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Startup Manager wont show up after holding ALT key

Hi Apple,

I have macbook pro retina late 2013.

Recently I tried to access the startup manager at bootup by holding ALT key after the chime sound but it will directly go to OS without showing the startup manager or boot options.


I've looked around the questions mentioned here and I checked system info and the following are the ROM and SMC versions:


Model: MacBookPro11,3

Boot ROM: 151.0.0.0.0

SMC Version: 2.19f12


The ALT key works properly in the MacOS (Majove currently installed)


I remember the startup manger used to work earlier when I hold the ALT key after powering the laptop on.


I have MacOS Majove on MacHD partition and BootCamp windows 10 on the other partition.


Let me know if you have any ideas that would direct me in the right direction.


Kindly..

Ali

MacBook Pro 15", macOS 10.14

Posted on May 13, 2019 8:26 AM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on May 13, 2019 10:15 AM

You may need to do a disk repair.

Open DiskUtility in macOS.

In the upper left hand corner of the DiskUtility window, click the icon

and make sure to select "Show Devices".

Select the actual disk drive (not any volumes underneath) and select Disk First Aid

and let it repair disk.


See if that now brings back the boot manager.


If not, try running a PRAM reset (Reset NVRAM or PRAM on your Mac - Apple Support).

This does several things in terms of reloading boot time items, hardware and firmware.



Similar questions

10 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

May 13, 2019 10:15 AM in response to ahawwa2

You may need to do a disk repair.

Open DiskUtility in macOS.

In the upper left hand corner of the DiskUtility window, click the icon

and make sure to select "Show Devices".

Select the actual disk drive (not any volumes underneath) and select Disk First Aid

and let it repair disk.


See if that now brings back the boot manager.


If not, try running a PRAM reset (Reset NVRAM or PRAM on your Mac - Apple Support).

This does several things in terms of reloading boot time items, hardware and firmware.



May 18, 2019 11:54 PM in response to ahawwa2

FYI, a PRAM reset wipes out the nvram where the pointer to the bootloader resides. Sometimes performing a single PRAM reset is not enough and you need to hold the PRAM reset for a full minute. If you look closely at the laptop's display you should see the backlight come on changing the pure black screen to a slightly lighter black just for an instant. It helps to see the effect if the room is darker. If you don't see the backlight flicker on for an instant about every 20 seconds, then the PRAM reset is not being activated. If the PRAM reset worked, then the laptop will search out and boot from the first viable bootable volume it finds whether internal or external.


Connect a USB stick (or drive) to your other Mac and Erase it, making sure to select "GUID partition" and HFS+ (Journaled). Use Disk Utility or Apple System Profiler to get the Apple identifier for the external drive which should be in the form of "disk1" or "disk2". In my example later, I will use "diskN" for the example template, but you will substitute the correct number for your USB stick/drive in the place of the "N".


We will use the Terminal app to run the rEFInd installer script with the "--usedefault /<path-to-external-SSD-EFI>/" so the rEFInd bootloader gets installed to the external USB drive's EFI partition using a generic form of the bootloader which should allow the Mac to boot. Plus this should not affect the host Mac's nvram settings.


In the Terminal, type "sudo " (without the quotes) followed by dragging the rEFInd installer script (called "refind-install") to the Terminal so it auto fills the path to the script. Then continue typing " --usedefault /dev/diskNs1". Then press Return to execute the command which will prompt you for your user password. Here is an example template of the command:

sudo  <path-to-refind-installer>/refind-install   --usedefault  /dev/diskNs1


If your external USB stick or drive is "disk2" and the location of the rEFInd installer is at "~/Downloads/refind-bin-0.11.4/refind-install", then the command would translate to:

sudo  ~/Downloads/refind-bin-0.11.4/refind-install   --usedefault  /dev/disk2s1

FYI, the "s1" is usually the hidden EFI partition on a bootable Mac drive.


You should make sure to have good verified working backups of your second computer just in case something goes wrong. Unmount the USB stick/drive and connect it to the original laptop to see if it will boot. This will only work if you were getting the blinking folder with question mark before. Give it time to search for bootable volumes as it can take a while. Download the rEFInd binary zip installer from the link on this page. If macOS doesn't automatically unzip the file, then just double-click on it.


If the rEFInd USB drive works, copy or re-download the rEFInd binary zip installer file to this "broken" Mac and run the installer normally as described here so your "broken" laptop will automatically boot rEFInd and be properly configured for that particular laptop. Make sure to remove the rEFInd USB stick/drive before running the rEFInd installer so the USB stick/drive doesn't interfere with the permanent rEFInd installation. The rEFInd bootable USB drive we made was just a generic rescue disk.


If none of the above works and if you haven't done so already, I think you need to completely erase the SSD and start over. To completely erase the SSD, you need to select the physical drive in the left pane of Disk Utility. If the physical drive does not appear, then you need to click on the "View" drop down list just above the left pane and select "Show all devices". Make sure Disk Utility uses the GUID partition and select HFS+ (Journaled).


If you have need files from the original Mojave install, then use your enclosure to connect the SSD to another Mac running HS or Mojave. I've seen someone mention that Paragon may have a Windows APFS drive, but it is not free.


Please let us know how you make out with all of this and Good Luck.


May 17, 2019 6:10 PM in response to ahawwa2

Have you tried an SMC reset? Is your SSD partitioned as GUID?


Sorry I quickly skimmed the thread earlier and missed your install of El Capitan. How did you install El Capitan? Will the laptop boot to a bootable USB drive? Did the fresh install of El Capitan boot at all before you installed Windows?


