Macbook Pro A1708 820-00840-a not completing MacOS install

[Simplebeans]

As some of you may be aware i had recently acquired a liquid damaged Macbook Pro A1708 820-00840-a which was not powering on, power issues sorted and it was down to a shorted capacitor, please see my original thread on this if you would like to find out more (https://www.badcaps.net/forum/showthread.php?t=103060)

Now that i have the Macbook Pro powering on i am experiencing a multitude of other suspected problems. Ha.

Firstly I’m attempting to install MacOS Monterey using a bootable USB installer. I have formatted the SSD(128GB) as Mac OS Extended (Journaled). Whichever and whatever, i have tried, during installation I get, the screen with the apple logo and it gets to the message - 'Less than a minute remaining' and then it will not go further. I have restarted the process several times (incl. formatting the SSD again) and even on one occasion left it to run nearly 7 hours but it still didn't get past this part. I done the SMC and PRAM/VRAM resets all to no avail. I also tried internet recovery again same scenario.

Heres the interesting thing though during all this i encountered two other things which were odd, so when navigating through the install menus during installation it seems the graphics on the screen glitch, when i mean glitch it seems a change in colour where the mouse pointer is moving like its catching up with itself, only briefly before returning back to normal and it only seems to happen on very rare occasions. However the other thing and this one is consistent is the Macbook Pro is running slowly, in contrast to what i have experienced on other Macbooks. If i click the trackpad on a arrow on the screen to confirm i want to progress to the next page there will be a noticeable delay from my click and also to when you see the click occur on the screen. I have tried with a USB mouse and it seems the same effect.

When i have tried this same MacOS install on for example a Macbook Air A1466 2015 during the initial part at the recovery menu it will say 2 hours remaining but on the Macbook Pro sometimes this notification goes up to 6 hours, it doesn’t last 6 hours long for the duration of that part but then that coupled with the system being slower then normal, it just seems something is off.

My initial thinking so far was this might be liquid spillage inside the SSD but could this be causing this?

[reformatt]

Re: Macbook Pro A1708 820-00840-a not completing MacOS install

Fan at full speed and CPU throttled is usually because of missing sensor data. Examine the the board closely and look for corrosion, especially at the edges. I'd probably look closely around U5870. You could try running Diagnostics from startup to confirm, but you'll need to get MAC OS running to run something like HWsensors to narrow it down.

I had something similar on an A1706, Thunderbolt temp sensor IC was corroded underneath. Ran like a dog, and took forever to complete installation.

[reformatt]

Re: Macbook Pro A1708 820-00840-a not completing MacOS install

Could also be from damage to something external as well, like Trackpad. Don't you just love MAC's?

[mon2]

Re: Macbook Pro A1708 820-00840-a not completing MacOS install

https://youtu.be/yuunAVCAd0g

[Simplebeans]

Re: Macbook Pro A1708 820-00840-a not completing MacOS install

Fan at full speed and CPU throttled is usually because of missing sensor data. Examine the the board closely and look for corrosion, especially at the edges. I'd probably look closely around U5870. You could try running Diagnostics from startup to confirm, but you'll need to get MAC OS running to run something like HWsensors to narrow it down.

I had something similar on an A1706, Thunderbolt temp sensor IC was corroded underneath. Ran like a dog, and took forever to complete installation.

https://youtu.be/yuunAVCAd0g

Hey reformatt and mon2 so this was the line of enquiry (sensors) that I started out on intially but then as soon as i saw that my fan function was normal (not at full speed and on all the time) i abandoned this idea. Was this the right move correct me if i'm wrong?

Also I tried running Apple Diagnostics but that is not working at the moment, I think this might be because there is nothing on the SSD at the moment.

[reformatt]

Re: Macbook Pro A1708 820-00840-a not completing MacOS install

On newer firmwares, diagnostics needs an internet connection. It should be independant of SSD.

[Simplebeans]

Re: Macbook Pro A1708 820-00840-a not completing MacOS install

On newer firmwares, diagnostics needs an internet connection. It should be independant of SSD.

Sorry about that reformatt i just tried again and now it’s working, i think it might be due to the fact that some liquid had spilt on the keyboard from what I do remember the seller informing me about and the keys may not in the best of shape, its reported 'No issues found' now.

Based on this result do you think i should continue to persue the sensors?

[reformatt]

Re: Macbook Pro A1708 820-00840-a not completing MacOS install

Normally a sensor issue will be flagged by Apple's diag's test. So a bit suprised it revealed nothing. Pity we don't have ASD for these models.

Maybe the SSD has an issue? You could try substituting it, or trying to install on an external drive attached via Thunderbolt and see what happens.

[Simplebeans]

Re: Macbook Pro A1708 820-00840-a not completing MacOS install

Normally a sensor issue will be flagged by Apple's diag's test. So a bit suprised it revealed nothing. Pity we don't have ASD for these models.

Maybe the SSD has an issue? You could try substituting it, or trying to install on an external drive attached via Thunderbolt and see what happens.

I managed to get Catalina MacOS installed on an external USB drive, i plugged it in using the USB Type-A to USB Type-C adapter. Its loaded into the OS and i have just installed HWMonitor. The readings i got are below, see screenshot:



The two that stick out is the 'Mainboard Proximity' and the 'Airport Proximity'.

