Issues with 2020 MacBook Pro m1 booting

[ecarlson03]

Ok, so I’ve been having some issues with my m1 Mac booting lately. About two weeks ago, I started having problems with it. I would login to my Mac, and it would take around 5 minutes to start up and get to the desktop screen. After that it would function pretty normally, but if it went to sleep, it would be completely unresponsive to any attempts to wake it up, so I would be forced to reset it with the power button. After a couple of days of this, I attempted a couple remedies that I found on Apple Support forums.
- Booted up Mac in Safe Mode, attempted to see if that made a difference (it didn’t)
- Booted into recovery mode and ran first aid on my hard drive (no error messages or issues there)
Then it got worse. Whenever I would try to log in it would never send me to the desktop. It just sat at the login screen, loading forever. I contacted Apple Support, and reinstalled MacOS Monterrey, but it didn’t fix the issue. From there the Apple Support person recommended I take it in to a store to get it fixed. I’m able to do this, but I’m curious if there’s any other possible remedy before taking it in, because the nearest store to me is a ways away from where I live. I’m a producer that uses Logic Pro X, and so I have a lot of files on the Mac that I’m hoping to recover, but I was stupid and I don’t think I backed anything up. Losing the files isn’t ideal, but if I must lose them to get the Mac running again, so be it. A little more information on what I was using the Mac for before I started having issues. I recently got a PC from a friend, but it didn’t have windows installed on it. I downloaded a windows iso file in order to put it onto a flash drive to run it on the PC. I was following a tutorial on how to do it using Homebrew, and it required me to install Homebrew through Terminal, which I have little experience with. I’m not sure if that could have messed things up, but I’m not extremely technologically advanced. Any help is appreciated.

 

[MacInWin]

Take it to the store. There is no other way to fix it. They may need to take it in to go to a depot for repair. They may trade it for a replacement, but depot repair is more likely. What is on it may very well be lost, Learn from it by making backups and sticking to it from now on.

Can't help with Windows, sorry.

EDIT: I meant to welcome you to the forum. So, Welcome!

 

[ecarlson03]

Unfortunate, but was mostly expected. Thank you for responding!

EDIT: I was able to use the share disk option in recovery mode to get my files back!

 

[MacInWin]

If you have the files saved, and if you are open to a total wipe of the system, here is an article on how to restore an Apple Silicon (Mx) Mac back to factory:

How to Factory Reset M1 Mac (MacBook Air/Pro, Mac mini, iMac)

Ways to factory reset your M1 MacBook Air/Pro, Mac mini, and iMac and reinstall macOS Monterey when you need to replace it or the Mac is bricked.

iboysoft.com

Note that there is a section on how to recover a bricked Mac, so you can try that, if the first fails. Takes another Mac and a cable, but if you got the files back through Share disk mode, you might have them already.

 

[pm-r]

EDIT: I was able to use the share disk option in recovery mode to get my files back!

That must be a relief and certainly good news for us to read.


- Patrick
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[ecarlson03]

If you have the files saved, and if you are open to a total wipe of the system, here is an article on how to restore an Apple Silicon (Mx) Mac back to factory:

How to Factory Reset M1 Mac (MacBook Air/Pro, Mac mini, iMac)

Ways to factory reset your M1 MacBook Air/Pro, Mac mini, and iMac and reinstall macOS Monterey when you need to replace it or the Mac is bricked.

iboysoft.com

Note that there is a section on how to recover a bricked Mac, so you can try that, if the first fails. Takes another Mac and a cable, but if you got the files back through Share disk mode, you might have them already.

Awesome, I’ll try it out

 

[MacInWin]

Just don't wait too long to take it to Apple. Even if you get it going again, you'll want to have them check it out just to make sure that the hardware is all good.

 

[pm-r]

you'll want to have them check it out just to make sure that the hardware is all good.

Good suggestion Jake, and I wonder what software the Apple techs might have available to use to check out a Mac that we do not have access to, if that is the case???

PS: I was most impressed with the OPs ability to be able to use the share disk option in recovery mode to recover their files back, especially if they were new to the new Macs and knew that the feature actually existed. Well done, and welcome to the mac-forums group.



- Patrick
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