Recently I made a hasty mistake in forcing a shutdown when it was becoming unresponsive. Previously I've been able to boot the system with no problems by starting in single user mode (to bypass the gray progress bar (which disappears after loading partially) and spinning wheel that stays indefinitely). However, now when starting up the system, it appears that pressed keys aren't recognized.
I've tried resetting the SMC (by unplugging the power source and battery and holding down the power button for 5 seconds), but that appeared not to help.
Is there another way to get to single-user mode or reset the NVRAM (such as by opening and adjusting something in the MacBook)?
EDIT: I attempted diagnostics based on comments below by trying to boot into Verbose mode and holding Option to bring up the bootloader, but nothing worked.
Command-Option-P-R
doesn't work? Now, the fact that you have to boot to single mode to boot your Mac is concerning...why didn't you address the problem earlier? – Allan Feb 21 '17 at 1:35Command-Option-P-R
didn't work. It didn't seem to be much of a problem earlier, as running fsck functions from single-user mode appeared to work well (I only had to do this a couple times) and everything was working when running the system. – Phillip Feb 21 '17 at 1:37Cmd-V
(Verbose Mode) and see what get's output to the console. Look for error messages. Also, do you have your original install disks to run Apple Hardware Test? – Allan Feb 21 '17 at 1:53Option
to see if it brings up your boot loader. If it dosen't your keyboard may be hosed; try an external one. If that doesn't work, it's time to start looking at repair shops because there's nothing that can be adjusted. If you can't boot to Verbose mode or to the boot loader, replacing a drive won't help. – Allan Feb 21 '17 at 2:08Alt
=Option
but I am glad you were able to get your situation addressed. If you still need to fix your constantly having to boot to Safe Mode, that can be another question. – Allan Mar 8 '17 at 12:30