You can make a difference in the Apple Support Community!

When you sign up with your Apple Account, you can provide valuable feedback to other community members by upvoting helpful replies and User Tips.

Looks like no one’s replied in a while. To start the conversation again, simply ask a new question.

Fan was overspinning, now my MacBook Pro is unusable

Hi there, I’ve got quite a conundrum for the community - details below.


early 2015 MacBook Pro, Mojave 10.16.4


> woke up the other morning and opened my laptop, it wouldn’t wake as normal (stayed on black screen) so I did a forced shutdown and when I rebooted the fan was spinning out of control

> this has happened once before, so I tried to perform an SMC reset to stop it, this didn’t work so I reset the PRAM. Neither worked but tried both multiple times.

> battery also behaving weirdly - showing as connected to power even when not, is not appearing in top bar, won’t let me click the box to have it appear in the top bar.

> realised I was using the silicon-based SMC reset method (idiot), switched to the Intel one and it works first try. Fan is chill.

> boot the computer, it’s very slow to boot.

> restart, now the computer will not restart when I press the power button like normal. It turns on but power cuts out immediately. There is no chime or apple logo.

> computer DOES turn on when I hold the power button for a few seconds and stays on.

> it is now so slow it’s unusable. Roughly 10 minutes to boot up, multiple seconds thinking about each letter I type etc.

> try many things, smc resets, pram, etc. nothing will make it run faster.

> boot in Restore mode. Repair HD with disk utility. No dice.

> boot in Restore mode. Reinstall OS. No dice. The reinstallation takes about 12 hours which indicates it’s still running at snails pace.

> I’m now doing a backup and then will erase the HD and try to start again.


anyone have any ideas as to WTF happened here or whether I can fix it?


MacBook Pro 13″, macOS 10.14

Posted on Jan 3, 2022 2:11 PM

Reply
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Jan 3, 2022 11:23 PM

Have you tried to boot into diagnostics mode? Press D immediately after powering on and hold until you see a progress bar (it might take a while if your Mac is very slow). If you have password protection set on the firmware you'd have to disable that first.


If it's a hardware problem, and it sounds as if it is, if you can get into diagnostic mode that may a least let you know what has failed or is failing.

Similar questions

2 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Jan 3, 2022 11:23 PM in response to MBP_

Have you tried to boot into diagnostics mode? Press D immediately after powering on and hold until you see a progress bar (it might take a while if your Mac is very slow). If you have password protection set on the firmware you'd have to disable that first.


If it's a hardware problem, and it sounds as if it is, if you can get into diagnostic mode that may a least let you know what has failed or is failing.

Jan 3, 2022 2:38 PM in response to MBP_

I may not be an expert, but when there is no startup chime...there is a problem(make sure you didn't mute it to not hear it or in a macos version where there is no startup chime to be heard). There must be something wrong/very wrong with the inside of the macbook to be acting like this like you described.

Fan was overspinning, now my MacBook Pro is unusable

Welcome to Apple Support Community
A forum where Apple customers help each other with their products. Get started with your Apple Account.