MacBook Pro 14" M2 Suddenly Unable to Boot

Have you tried all of these steps and followed them carefully?

From this apple support article: If your Mac starts up to an Apple logo or progress bar – Apple Support (UK)

1. Press and hold the power button on your Mac for up to 10 seconds until your Mac turns off.
2. Every Mac has a power button. On laptops that have Touch ID, press and hold Touch ID.
3. Turn your Mac back on. 
4. If the issue persists, press and hold the power button until your Mac turns off. Then unplug all non-essential accessories from your Mac, including printers, drives and USB hubs. There may be an issue with one or more of these devices or their cables. 
5. Turn your Mac back on.
6. If the issue persists, press and hold the power button again until your Mac turns off. 
7. Repair your startup disk as described in How to repair a Mac disk with Disk Utility.
8. If the issue persists, reinstall macOS from macOS Recovery.

If all of this is not working, there is no other option than to , contact Apple Support to set up hardware service. Unfortunately, a forced shutdown using the power button when the laptop is allready in the process of shutting down can give damage to your internal drive

Squarebin wrote:

I'm getting this exact symptom today too. I'm thinking it might be this problem: https://www.theregister.com/2023/11/01/asahi_linux_mac_black_screen/

Two days ago I upgraded to the latest Ventura (I believe 13.7 from 13.1) which seems to put me in the danger zone, according to the article. And yesterday it was plugged in to external monitors that required DisplayLink, with unknown refresh rate but probably 60Mhz. Today at home, it won't boot.

I have just dealt with two laptops in my organization where this happened so I have first hand experience with it. I didn't discover the Asahi Linux developer's findings until after I had resolved our issues. A much better link is the first hand article written by the Asahi developer's themselves, although their article is a bit confusing....I'm still reviewing & parsing it. I didn't see TheRegister article provide a direct link.

https://github.com/AsahiLinux/docs/wiki/macOS-Sonoma-Boot-Failures

Other things I'm trying:

How to revive or restore Mac firmware - Apple Support• : I was unable to get this to work - the only other Mac I have available is an Intel Mini, and the MacBook does not show up in the sidebar.

You won't see it in Finder's sidebar unless you utilize the "Share Disk" feature when booting the "broken" laptop into recovery mode, then it will be located under "Networking" since it would appear as a network volume even though it is connected by a Thunderbolt cable.....it will show up as "Macintosh HD" or whatever you may have renamed the boot volume.

If you are using DFU Mode to perform the firmware "Revive", then you will only see the broken Mac showing up with a "DFU" note within the Apple Configurator app. If you perform a firmware "Revive" it may allow you to upgrade the Mac to macOS Sonoma. That is the only option available which will allow you to boot the Mac again with your data intact.

It can be tricky getting the Apple Silicon Mac into DFU Mode. Follow Apple's instructions exactly since the 10 second count is extremely important for a complete power off and to trigger the first part of the DFU Mode procedure before releasing the keys. Also, make sure to use a USB only USB-C cable, an Apple USB-C charging cable is good (it has no symbols on the cable's USB-C connector). If the USB-C cable has a lightning bolt symbol on it, then it cannot be used DFU Mode.

• Bootable installer - worth a shot, I'm trying it next.

It will need to be a macOS 14.x Sonoma installer. Ventura installer will not work. If you have a good network connection, then you should be able to just use the recovery mode option to install macOS Sonoma, but possibly only after performing a firmware "Revive". If you end up trying to boot to the internal drive, or install macOS Ventura, then there is a good chance you will end up having trouble accessing recovery mode again. It may require you to perform another firmware "Revive".

I just spent a week trying to figure out what was happening with our two "broken" Macs. Even if you can upgrade to Sonoma successfully, I would not trust the laptop at all without performing a full firmware "Restore" which destroys all data on the internal SSD, resets the security enclave & firmware as well as pushing a clean copy of macOS Sonoma onto the internal SSD. Afterwards you can migrate from a backup you made. I highly recommend this option because one of the laptops was acting very oddly even though installing Sonoma overtop of Ventura was successful. After doing this I was able to reinstall macOS Ventura without issue.

Good luck.

I'm getting this exact symptom today too. I'm thinking it might be this problem: https://www.theregister.com/2023/11/01/asahi_linux_mac_black_screen/

".. Apple managed to release an OS update that,

when upgraded to normally, leaves machines unbootable if their display

refresh rate is not the default."

I don't think Apple has confirmed this bug so take all this with a grain

of salt. But it's the only thing I've found so far resembling my

symptoms, and it closely resembles my symptoms.

