What to do if your Mac won't boot and freezes at the Apple logo. What to do if your MacBook won't turn on Mac mini monitor doesn't work

Let's not talk about Apple's reliability for the 100th time. Everything breaks.

But this case is strange, almost paranormal - at least it seems so when it happens to you.

Given: a new MacBook in excellent condition and without repairs. Sit and work on it. Suddenly, it turned off. Without warning, the screen went dark and the power went out.

You try to turn it on, but it doesn't respond at all. No way. Long press the power button, connect the charging cable, change the charger. Just zero reaction.

Don't rush to go to the service just yet. And don't rush at all. Perhaps this problem can be solved right now.

I experienced my Mac suddenly shutting down 2 times in 1 week

I believe in coincidences, so I think I was just “lucky.” But any of you could be in this place.

A week ago, a colleague of mine experienced the above problem on his MacBook Pro. The computer simply turned off out of the blue and no longer showed any signs of life. I tried different chargers, cables, opening and closing the lid. No use.

A few days later the situation repeated itself with me and a 12-inch MacBook. Only the circumstances are different.

I didn't have a sudden blackout. The MacBook had 2% charge left when it went out. I didn’t think anything bad, put it in my bag and forgot about it. In the evening I put it on charge.

I open it in the morning, try to turn it on - zero reaction.

The laptop just seemed completely dead. It’s a strange feeling – just there was a computer, and now there’s a piece of metal with buttons. And it seems like it's not your fault.

If something like this happens to you, do not despair: most likely, the problem is a failure of the SMC controller.

What is an SMC controller, why is it needed?

Literally, SMC stands for System Management Controller, that is, a system management controller.

This is a chip on the motherboard that solves several specific problems. Quoting the official Apple website, SMC is responsible for:

• response to pressing the power button
• response to opening and closing the display lid on Mac laptops
• battery resource management
• temperature control
• operation of the sudden motion sensor (SMS)
• ambient light sensor operation
• keyboard backlight
• status indicator control
• battery status indicators
• Select an external (rather than internal) video source for select iMac displays.

SMC controllers are found on all MacBooks with Intel processors. Under ideal operating conditions they function without problems.

But for some, SMC may begin to become dull. The cause cannot be guessed or diagnosed at home. This could be problems after an unsuccessful update or restoring the system from a backup, or power surges when recharging the battery. Or something else.

If the cause of the SMC controller failure is extremely difficult to determine, then you will notice the problems themselves almost immediately.

Again, we turn to the official Apple website for a list of situations that require resetting the SMC controller:

• The computer's fans are spinning at high speeds even though the computer is not heavily loaded and is properly ventilated.
• The keyboard backlight is not working properly.
• The status light (if equipped) does not light up correctly.
• Battery indicators (if present) do not work correctly on Mac notebooks with a non-removable battery.
• The display backlight does not respond correctly to changes in ambient light.
• Your Mac doesn't respond when you press the power button.
• Your Mac laptop doesn't respond correctly when you close or open the lid.
• Your Mac suddenly goes to sleep or shuts down and then can't turn on.
• The battery is not charging properly.
• Your MacBook or MacBook Pro won't charge using the built-in USB-C port.
• Your MacBook or MacBook Pro doesn't recognize external devices connected to its built-in USB-C port.
• The LED indicator on the MagSafe power adapter (if equipped) does not correctly indicate the current charging status.
• Your Mac is running unusually slow, even though it isn't experiencing excessive CPU usage.
• Your Mac that supports external display mode doesn't switch to or from external display mode as expected, or it switches unexpectedly.
• The lighting around the I/O ports on your Mac Pro (Late 2013) does not activate when you move the computer.

Normal, right? Reading this list in its entirety makes you want to immediately reset the SMC settings on your Mac, no matter how it works. Suddenly it will get better.

Fortunately, the SMC reset procedure is safe, does not lead to negative consequences, and is often used by Apple service centers as the first step in resolving owner complaints. No data or settings will be lost. All files will be in place.

As you may have guessed, it was the SMC reset that helped my colleague and I revive our MacBooks. Only the procedure turned out to be not as simple as it was described on the Apple website.

How do I reset SMC on my Mac?

If you have a MacBook with a non-removable battery: Turn off your MacBook (if it's on), hold down the CMD (command) + Option (alt) + Shift keys on the left side of the keyboard, and press the power button with your other hand. Keep it all pressed for 10 seconds, then release. Turn on your Mac as usual.

