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I have a MacBook Pro (15", Mid 2015; 2.2GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7; 16GB 1600 MHz DDR3).

Recently it started to go slowly and erratically; eventually flashing onto the screen, momentarily, 'serious error'.

It became unusable so I took it to a local Mac specialist who says "... updating the OS to Monterey (actually done several months previously with no obvious bad effect!) damaged the bios on the logic-board and the ssd also...". This specialist says the ssd needs replacing and the the bios repairing.

My questions -

Could updating to Monterey cause the problem described? I'm surprised that there was no warning not to proceed if the the update was this dangerous.

Does the solution - new ssd and repairing bios - make sense?

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    I'd go see a different 'specialist' & ignore anything that one said. Macs don't have a BIOS & never have in 40 years.
    – Tetsujin
    Commented Nov 18, 2022 at 18:17
  • I concur: find someone else to inspect your Mac.
    – benwiggy
    Commented Nov 18, 2022 at 18:38
  • @Tetsujin - thanks. Does it sound plausible that "... installing Monterey on my MacBook..." would cause this damage?
    – Dan
    Commented Nov 18, 2022 at 19:30

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First thing. Find another tech if that one insists on bios being part of the hardware. Perhaps they or you are using terminology that's familiar assuming PC knowledge transfers to Apple hardware and that's OK for starters, but ask for clarification and documentation on Apple's site on what process they followed to diagnose it to be sure they and you agree on the actual issue.

All computers have some sort of firmware, but bios isn’t on yours.

Second, the repairs might be needed since that’s the nature of things when they break. They are fine and fine and then suddenly (to us at least) they break. (Everything about high speed digital circuits and processing is sudden, though. Even things that work happen suddenly since they do millions of operations a second.)

What you can do is an erase install from the internet recovery after backing up anything and everything you care to save.

Sometimes an install goes bad in the download or the install or the post install migration. If your second try at a clean install of everything ( software, firmware updates, setup) fails you’ll know you need a repair.

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  • Thank you. Does it sound plausible that "... installing Monterey on my MacBook..." would cause this damage?
    – Dan
    Commented Nov 18, 2022 at 19:30
  • It's 100% plausabile that you noticed the failure as you did that install, not that it caused it. Correlation and causality are hard until someone that knows how to fix it does the fix. You might fix it with a reinstall and then you'll know more @Dan
    – bmike ♦
    Commented Nov 18, 2022 at 19:53
  • Hmmm... I'm just wondering whether it happens ever/sometimes/often in your experience, that trying to install a system update makes this kind thing happen? Does Apple not guard against 'incompatible' upgrades of their own s/w on their own machines?
    – Dan
    Commented Nov 18, 2022 at 20:18
  • The Apple site says "... Software Update shows only upgrades that are compatible with your Mac...". I understand this means that Monterey is compatible with my MacBook (because I was able to do it). Surely this means that installing Monterey could not have been the cause of my MacBook problem?
    – Dan
    Commented Nov 18, 2022 at 20:42
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    @bmike is correct, installing software is not going to be the cause of a hardware problem. Installing software is something the Mac was designed to do. You may indeed have an issue that requires repair or replacement of hardware. But the problem being caused by an installation... You're more likely to win the lottery. By coincidence the issues happened at about the same time.
    – Steve Chambers
    Commented Nov 18, 2022 at 21:29

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