How to recover from firmware update failure?
I received a call today from work (it's a holiday for me) concerning a problem with a 17" PowerBook. The caller reported that the user's laptop was locked up and to help them, held down the power button to force a restart. Unfortunately, they held the power button down until the firmware update tone came on. Of course, there was no firmware software to be installed, so they shut the Mac down and tried again. Now, every time they press the power button to restart, it returns to firmware installer mode.
How do I cancel this firmware update cycle? I've tried having the caller remove the battery, power cable, and holding down the power button for 5 seconds, but that didn't help. I'll be working on this laptop tomorrow, so I'm wondering how to proceed. I'm not even sure I'll be able to startup the PowerBook from an external hard drive, since something in the hardware seems poised to execute.
This is a 2-year old 17" PowerBook running Panther 10.3.9.
Thanks in advance for any ideas.
How do I cancel this firmware update cycle? I've tried having the caller remove the battery, power cable, and holding down the power button for 5 seconds, but that didn't help. I'll be working on this laptop tomorrow, so I'm wondering how to proceed. I'm not even sure I'll be able to startup the PowerBook from an external hard drive, since something in the hardware seems poised to execute.
This is a 2-year old 17" PowerBook running Panther 10.3.9.
Thanks in advance for any ideas.
Comments
If not, they can do an archive and install using the same method.
I was just concerned that the firmware may have locked something in hardware, so that any attempt to startup from any hard drive would fail. If that's the case, something on the logic board will have to be reset to a default state, and beyond looking for a button to push on the logic board, I'm out of other ideas to try.
If this is the case, does anyone know of any key combinations to try at startup?
I was successful in booting the laptop into Target FireWire mode, so I transferred the users apps/data/account over to another Mac, reformatted the laptop's hard drive, and reinstalled MacOS X 10.4. Upon reboot, the Mac again kernel panicked. So, I rebooted into Safe Mode (cmd-S) and finished the installation process for MacOS X 10.4, logged in, and went to the Desktop to assure everything had transferred successfully. All appeared well, so I rebooted, and again the Mac kernel panicked.
At this point it's clear that something is preventing the ATA/FireWire bus from booting any hard drive. When I asked the caller yesterday to hold the power button down and force a reboot, they held it down all the way to the firmware update tone, which I'm now suspecting may have locked up something on the logic board. Of course, it's also possible that yesterday something else failed on the logic board that the hardware test didn't discover, but I've run out of ideas.
So, I called AppleCare, reiterated all of the above, and they opened a ticket for the laptop. I'll be taking it in tomorrow, so we'll see what they do to fix it.