Good evening, all.

Over the last 3-4 days, my 2012 MacBook Pro has given me the white-screen once a day or so.
I can "bring it back to life" using the "hold down Command and R while powering up" thing and re-mounting the drive (solid-state). Afterward, all seems well. But if I put it to sleep for the night (simply by closing it), then the next time I go to start it, I'll be back to the white-screen condition.

Fault once and recover? Easy enough to forgive. Three fails in a row now? I'm concerned.

I'm not really Mac-savvy, so I'm just not sure what to do aside from asking you all. Thank you for your help.

Get out your credit card. I suspect there is an Apple Store not too far from you in Hokie Nation (e.g. near the campus in Blacksburg), worth a visit, but don't expect to get out of there without a purchase (not that they pressure you, but the array of sparkly new machines are very persuasive). Or, if the DC area is not off-limits, there's a fine Apple Store in Tysons, tell me when you're coming and I'll buy you a drink at a local watering hole.

First, before you do anything else, make sure you have multiple recent clean backups (one is none, two is one) onto an external drive , and iCloud. You can get 1TB thumb drives these days, or something like an SSD in a case. The Apple Store will do this for you, probably for no charge, but, of course, this means they'll have a copy of all your data porn.

A 2012 MacBook is going to be at or near EOL, it is possible that Apple no longer supports it. You don't say what model number, or OS version you are running, but I suspect both are vintage (ancient in computer terms). You might want to try an OS reinstall from Apple over the 'net to get the latest that supports your hardware. This will not wipe user data. The Apple Store will do this for you too.

Do you have a way of logging onto the device over a network, e.g. with SSH or screen sharing? (Another computer, or one you can borrow from a friend?) Try this after the screen goes white, or login and monitor the system log (/var/log/system.log). This might help reduce the problem space, but your symptoms smell to me like a hardware failure of some sort (ageing capacitors or the like on the graphics card). If you can manage a remote login, you can at least do a command line reboot that will sync the disk on shutdown so you don't have to perform a recovery boot. You could also shutdown overnight rather than sleeping the machine so as to skip the recovery boot. E-mail me for assistance with this if you need it.

I had a similar problem a few years ago. I'm running a 2010 MacBook Pro still. I replaced the HD with an SSD and it runs like a new machine. Also maxed out my RAM and replaced the battery. The SSD and battery are a MUST, added RAM was just icing on top. Is it a screaming beast, NO, but it does all of my daily computing without issues so why spend another $1K+ on a new one before upgrading for around $200-$300? Doing the upgrades was stupid simple if you can figure out how to use a screw driver.

Thank you both for your advice, and thank you architect for the beverage offer!

To my knowledge, there's not an Apple Store on campus in Bburg -- I'll have to investigate that further. (Road trip!). A new machine is mighty tempting, but brakes on the car are the bigger necessity right now.

To give some more detailed information:
This machine is a 2012 (15-inch, Mid-2012, 2.3GHz Intel Core i7, 4GB RAM (system max), model MacBookPro9,1); I bought it from a friend's sister in about 2017 (maybe '18). Very soon after getting it (and with help from a few articles downtownv sent), I swapped in a 500GB solid-state drive -- that was a "yuge" improvement, for sure. Roughly 80GB of that drive is consumed. OS is macOS Catalina, version 10.15.7. I haven't replaced a battery yet.

I do have a Time Machine backup (a week or so old at this point) but nothing (that I know of) on the iCloud. Zero p0rn.

I think I don't know enough about logging in over a network, though there's a Chromebook around here somewhere I could use if I had enough knowledge. So far, the white screen seems to occur after the machine has gone to sleep. That said, it woke up just fine this evening -- I'm using it now.

As an observation: I removed the jump drive that's used for Time Machine backups last night. Is that related to today's easy startup? I'm not sure. But I'm willing to drop a few bucks on another jump drive to prove the point (and then reformat the existing one for possible reuse).

When I finish up this evening's catch-up and surfing, I'll leave the jump drive out, do a full shutdown, and plan to get a minute before work in the morning to restart and see what happens.

VTH -- Are you a veteran? If so, be sure to check the military / veteran version of Apple's website, before taking your credit card to an Apple store. The veteran website lets you order Apple things for around 10% less than the regular Apple website.

