2012 MBP weirdness

[Banzai_Joe]

Hi all,
so, i replaced the HDD in my 2012 MBP for a SSD and added 4gb of ram to give it some ooomph.
If the MBP was off for a certain amount of time (days > weeks) then it would boot up with a "?" in a folder icon, denoting it can't find a system folder i guess.
Took it to a mac repair shop. The guy replaced the sata ribbon for a genuine apple one as he'd seen this issue before and all was good.
Then months later the same thing happened.
This time i replaced the SSD for another one and re-installed High Sierra. All was good for days of use.
Then, tonight i turned it on for the first time in 2 months and the same damned thing..... folder with a ? in it.
i can hold down cmd+r to get into internet recovery, but why oh why is this happening?
Could it be an internal clock thing due to it being turned off for so long? (its definitely off and not in sleep mode). Battery is at 65%, but i've plugged it in anyway.
I was wanting to sell it, but can't when it's acting this randomly unreliable.

Not worth going to a Genius bar as it'll be more than the mac is worth.

Any ideas?

Edit: boot up in recovery mode and disk utility sees the SSD and finds no errors with it. Yet when i select startup disk the list is empty. ???????
Quit startup disk and go back to disk utility and the SSD has disappeared from there too.
BTW....this happened prior to adding a 2nd stick of 4gb ram.

 

[dirtybeatfreak]

Sata cable on these is a known fault, Apple had an extension repair program to fix for free but this model is deemed as obsolete/vintage now so the genius bar may turn you away anyway (though there is a small chance they have some of the cables in stock). Might still be worth checking with them as the cable is around £15. Your symptoms sound like it is still the cable, the one the guy in the shop gave you may have been faulty too.

 

[Banzai_Joe]

Hi and thanks for the reply.
I did put Mojave on but it ran like a one-legged dog, so i put high sierrra on instead and it ran fine for the few days i tested it for until turning it off.
I was originally told that the official apple sata cables were £75. If i can find one cheaper, i can do it myself and see if it fixes it.
Is there no chance it could be a faulty mobo or sata connector rather than the cable?

Thanks again

 

[Terminal_Boy]

You haven’t got a cleaning app running periodically?

 

[dirtybeatfreak]

Hi and thanks for the reply.
I did put Mojave on but it ran like a one-legged dog, so i put high sierrra on instead and it ran fine for the few days i tested it for until turning it off.
I was originally told that the official apple sata cables were £75. If i can find one cheaper, i can do it myself and see if it fixes it.
Is there no chance it could be a faulty mobo or sata connector rather than the cable?

Thanks again

It could be the Logicboard yes, obviously without diagnostics it would be impossible to tell. That cable connects the HDD/SSD directly to a port on the logicboard. Do not under any circs pay £75 for that cable. This is excluding any labour/inspection charges of course but it is literally a 2 minute job. Take it to an Apple store or AASP. Even though its vintage they will still be able to run tests on it and give you a better idea (this is of course assuming it's hardware related), they wont charge you for it. Obviously Apple wont sell you the cable loose though and let you fit it yourself.

Edit: Have you run the Apple diagnostics suite? What did it say? (hold d on boot)

 

[Banzai_Joe]

i’ll try the diagnostics when I get home.
There was nothing but high Sierra on it.
I’d not set up any housekeeping apps etc.

 

[Banzai_Joe]

Ran diagnostics, took 3 mins and found no issues.
So i'm running extensive tests, could take over an hour.

 

[Banzai_Joe]

Hi,
so i purchased a new sata cable from Amazon, i ensured it had the same model number and was for my model MBP.
After installing it when i now boot i get a big hazard sign (circle with diagonal line through it) and every few sec it changes to the apple log for literally a 1/4 of a sec then goes back to the hazard sign.
Any ideas what i may have done wrong now?
I've built systems for years, so i'm not heavy-handed and do generally know what i'm doing.
Not sure whether i've got a faulty cable (unlikely), or whether i've actually done something else wrong.

Any more advice would be appreciated.

 

[dirtybeatfreak]

Hmm that is strange. The prohibitory symbol means your Mac does not support the OS you're trying to install. Which is weird, as you have already had that one on it! Agreed on the cable so yea it must be something more sinister. What further tests did you do? I would still take it down and get it run though the full system diagnostics Apple/AASP can do.