If your MacBook has a removable battery: throw it away, it's time to upgrade. Okay, seriously, you need to turn off the beech, remove the battery from it, hold down the power button for five seconds, then release, insert the battery pack back and turn on the laptop normally.

If you have a desktop Mac, iMac, and Mac mini: turn it off, unplug the power cable, wait 15 seconds. Insert the cable back. Wait another 5 seconds, turn on as usual.

If you have an iMac Pro: turn it off, hold down the power button for 8 seconds, release it for 2 seconds and then just press.

Mac computers give no indication that the SMC settings have actually been reset. If your problem is not solved, although it is mentioned in the reasons to reset, try again. And again.

Damn it, try ten times. Because for some unknown reason it very rarely works out the first time.

Personally, about the sixth attempt brought me success. The Mac suddenly turned on, started charging and generally acted as if nothing bad had happened.

What if resetting the SMC didn’t help and the Mac still won’t turn on?

I highly recommend trying to reset SMC at least five times. This observation is confirmed by numerous topics on Western forums. For some reason, the keyboard shortcut window is very small on newer MacBook models.

Fair, not overpriced and not underestimated. There should be prices on the Service website. Necessarily! without asterisks, clear and detailed, where technically possible - as accurate and concise as possible.

If spare parts are available, up to 85% of complex repairs can be completed in 1-2 days. Modular repairs require much less time. The website shows the approximate duration of any repair.

Warranty and responsibility

A guarantee must be given for any repairs. Everything is described on the website and in the documents. The guarantee is self-confidence and respect for you. A 3-6 month warranty is good and sufficient. It is needed to check quality and hidden defects that cannot be detected immediately. You see honest and realistic terms (not 3 years), you can be sure that they will help you.

Half the success in Apple repair is the quality and reliability of spare parts, so a good service works with suppliers directly, there are always several reliable channels and your own warehouse with proven spare parts for current models, so you don’t have to waste extra time.

Free diagnostics

This is very important and has already become a rule of good manners for the service center. Diagnostics is the most difficult and important part of the repair, but you don't have to pay a penny for it, even if you don't repair the device based on its results.

Service repairs and delivery

A good service values ​​your time, so it offers free delivery. And for the same reason, repairs are carried out only in the workshop of a service center: they can be done correctly and according to technology only in a prepared place.

Convenient schedule

If the Service works for you, and not for itself, then it is always open! absolutely. The schedule should be convenient to fit in before and after work. Good service works on weekends and holidays. We are waiting for you and working on your devices every day: 9:00 - 21:00

The reputation of professionals consists of several points

Company age and experience

Reliable and experienced service has been known for a long time.
If a company has been on the market for many years and has managed to establish itself as an expert, people turn to it, write about it, and recommend it. We know what we are talking about, since 98% of incoming devices in the service center are restored.
Other service centers trust us and refer complex cases to us.

How many masters in areas

If there are always several engineers waiting for you for each type of equipment, you can be sure:
1. there will be no queue (or it will be minimal) - your device will be taken care of right away.
2. you give your Macbook for repair to an expert in the field of Mac repairs. He knows all the secrets of these devices

Technical literacy

If you ask a question, a specialist should answer it as accurately as possible.
So that you can imagine what exactly you need.
They will try to solve the problem. In most cases, from the description you can understand what happened and how to fix the problem.

What to do if suddenly MacBook Air, Pro laptop screen does not work? Of course, in this case it will be impossible to continue working. First of all, we advise you to connect the laptop to the monitor and check if an image appears on the external monitor. If it appears, then the problem lies in your laptop, or more precisely, either in the cable or in the matrix itself. If it does not show, as a rule, the problem is hidden in the hardware. Let's consider the possible options in more detail.

1. First of all, check if problems occur when opening or closing the laptop lid. Often, when closed, the MacBook simply turns off or goes into sleep mode. When opened, the screen turns on again. As a rule, the reason lies in the mechanical power button itself, which suffers the most and becomes unusable due to dirt. In this case, it just sticks. Users can simply fill it with liquid, causing it to simply short out. The button is located in the most visible place. As a rule, in the upper right corner, on the panel where the display is, or at the end. If there is a malfunction, the power button will need to be replaced. This simple task takes very little time.
2. If the monitor shows, but there is no backlight, this basically means that the inverter or the backlight itself is damaged. It is these components that are responsible for the display backlight. If the inverter is not badly damaged, it can be repaired, otherwise it is replaced with a new one. The backlight lamp cannot be repaired, only replacing it completely will help.
3. If the matrix is ​​black, and there is or is no backlight on the sides, then the problem lies in the hardware itself.

