS Office are available as a download, but incur an annual subscription .......Harrumph indeed!

There is, I believe, other free word processing software out there, which will allow you to create new documents, and open existing MS Word documents, both of which will be openable and editable.

I'm still using an old 3 licence version of Office, which has thus far seen action across four different MacBooks, so I guess I just got lucky. 

I will try calling them again in the morning.  I found it very hard to understand what the support people were saying - and probably vice versa! - so maybe that was the problem.  I tried calling back but then just got stuck on hold for almost half an hour. It may well just be easier and less time-wasting to make a trip to PC World in order to buy an updated Office 2016...

Buy a license and a download online. That´s much cheaper. I´ve seen Office 2016 for mac for around euro 60. A full license, no yearly one. And yes, this is legal.

How unfortunate I can´t post links to other commercial companies here

Post on my wall if you need a link / you know my email anyhow.

Richard, I was in charge of an IT Dept in a past life!  I will NOT use pirated or faked serial numbers or hacked programs. However, what I do is this: if you go onto a well known auction site, you can find a number of different versions for "Microsoft Office 2016 Mac". Organise your page into 'Lowest price inc p&p' and select UK only.

You can find one for a few quid. Seriously, between £2 and £10.

Ignore any which refer to you paying a 1 year subscription. Avoid Academic copies.

You either want 'Microsoft Office for Mac 2016'   OR  'Microsoft Office Home & Business LIFETIME 365' in the descriptions.

What you are usually buying is a SERIAL CODE only. The seller will send you a link to the MS download page. I have done this for seven people in our extended family who all use Macbooks or iMacs, and it has never failed.

The sellers are usually technicians or retailers who have spare serial official MS numbers.

PM me if you want more advice.

Richard , if you have High Sierra try using Apple Pages and or Numbers since changing to all Apple devices last year I have sent all my documents to Apple pages.

Richard Dane posted:

However, I say "almost" because one little glitch has arisen, and it's an annoying one; On opening up a Word document to edit, MS now says I need to validate my product (again).  I entered the product code and it says I've used it too many times (?!).  A very long and rather frustrating call to MS support and I'm told that MS Office 2013 is obsolete and they can't help me. Which has left me somewhat peeved.  I only really use Word and not that often, but it's useful, if not indispensable.  And now it seems they would like me to buy it all over again.  Hmmm.. sounds familiar. Harrumph!

Hi Richard,

I bought a copy of Office for OSX 2011, shortly after it was released. When I bought a new MacBook Pro (2014 version with SSD) I loaded the same version of Office onto it, and it still works perfectly well today, running on High Sierra 10.13.4. So you cannot possibly have a compatibility issue, or I would surely have a much worse one?

My guess is that they are chasing the holy grail of the monthly subscription, which must surely be far more profitable for them than a one-off purchase, and I'm guessing that the support guy is following a script designed to push you onto the subscription model, so that they can charge you every month for a produce that you may rarely use. Call me a cynical old git, but (in case you couldn't tell!) I really hate those monthly subscriptions. 

Good luck!

Richard Dane posted:

An update: On fellow forum members recommendation (see above) and assurances from some of you in person last week that even an idiot can do it without problems (thanks), I've just upgraded my 2013 model MacBook Pro with a Crucial SSD and some bigger RAM.  Almost all has gone without a hitch; the time machine back-up reloaded and it's now really flying.  The SSD upgrade is strongly recommended so far.

However, I say "almost" because one little glitch has arisen, and it's an annoying one; On opening up a Word document to edit, MS now says I need to validate my product (again).  I entered the product code and it says I've used it too many times (?!).  A very long and rather frustrating call to MS support and I'm told that MS Office 2013 is obsolete and they can't help me. Which has left me somewhat peeved.  I only really use Word and not that often, but it's useful, if not indispensable.  And now it seems they would like me to buy it all over again.  Hmmm.. sounds familiar. Harrumph!

5 year lifespan, courtesy Tyrell Corp..