I know it sounds silly, but maybe try re downloading the OS from the App store and creating a new bootable.

Also, when you are installing it, which format are you erasing the drive with? journaled for High Sierra and AFS for Mojave?

 

[Banzai_Joe]

Hi, so I booted into recovery, it saw the ssd I ran first aid on it and it booted.
How long that will last i’ve no idea.
But if it does happen again I may have to chalk it up to the logic board even though it passed the extended diagnostics test.
I’ll enquire at an Apple store but I’m not paying a crazy price for a 2012 laptop repair.

 

[dirtybeatfreak]

Unfortunately they probably wouldn't repair it for you anyway as it's a vintage/obsolete model. Even if it doesn't need new parts they like to shy away because it obviously means they can push a new one on ya, they're awful for that! The tests they can do though will be free and generally are a lot better than any 3rd party ones so may give you a better picture.

Also, another option you could try is a program called Diskwarrior. Use that instead of first aid in disk util, it can rebuild your os structure, fix permissions etc. Though it wont work on AFS drives as not supported yet.

 

[Banzai_Joe]

Good day, so i'm back again.
Last night i got it working. I reset the SMC (which i don't think did anything), but i booted into recovery and ran first aid on the boot partition. This allowed me to boot into it.
After numerous reboots today to test it and updating safari. I shut down. Then booted up and it fails to boot, instead launching the installation log and showing me a great big list of events in the log that i won't pretend to understand.
I'm wondering, even though i have a SSD as my only hard drive and its formatted with High Sierra using APFS, as its a mid-2012 MBP should i reinstall using using MacOS journaled isntead?
Clutching as straws here, but so far, i've used 2 different (and brand new) SSD's and 3 different sata ribbons.

 

[Terminal_Boy]

Is it a single boot MacOS machine (i.e. no Bootcamp partition)?

I’ve always run MacOS Journaled on MBPs.

 

[dirtybeatfreak]

Good day, so i'm back again.
Last night i got it working. I reset the SMC (which i don't think did anything), but i booted into recovery and ran first aid on the boot partition. This allowed me to boot into it.
After numerous reboots today to test it and updating safari. I shut down. Then booted up and it fails to boot, instead launching the installation log and showing me a great big list of events in the log that i won't pretend to understand.
I'm wondering, even though i have a SSD as my only hard drive and its formatted with High Sierra using APFS, as its a mid-2012 MBP should i reinstall using using MacOS journaled isntead?
Clutching as straws here, but so far, i've used 2 different (and brand new) SSD's and 3 different sata ribbons.

Yea, if you're installing High Sierra, I would stick to using Journaled. Don't upgrade/convert to APFS if it gives you the chance.

 

[Banzai_Joe]

Well APFS is apparently best for SSD and was introduced in High Sierra, but due to my issues i’ll reformat using journaled.
Will report back later

Oh, before i do that, any reason why Mojave would run so slow on my spec? I5, 8gb ram

 

[Banzai_Joe]

ok, a quick check on diskutility and...
OS X Base System (disk image) = Mac OS Extended (not journaled)
240gb = APFS
So, now i'm confused!

 

[manic111]

I've done the same thing as you (replaced the HDD with an SSD) on a 2011 MBP, and a few years later had to do the sata cable fix. It all worked very smoothly, so theoretically it should be fine.

That said I'm pretty sure I've not updated to High Sierra. Any way you can roll back?

 

[Banzai_Joe]

Well, i reinstalled High Sierra and the first time i shut it down and powered up it went into the logs utility again and won't boot.
So all i can think is its a logic board issue.
Probably try and sell the chassis for spares or repairs.
Dang!

 

[dirtybeatfreak]

Well, i reinstalled High Sierra and the first time i shut it down and powered up it went into the logs utility again and won't boot.
So all i can think is its a logic board issue.
Probably try and sell the chassis for spares or repairs.
Dang!

When you say logs utility do you mean loads of text when you boot the unit instead of the Apple logo? Sounds like it is booting in verbose mode which should be easily sorted with an NVRAM reset.

 

[Banzai_Joe]

Well. I thought about resetting the NVRAM, but its a fresh install. Surely NVRAM is for caching your settings? Of which i had none.
NVRAM is the updated version of PRAM no?