Two days ago I upgraded to the latest Ventura (I believe 13.7 from 13.1) which seems to put me in the danger zone, according to the article. And yesterday it was plugged in to external monitors that required DisplayLink, with unknown refresh rate but probably 60Mhz. Today at home, it won't boot.

Other things I'm trying:

• How to revive or restore Mac firmware - Apple Support: I was unable to get this to work - the only other Mac I have available is an Intel Mini, and the MacBook does not show up in the sidebar.
• Bootable installer - worth a shot, I'm trying it next. After that it's time to contact AppleCare.

Some great info there; thanks!

I took it to the Apple Store yesterday (same-day appointment thankfully) and they had a go. They immediately decided to try a DRU revive.

> you will only see the broken Mac showing up with a "DFU" note within the Apple Configurator app.

This is what Apple did. The Apple support document I was using yesterday says you can do it in Finder, but that didn't work for me.

The other thing that can easily go wrong is using the wrong port. On my particular model the tech said a USB-C power cable had to be in the front-left port, and the transfer cable back-left. (They said that using MagSafe power wouldn't work!) Again, the support document I was using didn't mention anything like this. Today when I searched I found a better one: Revive or restore a Mac with Apple silicon using Apple Configurator - Apple Support

But still nothing is mentioned about the power, so I'm filing that requirement under "maybe; worth a try if it isn't working".

Any, Apple did get it connected and ran the revive, but the transfer was much slower than normal (according to them) and it didn't fix anything. Rather than try a DRU restore next, they jumped straight to "wipe and start over". Based on all the problems you described it sounds like they made the right call. We'll see how they did when I get it back.

> [bootable installer[ will need to be a macOS 14.x Sonoma installer. Ventura installer will not work.

Ventura installer didn't work for me, true, but the laptop didn't even get as far as that. After a couple seconds of scanning for possible drives it returned to the usual blank screen. If I'd noticed that I wouldn't have bothered creating the installer in the first place..

Thanks again - you would have saved me some time yesterday with this info, and hopefully it will help someone else. Or me, if it happens again.

Squarebin wrote:

The other thing that can easily go wrong is using the wrong port. On my particular model the tech said a USB-C power cable had to be in the front-left port, and the transfer cable back-left. (They said that using MagSafe power wouldn't work!) Again, the support document I was using didn't mention anything like this. Today when I searched I found a better one: Revive or restore a Mac with Apple silicon using Apple Configurator - Apple Support

It is confusing since the ports used on the "broken" Mac differ between the Intel Macs and the Apple Silicon Macs. Apple should definitely have had them use the same USB-C port for the procedure. It drives me crazy.

But still nothing is mentioned about the power, so I'm filing that requirement under "maybe; worth a try if it isn't working".

I thought power may have made a difference, but I successfully performed a firmware "Restore" without a power adapter connected. It is probably best to have a power adapter connected as long as you have two USB-C ports. If your laptop only has a single USB-C port, then you won't be able to connect a power adapter during the procedure....just make sure the battery is fully charged.

Any, Apple did get it connected and ran the revive, but the transfer was much slower than normal (according to them) and it didn't fix anything. Rather than try a DRU restore next, they jumped straight to "wipe and start over". Based on all the problems you described it sounds like they made the right call. We'll see how they did when I get it back.

Personally, I would insist they perform the firmware "Restore" since they are erasing everything anyway. Like I said, on the one laptop I still could not install Ventura beside Sonoma until after the firmware "Restore" was performed. Plus I noticed some other instability as well. The second laptop I was working on did not show the same symptoms or odd behavior, but I still performed the firmware "Restore" just to be safe. After all why risk possible instability when you are already wiping the system anyway? It is actually quicker to perform a firmware "Restore" than it is an erase & reinstall especially if everything has already been downloaded to the host Mac which it should be for Apple or an AASP.

> [bootable installer[ will need to be a macOS 14.x Sonoma installer. Ventura installer will not work.

Ventura installer didn't work for me, true, but the laptop didn't even get as far as that. After a couple seconds of scanning for possible drives it returned to the usual blank screen. If I'd noticed that I wouldn't have bothered creating the installer in the first place..

Yeah, you can have problems accessing recovery mode screens at times. Usually after a firmware "Revive" you have at least one chance to access recovery mode since it usually boots automatically to the boot picker menu after a "Revive".

iSchmal wrote:

I have an M2 MacBook 14" that's just a few months old with no prior issues and no physical damage whatsoever.

Why don't you take it to Apple Technical Service? Isn't it under warranty?