Macbook Pro factory EFI restore?

April 5, 2018 6:10 PM

Ok, just what the heck did I do to my Macbook's EFI and BIOS, and how do I recover it?

Previously: I have replaced the battery.

The stock OS (10.6) was snappy and just fine, aside from the fact that it has sadly walled itself into its own garden where apparently I can't even get a modern browser installed or even a package manager, but I digress. I don't want OS X at all anyway.

Hardware checks all came back clean, including RAM and HDD. Also, the OS installation media I have checks out. (Original 10.6 DVDs, 10.6.3 standalone DVD, and a Macbook Air 10.6 USB key.)

Bootcamp works fine. rEFInd also works and allows boot device selection.

I'm trying to use to set up Ubuntu Studio (17.10).

Live session works fine, go to install, it forces UEFI boot mode (overriding and overwriting rEFIt and Bootcamp and wiping the whole drive - in theory.

Except it throws an error on installing to the drive and aborts back to Ubuntu live desktop session, and now everything is totally screwed up.

After this first "force UEFI" install option:


Reboots to installation media now do nothing for two of the disks (original and the Air USB stick.) No activity pinwheel comes up at all, just the apple logo. (Have let this ride for 30+ minutes, it's not an update.)

The stand alone 10.6 show the apple and pinwheel, but then gives the BIOS beep code of three beeps separated by about 4-5 seconds, continuously. Apple's support says this is a RAM error. Only this disc throws the beep code. The other two media do nothing.

Meanwhile I can still boot to Ubuntu from USB and the RAM checks out just fine. Installing Ubuntu throws the same disk error and dump, even after just checking the drive and telling me it was fine.

Hardware test mode (Boot + D key) can check out and verify the RAM, no beep codes.

Internet recovery (boot + R) works. No RAM beep codes. I can recover, erase and rewrite the partition for OS X and write the tables out. I cannot actually install the OS from App Store because I don't have a working App Store account or Apple ID. (And I have recovery disks anyway what the hell, Apple.)

On reboot, I still can't boot to target install disk without RAM error beep code. (Ubuntu live still works, and will still verify RAM and drive as good.)

I have reset the SMC.

I have soft-reset the NVRAM/PRAM. I have hard reset the NVRAM/PRAM even with the memory removed as instructed on some Apple troubleshooting pages.

I have tried both 2g RAM modules individually - both boot fine in Ubuntu, and both test as good in Ubuntu and Mac hardware test mode.

Nothing is seemingly restoring the EFI and boot manager, and I don't understand what the hell is going on at this point.

I've tried installing and recovering to a complete blank drive like it's just a new upgraded drive, and it still won't recover to factory.


Am I doing something wrong or missing something here? This is driving me totally bonkers.

posted by loquacious to Computers & Internet (11 answers total)

Response by poster: Oh, and additional symptom:

I haven't seen the keyboard backlights light up since the "force UEFI" install option, even after resetting the SMC and NVRAM.
posted by loquacious at 6:30 PM on April 5, 2018

I have 2 2gb sticks of RAM from that model MBP that I’ll put in the mail to you if you memail me your address. It probably isn’t that, but it might be worth a shot.
posted by rockindata at 7:08 PM on April 5, 2018

I cannot actually install the OS from App Store because I don't have a working App Store account or Apple ID

If that were me, I'd generate a throwaway email address and Apple ID for this specific purpose, and attempt to reinstall Apple's OS.

I'd expect one of two outcomes: either the machine would put its world back together, or installation would fail. And if OS X installation failed, I would take great delight in exercising Apple's much-vaunted free technical support to the greatest extent possible, while completely failing to mention that I'd tried to make something other than OS X run on their locked-down unreasonable hardware.

Best case outcome: replacement machine.
posted by flabdablet at 11:07 PM on April 5, 2018

do i gather you do not have a working external bootable drive that contains a clean 10.6x? Do you have access to an external drive of sufficient size, say 300-500gb?

I would try to install a bootable 10.6 to this theoretical external using your discs and go from there. If I had to guess, I would be giving the stinkeye to your current internal drive.

This 2015 article states that 10.6 is available for download only to ADC Apple IDs. I don't know if ADCs are paid and subscribed anymore but I know they used to be.

I note that A1278 as a model number covers no less than 12 versions of MB and MBPs. Since you specify 10.6 as the shipped native OS I assume that the unit you have is either an MPB 5,5 or 7,1.

OWC says that those systems should be compatible with Mavericks, 10.9. Unfortunately 10.6 - 10.9 appear to be more or less solely tied to the App store for distro.

I concur with the analysis upthread: make an Apple ID and use it to download the needed installers if you must. Before you head down that road, though, try the external bootable drive method if you can swing it. Good luck!
posted by mwhybark at 3:06 AM on April 6, 2018

Sorry, hadn't checked the [previously] before recommending dealing with Apple, and hadn't twigged that this entire exercise is being driven by the fact of ancient (by Apple's standards) hardware.

I agree with mwhybark that a busted hard drive is a real possibility.

it throws an error on installing to the drive and aborts back to Ubuntu live desktop session

Can you get a photo or preferably a screencap or preferably the pasted text of the error message?
posted by flabdablet at 3:30 AM on April 6, 2018

Response by poster: Update: Man, I really don't understand EFI and GPT. The symptoms a Macbook displays when the EFI is fuxxored are bewildering and hilariously/frustratingly weird.

