MacBook Pro black screens and shuts off after a few minutes' use

Question

I have a MacBook Pro 15" (mid 2014, running Sierra). Recently, it has started black screening and shutting off shortly after, after a few minutes' use—let's say 3 to 10 minutes. The screen will go black but the LCD backlight will remain on for about 5 seconds, then the laptop will completely shut off.

I have reset PRAM and the SMC. Things I have determined:

• The built-in hardware test passes
• Problem is not tied to my user account (occurs when I'm logged in to another freshly created user)
• Problem is not tied to my OS installation (I wiped and re-installed)
• Problem does not manifest itself in Safe Mode or when booted into Windows 10. (Also didn't manifest during OS X re-installation.)
• Problem does not seem to be overheating: I can game with no issues on Windows, graphics performance and fans are fine.

This behaves like a classic overheating problem, but I'm stumped due to some of the weirdness of it not being an issue in safe mode or Win 10. Any thoughts?

Answer 1

As discussed on the MacRumors forums thread, Help! Updated to macOS 10.12.4, MBP randomly shuts off, it is likely that AppleThunderboltNHI.kext is the culprit:

So if you disable (move out of /System/Library/Extensions) AppleThunderboltNHI.kext driver then reboot. Everything runs ok, you can connect external screens via Thunderbolt.

The only drawback is that Ethernet via Thunderbolt will not work.

Answer 2

Been having the same issue for about a year now, right now the only way to prevent it from shutting down randomly is to have the Thunderbolt Gigabit Ethernet Adapter plugged in all the time. Brought my unit to Apple multiple times but were to no avail.

Answer 3

I can say that the only thing that has worked for me is to leave my thunderbolt in the computer even when connected on WIFI and not ethernet. Just having it dangle out of the computer seems to do the trick. I forgot to have it in yesterday and it shut down on me again.

Answer 4

I have now hit on a solution. I'm not sure if it's the correct one, but it works for me so I thought I'd at least post it.

My vague suspicion: things worked perfectly in Windows, but not on Mac OS. This means that it's probably a hardware issue manifesting itself due to differing driver implementations between the two OSes. So, I started disabling driver kexts until Mac OS stopped crashing.

I created a folder under /System/Library/DisabledExtensions/ and moved these files from /System/Library/Extensions:

AppleFWAudio.kext
AppleThunderboltDPAdapters.kext
AppleThunderboltEDMService.kext
AppleThunderboltIP.kext
AppleThunderboltNHI.kext
AppleThunderboltPCIAdapters.kext
AppleThunderboltUTDM.kext
AppleUSBAudio.kext
AppleUSBDisplays.kext
AppleUSBEthernet.kext
AppleUSBEthernetHost.kext
IOUserEthernet.kext

It now works.

Answer 5

For those getting Read-only yada yada yada on terminal.

For Mac OS Big Sur

Remember the address which redirects you to the page. www.tinyurl.com/fixapple2

1. Reboot in the rescue mode (reboot by pressing "⌘ + R")

2. Open safari in the rescue mode to come this page and to copy what is written here into Terminal.

3. csrutil disable

4. csrutil authenticated-root disable

5. mount -uw /Volumes/your MacOS files location e.g. mount -uw /Volumes/Macintosh\ OS/

6. cd /Volumes/your MacOS files location/System/Library/Extensions as happened in the 4th step

7. mv AppleThunderboltNHI.kext AppleThunderboltNHI_kext.bak

8. kmutil install -u --force --volume-root /Volumes/your MacOS files location

9. bless --folder /Volumes/your MacOS files location/System/Library/CoreServices --bootefi --create-snapshot

10. Reboot normally

---

Tested on Catalina 10.15.4.

You need to be fast while doing this because highly likely your Mac shuts down in a very short time.

The process is, boot to recovery (⌘-R at boot, hold these keys before the Apple logo), open Terminal:

csrutil disable

Then reboot to the OS, run

sudo mount -uw /

and

sudo killall Finder

commands, then

cd /System/Library/Extensions

and

sudo mv AppleThunderboltNHI.kext AppleThunderboltNHI_kext.bak
sudo mv IOThunderboltFamily.kext IOThunderboltFamily.kext.bak

If you wish, actually what I do so, re-enable csrutil enable, with ⌘-R at boot, then.

Answer 6

For Mac OS Big Sur

1. Reboot in rescue mode (reboot while "Cmd + R")

2. csrutil disable

3. csrutil authenticated-root disable

4. mount -uw /Volumes/[MacOS ]

5. delete (or rename, or move elsewhere) the AppleThunderboltNHI.kext directory (I've moved all thunderbolt kext directories since I have no needs about this interface, but I think it works only by disabling AppleThunderboltNHI)

6. REBUILD the extensions cache ! (new has-to-do in Big Sur...)

kmutil install -u --force --volume-root /Volumes/[MacOS ]

7. DON'T FORGET to create another system snapshot to take these modifications under account at next reboot

bless --folder /Volumes/[MacOS ]/System/Library/CoreServices --bootefi --create-snapshot

8. reboot (in rescue mode). This step may be unnecessary, not tested straight to
9. csrutil enable
10. Reboot

Reference https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/407918/252245

Answer 7

So my computer would sometimes simply shut down in the middle of the bootup process, with exactly the same symptoms (shuts down with the fan spinning in a loud final flourish). I tried every fix possible, disabled startup items and kernel extensions etc. In the end I figured out that it was simply an issue of actual overheating, because of the extremely hot weather... I put my MBP 16'' in the freezer for a while, and also kept it there during the bootup, and it actually worked! Who would have thought that you'd need to resort such a primitive workaround on a $3000 device...