Sudden MBP shutdown

[Rod]

I have an early 13" 2015 MBP that has started shutting down unexpectedly.

After shut down it may restart once but shuts down again almost immediately on login or before. After that it will not restart until some hours have passed.

I left it off overnight, not connected to charger.

I am using it now on battery and it has been on for 1Hr 15min Battery at 74% with no apparent issues.

I have iStat Menus running and temps prior to shut down did not exceed 60C, currently 46C.

I also use Macs Fan Control and currently states single right fan at 1299rpm Sensor Based on CPU PECI, fan is "just" audible.

I have run DU First Aid on both volumes, Intego Virus barrier Scanner, OnyX and Etre Check with nil issues found or repaired.

I am at a complete loss as to the possible problem but I can say it started just before battery replacement.

This was with a third party battery as I am o/seas and was unable to obtain a genuine Apple battery.

Initially I thought, as did the service centre that this old battery was the cause of the problemas it was slightly swollen but now we are unsure.

If anyone can shine the light of experience of this issue I would be very grateful.



Short of complete replacement, difficult where we are and extremely bad timing as far as pending new model releases, I cannot come up with a solution.

 

[chscag]

Could be a bad or weak power supply. Sometimes bad or intermittent memory can cause the problem you're experiencing.

 

[Rod]

Thanks Charlie, it's really frustrating. The service centre provide one month's guarantee on their work so it's not costing me any money to have them investigate the problem but I'm writing this on it now and it's been running without a hitch for nearly 3 hrs. Intermittent problems are a pain at the best of times but a complete shut down is about as bad as it gets. The device is completely disabled for an unknown period of time and the way things are at this moment I may not be able to reproduce the fault. Not that they don't believe me, they've seen it happen but right now it's fine. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[MacInWin]

I, too, have the same issue. It's totally random. NO warning, nothing in the Console logs. Just stops. I have a thread on it here: Strange hardware behavior

 

[Rod]

I remember the thread, have just read it again to refresh my memory. There are some remarkable similarities. Too many I think to be a coincidence. No logged errors, no kernel panics, the odd behaviour of the MagSafe charger light on reboot. The only major difference is that mine does not restart. Indeed it will not start or if it does it stays live for decreasing short amounts of time. I will try an SMC reset, hadn't been able to do that. Incidentally after my post today it continued to function perfectly until about an hour ago when I switched it off. Not something I usually do but trying everything to see if I can identify a pattern.
Despite small differences this just sounds too similar not to be the same issue and to essentially the same model MBP.
I'll let you know what happens in the morning and try an SMC reset if possible.

 

[Randy B. Singer]

Check out:

SOLVED: MacBook Pro Shuts down randomly - MacBook Pro 15" Retina Display Mid 2015

The problem should be solved once you turn off buggy Thunderbolt LAN Ethernet driver. Here are the steps: 1) reboot with CMD+R pressed. 2) open Terminal 3) sudo csrutil disable 4) reboot in normal mode 5) sudo mv /System/Library/Extensions/AppleThunderboltNHI.kext... - MacBook Pro 15" Retina...

www.ifixit.com

 

[MacInWin]

Randy that is from three years ago and doesn't work to solve the problem in the long run. There are long threads on other boards about the sudden shutdown, none with solutions that work consistently. The best indicator seems to be that a process called "Watchdog" aborts, without a panic, no log, just triggers a stop, but what triggers "Watchdog" isn't clear. The absence of any real indicator in the Console logs makes it very difficult to get to a culprit or solution, but some folks (not all) do see Watchdog throwing an error about a non-responsive thread that is not identified just before the end of the log. Lately, my crashes have ended up with even the logs being wiped out, so my logs start at the boot after the event, with no entries prior to the boot, so i can't even get a hint any more. I did see Watchdog in three of my events before it started to recreate the logs on the boot.

 

[Rod]

Same here, logs now begin at reboot after last shut down.

 

[Randy B. Singer]

Randy that is from three years ago

Correct. And the MBP's that are experiencing problems are also from several years ago.

and doesn't work to solve the problem in the long run.

No problem. Just wanted to point it out in case you haven't tried it. Apparently that solution has worked for others.

 

[MacInWin]

Correct. And the MBP's that are experiencing problems are also from several years ago.

Not all of them are that old. It's happening in Intel Macs of all ages. I had seen that "solution" before, but when i followed it up, folks reported that it didn't work. The real issue is that you never know if you actually have a solution because the cause is really unknown, which means you cannot duplicate or force the failure. So you try something and maybe it doesn't happen for a while, but then it reappears. One that worked for me for a while was to use Amphetamine to keep my system from letting any external drives from going to sleep by "tickling" them every few seconds. I thought I had it sorted out when the issued didn't appear for almost three weeks, but then, Boom! Popped up again. So now I'm back to the drawing board, hoping the log files won't get destroyed so I can look into what was going on just before the stop.