[reformatt]

Re: Macbook Pro A1708 820-00840-a not completing MacOS install

The overall temperatures seem that low you'd have to assume the CPU is being throttled. Without ASD for this model, it does become a bit of a crapshoot.

I'm not sure HWmonitor is accurate for this model since I don't have a A1708 to hand (only have a couple of A1706 machines). But the Airport reference would have me looking closely at U5800. I've had one of these TMP421 IC's have an issue on a A1706 board, where liquid had corroded pin 8 and it's corresponding pad. I was able to clean up the pin on the IC, but I ordered some replacements off Aliexpress. Bit pricey but they were genuine (since they were obviously removed off an Apple board). Maybe also check U5810 too.

[Simplebeans]

Re: Macbook Pro A1708 820-00840-a not completing MacOS install

The overall temperatures seem that low you'd have to assume the CPU is being throttled. Without ASD for this model, it does become a bit of a crapshoot.

I'm not sure HWmonitor is accurate for this model since I don't have a A1708 to hand (only have a couple of A1706 machines). But the Airport reference would have me looking closely at U5800. I've had one of these TMP421 IC's have an issue on a A1706 board, where liquid had corroded pin 8 and it's corresponding pad. I was able to clean up the pin on the IC, but I ordered some replacements off Aliexpress. Bit pricey but they were genuine (since they were obviously removed off an Apple board). Maybe also check U5810 too.

Yes i started with the U5800 and U5810 because of the Airport Proximity but those IC's are not on the board. Even better was when i checked the schematics not even a mention of a 'NO STUFF' for either of them! Haha.

I then had a thought to try the machine in SMC bypass mode, booted her up and the machine was running normally (no throttling). Ha. Ok, i thought, well then let’s check the 'SMC SMBus "1" S0 Connections', i checked pull up resisters R5360 and R536 (multi meter in voltage mode (20V) black probe to ground and red probe to PIN #1 and #2 at each resister and both were measuring 3.3V.

You'll will never guess reformatt and mon2 what it was in the end, i logged back into the machine and started to scope out Console > system.log and started to see all these errors occurring in and around 'mds' and 'mds_stores', i did some searching and found that this was related to 'Spotlight'. I opened Terminal and entered (turns off indexing):

sudo mdutil -a -i off

And then kernal_panic simmered down and the machine was back to normal, result! Then i ran the following command to remove all Spotlight Directories:

sudo rm -Rf /.Spotlight-V100

And to re-enable indexing i entered:

sudo mdutil -i on -E /

Now the Macbook Pro is running and back to normal. The part which i am trying to get my head around in all of this, is if Spotlight is local to the MacOS on the external USB drive only, which is where it is running from at the moment. Which i am sure it is. So if this is as is, would this effect the internal SSD and my attempts to install MacOS previously on it, it is quite strange.

Reformatt see the updated screenshot of HWMonitor now all this is done, temps seem much more usual now.

[Simplebeans]

Re: Macbook Pro A1708 820-00840-a not completing MacOS install

Just an update for everyone following I installed Monterey MacOS onto the internal SSD now and all is working fine. Interesting was upon first login Monterey MacOS seemed to be running a little slower then expected and on inspection on Activity Monitor there was nothing sticking out that was a concern. This lasted for about 3-5 minutes and then started to run normally. Possibly a first boot thing.

Since fixing the kernel panics the only difference on installing the OS on the internal SSD this time was that I used a USB Type-C Flash Drive (150 MB/s) instead of using a Type-A at 130 MB/s (with USB Type-A to USB Type-C adapter). This also could have had an effect on the speed of the MacOS installs I was having previously so there is something there to consider along with the issue with the kernel panics as mentioned above.

Admins can you please mark this one as solved so that others can have a go if they experiencing the same issues. And as always anyone else with similar issues to this or questions about anything discussed therein drop me a PM or post here and ill be more than happy to help.

[Simplebeans]

Re: Macbook Pro A1708 820-00840-a not completing MacOS install

Just wanted to provide another update on this and just some clarification, i know i have used a few terns to describe the issues on this thread. Firstly please ignore what i said about CPU throttling as i do not think that was what this issue was here anyway. I had realized this after i had posted it. Need some more coffee!

Also as for the fix as I described in my last post above, i mention kernal panic, this also is not exactly what was happening here either because the MacBook pro was not restarting at any point also so please ignore this as well. Again more coffee!

So just for clarification the main issue here was the kernal_task (which can be located in Activity Monitor) was reporting % CPU usage figures that were well above what would be considered normal and were staying at these figures constantly and this was causing the MacOS to then run slow. As outlined the fixes above i mentioned are what worked for me and this helped bring the kernal_task % CPU down to a level that would be normal and then this allowed the machine to operate at a normal speed.

Again hope that helps and if anyone does need any more clarification or questions about anything discussed drop me a PM or post here and ill be more than happy to help.

[Simplebeans]

Re: Macbook Pro A1708 820-00840-a not completing MacOS install

terms* Anyone got coffee? Ha.