Chosen Solution
I have a MacBook Pro 15” Retina late 2013. I was having problems with shut downs ever since I updated to Sierra (it’s been almost a year now). After two trips to Apple with no solutions, I decided to go back to my original OS (OS-X Mavericks) and now I’m having this problem (in the last year it’s probably happened 10 times max but that’s pushing it.) Since I got this update it’s been 14 hours and it’s happened three times already. The lights are on in the keyboard, and the Apple is lit up on the front, but the screen is black and the fans are running really loud. I’ve got all the available updates (without upgrading to High Sierra). Is there an easy fix for this? Update (05/29/2018) I didn’t mention that when I turn my computer back on it works fine. I’ll browse the web or edit on photoshop, and then it’ll happen again - black screen and increasingly loud fans, keyboard and Apple logo still lit. Then I hold the power button down until it shuts off, and when I turn it back on, it works fine until it happens again after a period of time. And BTW, here’s some info in case it’s needed: MacBook Pro Retina, 15" Late 2013 Processor 2.6 GHz Intel Core i7Graphics Intel Iris Pro 1536 MBMemory 8 GB 1600 MHz DDR3251 GB Flash StorageSoftware OS X 10.9.5 (13F1911) I reset the PRAM and that didn’t work. Resetting SMC made my display options set to “scaled” instead of “best for display”. UPDATE: I promise it’s late 2013 lol
I also want to note that I’ve updated to El Capitan (Mavericks wouldn’t allow me to run Photoshop). Since I upgraded, the black screen/loud fans stopped and I’m back to the shut downs (or hibernations, whatever it is). UPDATE 6/15/18: TG Pro and Activity Monitor snapshots after I opened up Lightroom and Photoshop
I hope those are in order but you can tell by the time at the top in the photos. It wasn’t staying up high the whole time but I guess that depends on what I’m doing in PS or LR? I also can’t remember if I said this already but thought it might be important to say that I’m almost always using an external hard drive when I’m on my laptop, mostly because it seems to help with the shut downs, but also because if I’m using LR or PS all of my photos are on my external drive. UPDATE 6/16/18: Here are some screenshots while I exported photos from Lightroom (I’m so surprised it didn’t shut down during this process)
@kimberlyrenee - I think you’ll need to do a few different things here to get to the root issue. First I do think you’ll need to do a bit of cleaning making sure the dust buildup is not hampering the systems cooling. Carefully pop the bottom cover and using a soft paint brush and a can of can’ed air dust the system don’t scrub to hard as you don’t want to damage things by shagging things with the brush. Use short blasts of air to push away the dust. Pop the cover back on and lets try the next step. While I know Ezra had recommended using software to override the fan I find that just makes things worse! Until you understand why your system is getting hot forcing it to cool harder often just masks the underlying issue and in the long term damages your system. While the software Ezra recommended does offer the thermal sensors temps the presentation of that information is not ideal on trying to ‘See’ whats happening sometimes we need to see the trend on when things ramp up and how hot things got. Which is why I try to get people to use TG Pro as it give you a better presentation of the needed info. Here we are using it to diagnose the issue using it in conjunction with Active Monitor which you have in your application/utility folder. Running it you should see if a given application process is consuming to much of the CPU’s time when the system starts getting warm. So with both TG Pro & Active Monitoring running in windows on your desktop run your apps in a third window and watch what happens when things start to ramp up. Take screen snapshots of both and paste them here for us to see. Update (06/16/2018) I’m sorry to tell you your system is just not up to the task of the type of photo editing you’re attempting. The process load is pushing the thermals beyond what this system was designed to support. Basically its undersized for the tasks you are trying to do. Between the limited graphics services, RAM & storage this system has it’s doing the best it can. I think you’ll need to make the investment of a new laptop system which has a dedicated GPU, supports 16 GB of RAM and offers a bigger SSD. Even then your system will get hot but it won’t thermally shutdown like this system is. The better direction is invest in a desktop system which has better cooling by design. Even Apple realizes the limits of its systems the 2013 MacPro (TrashCan) was also graphically & thermally challenged which is why the newer iMac Pro was released. To hold you over until you can save your pennies you’ll need to go on a process diet. Only have one app running and don’t auto load any apps at startup. That way you’re not forcing the CPU to task switch as often. You should get the full version of TG Pro as it can pre-cool your CPU so it gives you a bit more run time. Most likely these corrections won’t go far enough as you do need to address the fact the system has been running hot of quite awhile. This is where you’ll need to remove the heat sink and clean the old thermal paste off as you’ve cooked it! You also need to replace the heatsink as well. Follow this IFIXIT guide: MacBook Pro 15" Retina Display Late 2013 Heat Sink Replacement Review the tool & parts listing for the needed sundries and part.
You mentioning the fans running loud makes me think the computer could be overheating for some reason. Try downloading something like Macs Fan Control (https://www.crystalidea.com/macs-fan-con…) and seeing if the computer is running unusually hot.
Does sound like a overheating CPU. Maybe the GPU, I believe the later versions have discreet GPUs installed. But it also makes me wonder if some weird system failure is happening, because if the fans aren’t raving up before the crash, why would they go full blast when the glitch happens?
By the way, per your post, it is more to mid 2012 MBP retina. The symptoms are similar to the drive health. Hold down CMD+S at start up to get to single user mode wait until it finished loading and press enter then type the following fsck -fy »>Enter It will check the drives and when done try another one Try this command for a few different times with different volumes fsck_hfs -r /dev/disk1 then enter or disk1s1 or disk0s2 what ever depend on your drive partition. That should make a lot of different. If that is not a solution, the EFI firmware need to clean up. It may have some address issues. The device should be fine but the drive directory may corrupt. If it is EFI firmware, it cost $120 to reflash plus shipping. (lol good marketing) Update (06/05/2018) Power up the device while holding the Command + S until the command lines appears. Then press enter once and type the following line to make so many feel comfortable. fsck -fy The internal drive is usually disk0 and use the volume directory to rebuild each of them. First try the whole disk with the following line fsck_hfs -r /dev/disk0 That will repair the drive and if there is any error, it will shows. That is the command to run the whole disk to repair file system. If that get error, try each volume. fsck_hfs -r /dev/disk0s1 then try another partition fsck_hfs -r /dev/disk0s2 That is forced the drive to repair. It is better if you have external drive to boot with the single user mode. If not, internal drive may not allow to access the root system unless I make you confused. If that do not work, feel free to post the detail and correct device model.
Hi, I have the same problem while using my macbook in Mac OS, But I do not have any problem in Windows( I have bootcamp installed). Do you think it still is the heat sink?