Take a closer look at the possible options:

When the MacBook Air, Pro laptop display does not turn on

If your MacBook laptop boots up and everything freezes.

1. This primarily happens through problems with the hard drive.
2. It is possible that an error occurred on the hard drive.

A laptop computer can also freeze after receiving mechanical damage or as a result of moisture getting inside.

The specialists of our Telemama service center are always ready to lend a helping hand. We will provide quality repairs for MacBook Air and MacBook Pro.

Unfortunately, any computer user may encounter a problem when the operating system Mac won't boot and seems to freeze during the loading process. It usually looks like this: the computer starts to boot, the Apple logo appears on the screen as usual, but then nothing happens - the system does not boot, and the computer does not respond to anything other than a forced shutdown with the power button. In other cases, a loading indicator may appear under the Apple logo (similar to the one shown in the image above), but then nothing happens. Why does this happen and how can you fight it? Is it required in such cases? Let's figure it out in order.

Why Mac won't boot and freezes at the Apple logo

The reasons why the Mac stopped booting can be different:

• An operating system failure associated with damage to important system files (for example, in the event of an incorrect installation of a system component update, or the installation of a new OS).
• Damage to system files due to malware.
• Lack of free space on the computer boot volume.
• Inability to detect the boot volume due to a software error or damage to the hard drive cable (a clear symptom of this is).
• Malfunction of hardware components (damage to the hard drive or SSD, defective video chip, etc.).

Mac won't boot and freezes. What to do?

Depending on the reasons for the problem, there are different variations of its solution. Some you can try to implement yourself, while others can only be implemented by a specialist at a service center. Below we will give some recommendations on what you can do if your Mac stops booting and is stuck at the Apple logo or loading indicator. Let's start with something simple.

Boot in Safe Mode

Few people know that the MacOS operating system allows you to boot into Safe mode, which allows you to identify various software errors in the system. In Safe mode, only the system kernel with the main important functions is loaded, and when the computer boots in safe mode, the file system is checked for errors and, if possible, eliminated. Therefore, in most mild cases, booting your Mac into Safe Mode followed by a graceful soft reboot may solve the problem if your Mac won't boot and freezes.

In order to boot your Mac (it doesn't matter whether it's a MacBook, iMac or Mac Mini) in safe mode, you need to When you turn on the computer, hold down the "Shift" key on the keyboard and hold until the loading indicator bar appears. Please note that macOS boot time in safe mode takes significantly longer than a standard operating system boot, so we recommend being patient.

Correcting Errors Using Disk Utility

Disk Utility is a specialized application for working with the boot volume and the MacOS file system, which allows, in addition to the standard functions of formatting or partitioning a disk, to check the disk and boot partition for errors and the correctness of access rights to system files.

To run Disk Utility if your computer won't boot normally, you need to boot from the built-in MacOS recovery partition. For this it is necessary When you turn on the computer, press the Alt/Option (⌥) button and hold it until the boot partition selection screen appears, then select the Recovery partition. Force booting from MacOS recovery partition can be done by pressing a keyboard shortcut Command (⌘)-R when you start the computer.

When the recovery partition is launched, you need to select "Disk Utility":

In Disk Utility, select the "First Aid" section and click "Run" (available for MacOS versions El Capitan and Sierra), or manually select "Check Disk" and "Check Permissions" (available for OS X Yosemite and older). If, at the end of the process, the disk utility reports that the disk is good or restored, then try restarting the computer and check the loading of the operating system again. If the errors found are successfully corrected, MacOS should boot correctly in normal mode.

If, during the scanning process, the disk utility displays an error message that cannot be corrected, you should think about how to save important files and documents, and then reinstall the operating system.

Reinstalling the MacOS operating system

If the Mac does not boot and hangs on the loading indicator, and restoring using standard means does not produce results, then, most likely, it will hardly be possible to do without reinstalling the operating system. At the same time, given the fact that the computer does not boot, retrieving the user’s files and documents can be very problematic.

In order to extract files from a boot volume that cannot be started, you will either need to connect your computer to another Mac in external drive mode (the method is not very simple and requires a second Mac computer, a FireWire or Thunderbolth cable, and strict compliance with the Mac OS versions on both computers), or connect to the computer from external media with an installed operating system, or special software for extracting and transferring data.

Unfortunately, not every Mac user has the opportunity to carry out such manipulations and, when faced with a situation where their computer stops loading correctly and freezes, and simple ways to solve the problem do not help, they simply do not know what to do. If your MacBook Pro, MacBook Air or iMac does not boot or the operating system freezes when loading, you can always contact our service center specialists for help. will be done as quickly as possible, taking into account all your wishes about saving important data and the desired settings that our employees will make for your computer, so that it will delight you with its stable operation for a very long time.

