We had power outages and surges last night. Everything seems okay except for the Macbook Pro 13" (M1).

Usually it's on but for some reason, even though it has a battery, it turns off during power outages (all other laptops remain on).

We turned it on and then tried to login. The login status progresses a little but then stops and hangs. Then after several minutes, the system seems to reboot and allows you to try to login again.

Sometimes, a different screen comes up indicating some issue and giving you the option of either recovering from Timeline (which we don't have) or installing OS from scratch again. Unfortunately, we've been lax w/ backups on this laptop - no backups for the past year or so. Unless this Timeline function was doing something automatically.

Help - what are our options? Is there some way to login again - to at least save data to a usb drive and then re-install from scratch? Or are we SOL and we need to re-install the OS from scratch, losing all data from the past year or so?

If you have another Apple computer, you can try to boot the messed up MacBook into “Target Mode,” which basically lets another Apple computer access it like an external drive.

https://support.apple.com/guid...k-mode-mchlp1443/mac

Thanks. I wish I had another Mac. It would be nice if this was capable with an iPad. Or even iPhone. Maybe Apple Store can lend a hand. But I don’t want them to have a copy of my data either. I’d rather lose the year.

Sounds like I’m biting the bullet.

 
[Apple Silicon instructions, M1/M2] From a cold shutdown, press and hold down the power button. You may have to press and hold down a second time if you do not see "loading startup options".
 
If you made a boot USB stick, it should be inserted when you do this.

Select either the boot stick or Recovery Mode. Select Install macOS. Do NOT use Disk Utility to format your disk, leave it alone and go straight to Install macOS. This will install the macOS system files and leave your data alone.

Thanks!! I started the process and it’s says it’s installing now. Hopefully all will be well when it’s done.

Installation was counting down time remaining. But it’s seems to have stopped counting down and the system is not responding to mouse / keyboard. I hope it’s still working and will just finish soon. Not sure how to tell if the system is hung or still working.

At the risk of sounding like a Jedi Master, sometimes patience is the best course. I’d leave it alone for a day instead of fooling with it when it seems stuck. It maybe fixing something.

Took a few tries - doesn’t seem to always work. But seems like the OS was finally healthy enough to let me log in (some kernel error re: 3rd party extensions though).

I’m in the account and copying files to external SSD while I’m able.

Then I’ll continue testing for stability.

Thanks for all the help!!! Very valuable - I thought all our data was lost. It’s really appreciated!!

Surge protector ordered.

Spoke too soon. Rebooted and now have the same issues logging in. Recovery mode started again - re-installing OS yet again.

If I can log in again, I’ll look into backup / timeline and install from scratch.

I think it’s time to call Apple. Their service techs seem to be reliably good, and (at least in my experience) not located in India.

quote:

Originally posted by TMats:
I think it’s time to call Apple. Their service techs seem to be reliably good, and (at least in my experience) not located in India.

I've had the best luck at the local Apple Store when my daughter's Mac had issues

Thx. Making an appointment.

If you are able to save it, I would STRONGLY suggest you take the time to set up Time Machine and run it on occasion.

All you need is an external hard drive, it is almost hands off and automatic once set up, and set up literally takes about 3 minutes.One of the big benefits of the Mac system.

Best of luck getting it going…

quote:

Originally posted by konata88:
Installation was counting down time remaining. But it’s seems to have stopped counting down and the system is not responding to mouse / keyboard.

Apple's count down timer is a big joke. Several OS versions ago, a fresh install from a boot USB stick would hang at "one minute remaining", or even "one second remaining". I finally overcame my "need" to step in and restart the process, and just let it go, and it did finish up just fine. No explanation for the 30 minute "hang". Now, on newer versions, it will start out saying "28 minutes remaining", and finish up in 15 minutes. I suppose it partly depends on your hardware.

There should be signs of life on computers - CPU is doing something (ie like Task Manager) or SSD traffic (old computers used to have an HDD light that indicated traffic - I miss that light).

I know those progress bars are a joke and unreliable. Need something that shows the system is alive or hung. Lazy developers and not paying attention to exception handling....

quote:

Originally posted by konata88:
There should be signs of life on computers - CPU is doing something (ie like Task Manager) or SSD traffic (old computers used to have an HDD light that indicated traffic - I miss that light).
<snip>

Well, on MacBooks with Intel processors there’s the audible fan.

quote:

Originally posted by konata88:
There should be signs of life on computers - CPU is doing something (ie like Task Manager).

macOS equivalent of the Windows Task Manager is called Activity Monitor. Full info on all processes, cpu load, disk writes, network activity, etc. The first thing I do with it the first time I run it is /View/All Processes. Then for each tab, you can add (or remove) any of the displayed columns.
 
Also, the System logs are viewed in the Console app. A lot of info is logged, and it can be overwhelming at first, but there is a Search function so you can dig down to specific dates, apps, etc.
 
Both are found in Utilities.