 

[Rod]

We as I hinted at, I just want this device to last long enough for me to replace it with the device I want. That means going back to Australia, a physical impossibility at the moment. I would also like to be able to trade this 2015 model in (to Apple) on a new MBP to save a little. I could not in all conscience sell it privately knowing it might crash at any time but if Apple refurbish it any new buyer will be covered by warranty.

PS. Reset SMC this morning and it's still going strong so far.

 

[Rod]

@Jake, i just had a look at Mac Rumours Forums on the topic, the posts run to 21 pages and no 100% reliable solution yet. What does seem apparent is that it's software not hardware and in a number of cases Renaming of the NHI Thunderbolt kernel extensions has (to date) fixed the problem.
eg. mv AppleThunderboltNHI.kext AppleThunderboltNHI.kext.bak

 

[chscag]

I could not in all conscience sell it privately knowing it might crash at any time but if Apple refurbish it any new buyer will be covered by warranty.

No way Apple is going to refurbish that machine. They will recycle it. Trade in value on it won't be very much so you might be better off donating it to someone and then take the tax write off.

I don't think you want to return to Australia for awhile. It seems most places there are on complete lock down with very strict guidance from the law.

 

[Rod]

Maybe you have seen this Jake, I admit some of it is over my head. It's from the Apple Developer Forum.
About halfway down you will see "Solved" how to remove the Thunderbolt Driver in BS.

Random Shutdown in Big Sur (Thunde… | Apple Developer Forums

developer.apple.com

As stated this is definitely outside my skill set. Maybe you can evaluate it?

 

[Rod]

No way Apple is going to refurbish that machine. They will recycle it. Trade in value on it won't be very much so you might be better off donating it to someone and then take the tax write off.

I don't think you want to return to Australia for awhile. It seems most places there are on complete lock down with very strict guidance from the law.

Very true Chas, couldn't go back if we wanted to. There has been one DFAT (Dept. of Foreign Affairs and Trade) "evacuation" flight from Bali to Australia, mostly families with young children. There are still hundreds here and tens of thousands internationally that cannot return home because of our closed borders policy. I do not expect to be able to return until we reach an 80% fully vaccinated population which I estimate will not be until early next year. Our case is low priority, in fact numbers are dropping here while the delta version is running riot in Victoria and New South Wales.

So this old MBP needs to chug along a bit longer. If the Thunderbolt Driver solution works it may well just do that.

 

[MacInWin]

Rod, the kext solution might work, except that I am USING the TB Ethernet interface, so i need that kext as it is. It might work for you, if you don't have Ethernet and only use WiFi. But I've seen posts in some of the longer threads that said the "solution" worked for a while but then the problem reappeared. Right now, what I have going is Amphetamine keeping the CPU awake and the drives awake. That seems to work better than just letting the System Preferences/Battery/Power Adapter/Prevent computer from sleeping... do the job of keeping the CPU awake.

I, too, am nursing this along until Apple announces and has for sale the expected Mx 16" model. Once that is available, I'll install Windows on the MBP and give it to my granddaughter for her college work. She needs a good Windows laptop and presently has an el cheapo that won't last a year.

 

[Rod]

Thanks a lot Jake, I'll look into Amphetamine. It's interesting because on one occasion it shut down and rebooted I got a "Sleep/Wake Error" notification. It disappeared after a few seconds but it fits with your suggestion. I might get back once I've got installed. Thanks and good luck with yours too.

 

[Rod]

So just a couple of questions Jake. I have downloaded Amphetamine from the App Store and I wondered about setup.
Given that I use my MBP without peripherals other than an SSD for backup do I actually need Amphetamine Enhancer?
Do I really ned to set up Sessions at all? Currently I just have Indefinitely on.
I notice there are a lot of preference settings even if I leave out the application settings related to sleep and screen savers.
For example should I allow system sleep when the lid is closed, Display sleep and should I allow Screen Saver after 45min, that would conflict with my current Screen Saver Setting (1Hr)?

 

[Rod]

So just a couple of questions Jake. I have downloaded Amphetamine from the App Store and I wondered about setup.
Given that I use my MBP without peripherals other than an SSD for backup do I actually need Amphetamine Enhancer?
Do I really ned to set up Sessions at all? Currently I just have Indefinitely on.
I notice there are a lot of preference settings even if I leave out the application settings related to sleep and screen savers.
For example should I allow system sleep when the lid is closed, Display sleep and should I allow Screen Saver after 45min, that would conflict with my current Screen Saver Setting (1Hr)?

 

[MacInWin]

Rod, I have it set this way:

and:



I don't very often close the lid, I just walk away from it and 5 minutes later the screen darkens. My System Preferences settings are:



As I said, it seems to work until recently when I had an "event," but it hasn't happened again, so I'm hoping it was a one-off.