If your macbook freezes on the apple, we can fix it quickly - in 30 minutes. Contact us!

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11 comments to the article "What to do if your Mac does not boot and freezes at the Apple logo"

I have exactly the same problem - my Mac won't boot and freezes at the Apple logo
It hangs on the apple for a long time, then a chamomile appears, starts spinning, and so on ad infinitum.
I have important data there and I'm afraid of losing it. Can you restore both the data and the functionality of my MacBook?

• Hello Alexander!
  Sometimes, such problems are associated with the physical death of the hard drive on your Macbook. Unfortunately, hard drives on MacBooks fail, and not as rarely as we would like. If this is your situation, then we will need to separately remove the data that can be saved. After that, buy a new hard drive, install it, and return all the saved data back, after installing the system.
  The cost of such a service is agreed upon with the client, after a thorough diagnosis of hard drive damage.

Apple computers are highly reliable, but their owners sometimes run into trouble. Let's figure out what needs to be done when the MacBook does not turn on. If you didn’t manage to flood your laptop and didn’t drop it on the floor, the problem can most likely be solved without going to a service center.

First, you should perform an external test to ensure that the monitor and power adapter are working properly. The first applies more to owners of Mac Mini and iMac all-in-one PCs. Laptops manufactured before 2016 use a MagSafe magnetic port for charging. Its power cord is equipped with an indicator light.

When connected correctly, it should glow orange or green. The L-shaped magnetic latch can operate even if the contacts have not yet connected. In this case, the power cord is externally connected, but due to slight misalignment, power is not supplied. The latest generation of T-latches do not have this drawback. Make sure MagSafe is connected correctly.

All 12-inch models, and after 2016 – the MacBook Pro, use a power supply with a USB-C connector, which does not have a light indication. MagSafe remains only in Air. The cord of the new adapters has two identical connectors at the ends and connects to the laptop and power supply through a port.

Unplug it on both sides and plug it back in. The adapter can automatically interrupt the power supply if there is a disturbance in the electrical network. To reset the triggered protection, unplug it from the socket for one minute. Once turned back on, the computer should begin charging normally.

Reset NVRAM/PRAM

When the adapter is working properly, power is supplied and the apple on the lid lights up, but the screen is still black, you will need to reset the NVRAM/PRAM.

1. Completely turn off the computer using the power button. Turn it on and immediately press the combination shown in the screenshot.

1. Hold down all the keys until the laptop starts up, emitting the boot beep again. After the startup went smoothly and we are logged in, we need to check for updates. Click on the apple logo in the menu bar located in the left corner. Select the marked item.

1. On the main page, click the indicated button to open the App Store.

The system will automatically check for updates. We install all available ones and, if necessary, update the OS to the latest version of High Sierra.

Resetting the SMC

The SMC controller is responsible for the power supply functions. These include battery management, response to closing and opening the lid, the operation of some system sensors and interaction with peripheral devices. In any case, if you feel like your Mac isn't working properly, forcefully restarting the controller may resolve the issues.

For Aimak monoblocks and all Mini versions, it is enough to disconnect the power cord for 15 seconds. You must wait at least five more seconds before turning it back on. For laptop computers, which include all versions of Air, Pro and 12-inch Retina, we perform the following steps.

1. Turn off the device completely using the menu item shown.

1. Disconnect the power cord. Press the three keys shown in the screenshot in the left corner simultaneously with the power button and hold for ten seconds. Reconnect the power adapter and turn on the laptop.

As in the previous case, we check and install available OS updates.

Consequences of the upgrade

Apple has made it almost impossible to upgrade in recent years. In previously released MacBooks, the user could independently replace the memory sticks. The operation is, in principle, simple, but requires the correct selection of modules. If, after an upgrade, the laptop starts beeping while turning it on, this indicates problems with the new memory.

In this case, signals are given with a pause of five seconds. Depending on the model, this may be one repeating beep or a series of three consecutive beeps. The only way out of this situation is to reinstall old modules or purchase suitable ones.

In conclusion

If resetting the NVRAM and SMC didn't help you, then your Mac has serious problems. The best solution would be to contact a certified service for professional diagnostics. Don't forget that your MacBook is covered by Apple's limited warranty for one year from activation and some repairs are free.

Video instructions

In the video below you can see firsthand how the described operations are performed by a professional.