I am still deeply interested in to answers about this and trying to learn more about Apple's EFI/GPT system and how to wrangle it, because I've run into a variety of problems in this general area before either helping people with their Apple computers or trying to refurbish hand-me-downs like this.

This stuff is bonkers to me because I can usually walk up to any other old microcomputer and make it go.

So, at this point I've managed to recover and rebuild the EFI. Apparently the secret was to try to start the recovery/installation DVD in safe mode (power + left shift key ) at which point it just starts up as normal and repairs/reinstalls EFI/GPT and everything else.

And yeah, there's no real help from Apple here. I'm just trying to make a nice piece of old hardware have a longer life because if I get it working with Ubuntu Studio it's going to make a nice little media/music workstation.

I've scanned the drive for errors and fsck'ed it. SMART health is also good. I've also ran memory tests. Everything here looks fine, and the problem seems to actually be EFI/GPT config issues. (The drive is actually newer then the computer and an upgrade.)

At this point it "works" if I just want to run Ubuntu from the USB only and want to use the internal drive for storage.

The installation issue seems to be that either newer Ubuntu doesn't like installing from USB and prefers a DVD, and that this may be a Macbook specific thing. I have tried burning the ISO to USB using unetbootin and Etcher, and have tried walking back Ubuntu Studio release versions to see if previous variations are more stable.

I am also using a microSD to USB widget/dongle for my USB media, which it may not like at all so I will try to find my actual USB thumbdrive and flash that.

I will try to obtain a DVD-R but I haven't even touched recordable optical media in years because why? I bet the local pharmacy and drug store has some old stock. :)

I'm sure my next question thread is going to be "Help me triple-boot this old Macbook!" because I'm troubled like that. I already have a howto about how to quad-boot it. (Their choices were OS X, Vista, Windows 7 and Kubuntu for some strange reason.)
posted by loquacious at 8:51 AM on April 6, 2018

Best answer: Been a while since I had trouble with an EFI-only box (an ASUS iirc, not a Mac), but I seem to remember all kinds of pennies dropping after I installed Debian's efibootmgr package so I could actually see which EFI bootloaders the thing was trying to use.

It might also be interesting to use a live Ubuntu to have a look inside /sys/firmware/efi/vars both before and after a failed installation.
posted by flabdablet at 12:12 PM on April 6, 2018 [1 favorite]

Best answer: For what it’s worth, when 16.04 LTS came out i installed it on a 2008 Macbook (4,1) using a cheap, unbranded USB flash drive (barely big enough to hold the Ubuntu image) without any problems.

However, that computer never had Boot Camp or rEFInd installed. (I wanted a clean, Ubuntu-only install to minimize potential problems and didn’t care about dual-boot.) Perhaps the rEFInd installation borked something very low level?

I am also using a microSD to USB widget/dongle for my USB media, which it may not like at all so I will try to find my actual USB thumbdrive and flash that.

Yeah, given that you’ve already tried so many other things, i think this might be the problem.

If you get it working, i’ll also note that macfancntl works fine (i’ve tested custom configs), at least on that Macbook with 16.04, even though it is no longer maintained.

I also tweaked the config file for the trackpad to fix some annoying defaults (e.g., the upper-right quadrant of the trackpad being right-click needlessly), but it’s been long enough that i don’t remember exactly what i did.
posted by D.C. at 9:39 PM on April 6, 2018

Response by poster: I have now also tried a DVD install in three variations, and apparently it doesn't like my drive which is a shame.

I can also now reliably recover and rewrite the EFI, so at least I'm not stuck like the original post.

I have a slower, crappier 160 gb that might fit and work to try out, and worst-worst case scenario I can set it up with a minimal OS X install with the rest of the internal drive as storage and just run Ubuntu from a thumbdrive for now. (I have one of those tiny microSD to USB adapters and a fast card for it, so I could totally do that.)

Also tempted to wrap it in a bag and chuck the whole laptop in the freezer to pre-chill it for an install attempt. In fact, I should try that before trying to replace the drive with a crappieir one.
posted by loquacious at 7:38 PM on April 9, 2018

Any fault that's temporarily alleviated by time in the freezer is going to reappear as soon as the thing warms up. You might get an install out of it, but you'd always having to be giving the machine itself the stink-eye whenever it did anything mysterious.

Freezing drives is a last-ditch trick for pulling otherwise inaccessible data off a drive known to be dying, not for dragging more life out of old gear.
posted by flabdablet at 8:28 PM on April 9, 2018

Response by poster: Freezing drives is a last-ditch trick for pulling otherwise inaccessible data off a drive known to be dying, not for dragging more life out of old gear.

Yep, I've recovered the data from about a dozen sticky/failing drives over the years with the freezer trick. (Tip: Wrap the drive in an anti-static drive bag, then you can do stuff like strap or tape it to a blue ice freezer brick or a sealed ziplock bag of ice to keep it cold after pulling out of the freezer.)

I've looked at the error log and it's definitely the increased temps and higher temp throttling settings of Ubuntu, and I'm gathering it's a known but edge case issue.

This is frustrating because I have analyzed and tested the drive about as thoroughly as possible with software alone. Even on full throttle extended drive write/reads (triple-pass zero rewrites) within either OS X or live linux there's no problem or drive overheating issues and SMART health is good.

So it's like just on the edge of overheating and it appears to be more of a Ubuntu being fussy and weird for safe margins on install thing.
posted by loquacious at 8:12 PM on April 15, 2018