If a bootable macOS USB installer boots, then the easiest method would be to boot the macOS installer again, but instead of choosing the install option you will click on the menu bar looking for the "Startup Disk" option which I believe may be found on the Apple menu. Select the internal macOS volume and see if the laptop will reboot to your internal SSD.


If none of this works, then I will try to assist you in creating a bootable rEFInd USB installer or manually installing rEFInd.

May 16, 2019 7:48 PM in response to woodmeister50

Thanks woodmeister50 for your reply. I've tried First aid to no avail. I've got operation successful with no issues with hard disk.


Also tried PRAM several times to no effect. I've also tried command+R but couldnt go into recovery.


As an update to the situation, things now are getting worse as I've decided to format the hard disk and install OSX el capitan on one partition and windows 10 on another partition. Now when I boot the laptop, it is giving me flashing folder with question mark on it. I've read around this forum. Unfortunately the only solution I got for this is for command+R to work but it doesn't!!


is it possible that the bios/firmware need to be reset. Is there any way for this to be done other than the command+option+P+R.

Any other way to get the command+R to work?


Any help please?


Thanks,

Ali




May 16, 2019 8:56 PM in response to ahawwa2

Try using an external USB keyboard to see if it makes a difference.


I recently encountered a 2016 or 2017 MBPro which would not perform a PRAM reset, but would instead boot into local Recovery Mode. I could boot into Internet Recovery Mode so the firmware recognized the Option key. The Option and "P" keys were fully functional and the issue occurred even when using an external USB keyboard. It had to be either a firmware or Logic Board issue as the laptop worked perfectly fine other than the inability to perform a PRAM reset.

May 17, 2019 6:51 AM in response to HWTech

Thamks HWTech for your advice, I also believe it is firmware issue. Hope it is not a logicboard issue..

Tried the external USB keyboard with no difference.


How can i reset the firmware without the PRAM reset. I wish I could get into recovery mode but it wont let me...


Any advice, even if it is regarding physical hardware? I feel I'm facing a dead end..


eeh..

May 17, 2019 7:26 AM in response to ahawwa2

I'm not aware of any way to resolve it except to either wait for Apple to release another firmware update and hope it resolves it, or have the Logic Board replaced. It is possible the actual nvram holding the firmware is defective and a firmware update/refresh may not have any impact. In our case we are just living with it until a more severe problem arises.


If you want to be able to "Option Boot" to switch between macOS and Windows, you may want to check out rEFInd which is a third party boot loader manager which will present you with both macOS and Windows boot options every time you (re)boot your computer.

May 17, 2019 1:18 PM in response to HWTech

Thanks again HWTech but how can I install rEFInd or even use the laptop if I cannot boot into the harddisk?


I only have a flashing folder with question mark on it. tried to remove the hard disk and put a bootable macos usb but it doesn't recognise it. this trick used to work in the past. Also I cannot login into recovery mood.


The laptop was working fine until 2 days ago where I decided to format the hard-disk. it seems that the startup disk don't recognise the formatted harddisk and now it won't boot at all. I don't mind living with defective NVRAM if I can use the laptop in any OS.


let me know if you have any way to boot into any OS. At themoment only a flashing folder with question mark on it despite the fact that I've installed macos el capitan on the hard-disk on partition and windows 10 on another partition (I used different laptop to do that).


Any advice appreciated?

Thanks again,

Ali

May 17, 2019 11:40 PM in response to HWTech

Thanks so much HWTech for your help. Very much appreciated..

Let me give a background to the incident as I feel I didn't describe the sequence of events that led to current issue.


The source of trouble I believe was windows 10 bootcamp since after I've installed it on my drive, the macbook was only booting into window 10 and won't boot into macos. So I formatted that bootcamp partition and I installed El Capitan. So that's why my mac doesn't find the windows partition and cannot boot.


I've installed El Capitan by removing the SSD, putting it in a caddy and connecting it to another laptop where I went into recovery mode and then installed the native El Capitan of the second laptop on my SSD as external hard drive.

This was desperate move after the laptop decided not to boot. For some reason it keeps ignoring El Capitan macos until the start up disk is changed to the partition holding macos.


If I can boot into macos USB installer my problems will be solved (as you said I can change the startup disk there). I tried to put the macos usb installer but the mac won't boot into it. I believe it is still searching for windows 10 partition which is now gone.


I tried to remove the ssd drive and install windows 10 again on a new partition but it seems the macbook knows it is not the original partition (possibly mac is searching for the original EFI partition of windows, i really don't know). If I can make it boot from any source I'd be happy as then I can reach an OS and live my life again..


I believe rEFInd might be my last choice and I'd appreciate a help toward that.


Sorry forgot to mention that I've tried SMC reset (no luck) and yes my SSID partitioned as GUID.

May 19, 2019 8:37 AM in response to HWTech

Dear HWTech,

Thanks so much for your help throughout this. I have now went to apple store and they reset my laptop to factory setting. They managed to do netboot. They first tried an apple external keyboard but no luck. So they took upper case out and tried again and voila it worked... They said due to general wear and tear, the upper case was not responding properly to start combinations. They've suggested replacing it.


I'm happy now as problem resolved. I might try the rEFInd as some other stage as I might not be able to enter into startup manager (so afraid to try the ALT key!!) but I'm now happy with what I've got. I'm sending this message from my original MacBook.


Thanks HWTech and thanks Apple!


All the best,

Ali

Startup Manager wont show up after holding ALT key

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