You can stack veteran discount with the 15% discount for Apple refurbished computers for a total discount of at least 25%.

Thank you, V-Tail. And no, sir, I'm not.
(Unnecessary history: I got PO'd at my recruiter and received my acceptance letter from VT on the same day.)

OK, with the last bit of information provided, I have a different diagnosis.

USB drives are notorious for going off-line spontaneously. macOS will see this as the drive being unplugged, and will unmount it from the file system. The next time Time Machine tries to do its thing, it crashes the machine on the unavailable drive. There should be some evidence of this in the system log, or another log that you can see in the Console App (it's in the Utilities folder under the Applications folder).

You can try turning off TM for a few days to see if that makes a difference. The fact that your TM backup isn't current (shouldn't be more than a day old) is more evidence. Usually, these disconnects are on drives that are powered by the USB port. So if you have added or changed a USB device this may have triggered the phenomenon.

Architect, that makes sense -- I *have* received error messages over the last few weeks, complaining that the USB drive had been ejected improperly, when I hadn't intentionally ejected it at all.

I think my "next immediate step" is to leave the existing jump drive out for a couple of days (and turn off TM, as you mentioned) and see what happens there. Then the easy follow-up step would be to replace the jump drive and continue to evaluate.

Time for a new MacBook

It’s going on 12 years old

quote:

Originally posted by vthoky:
Then the easy follow-up step would be to replace the jump drive and continue to evaluate.

Get one with an externally-powered chassis rather than one powered from the USB port. Voltage drops are the most common cause of this phenomenon. You might be able to save a dime or two by buying just a chassis rather than a new drive+chassis combo. Drives have gotten to be relatively more reliable than the olden days, but the support hardware hasn't received nearly as much love.

Don't forget the cable or the ports (on both ends), a little wiggle room here can send things all to hell.

If you can tie your external drive to the Thunderbolt port, you'll see better performance and reliability than to USB (USB sucks in so many ways). Even FireWire would be an improvement, but good luck finding a FireWire chassis at the present stage of evolution. OK, so a quick 'net search shows that OWC still has a Thunderbolt Dock for sale (at $200 ) This would give you some additional options for an external drive chassis.

quote:

Originally posted by architect:

good luck finding a FireWire chassis.

MacSales.com

quote:

Originally posted by V-Tail:

quote:

Originally posted by architect:

good luck finding a FireWire chassis.

MacSales.com

They show one model, but it is sold out.

Gosh, friends, after three days of running with the jump drive removed, I'm about ready to knock on wood or throw salt or something -- no new issues!

At this point, I'm thinking the jump drive is/was faulty. I'll replace it with a new one tomorrow, run Time Machine, and see what happend next.

For what it's worth, the drive was a mine one, sort of like this.

Please consider purchasing a real SSD and an external enclosure for the SSD for Time Machine. Far better than USB drive.

SSD can be super cheap, as long as WD or other international brand. External enclosures are about $10 from Amazon.

Never under any circumstances purchase a LaCie brand external SSD or HDD. Too many failures.

Time Machine is useful. But, if you have an iCloud username, please consider turning on the iCloud backup. It is so much easier to restore from iCloud. The synchronicity of iCloud from iPhone to iPad to iMac to MacBook Pro is exceptional. Time Machine cannot do any synchronizing of anything between objects.

If this machine has significant problems in the future, you can perform an internet OS recovery, then restore from iCloud. Thor's Hammer, but it works.

quote:

Originally posted by 4MUL8R:
Please consider purchasing a real SSD and an external enclosure for the SSD for Time Machine. Far better than USB drive.

Yessir, can do. I have an enclosure here already, just need to pick up a new drive.

quote:

Originally posted by 4MUL8R:
if you have an iCloud username, please consider turning on the iCloud backup. It is so much easier to restore from iCloud. The synchronicity of iCloud from iPhone to iPad to iMac to MacBook Pro is exceptional. Time Machine cannot do any synchronizing of anything between objects.

Thank you again. I believe I do have an iCloud username, but I'll need to look into it. I'm not particularly Apple-savvy, though I enjoy the reliability of this 11-year-old Mac. I've got a lot of learning to do, as I have in mind developing operator instructions at work for use on iPads. That's a topic for a thread I'll start soon...