MBP: Sierra 10.12 USB lost in system profiler, but working in installer

[Uwe]

Hello,
I have a MBP 5,3 with Sierra installed since a couple of month without problems.

After a reboot of my MBP I am stuck in the login screen as trackpad and keyboard are not respodning any more.
USB ports are "dead", means I can not operate external devices on it.

Starting the "rescue" partition is not possible as the option is crossed out, means the icon with the crossed cricle appears. Bes..ides I can use the trackpad on the screen when to chosse the start partition.

However, I can start the installer program from a USB stick - it is not a dead USB port I assume.

With system profiler from the installer program I can see that there is no "USB" under hardware - could it be that I lost the system driver of MACOS?
I can use the Terminal as well etc. (from the Disk utility)

I did not install anything before the reboot.

Does anybody have an idea what to do to get the SUB working again without reinstalling?
The ususal stuff I did already, like SMC/NVRAM reset, using disk utility to repair file access rights , reboots etc.

Thak you for any hint fro a solution.


Thanx, cal

 

[honestone]

First, you do have a backup to an external device, right?

Secondly, is this your machine:

http://www.everymac.com/systems/app...66-aluminum-15-mid-2009-sd-unibody-specs.html

If so, I'm surprised you were able to get Sierra to run on it, as here is the "official" Mac compatibility list:

http://osxdaily.com/2016/06/14/macos-sierra-compatibility-list/

Note that it says "MacBook Pro (2010 and later)". But, according to the link above (if it is correct), your MacBook Pro is a 2009 model.

 

[Uwe]

Hello honestone, it is correct, the model is not officially supported for Sierra. But it was working fine for a few month now.

I have a backup, but would prefer not to use it. Of course, if there is no way around it, I can use the backup.

I was just thinking due to the fact that "system profiler" is not showing te USB stack, it is just a config file problem...may be the ".kext" one. I have no knowledge how the MAC manages to load the basic drivers for the hardware, so I am stuck to identify the possible problem.

 

[Uwe]

...but may be this is due to the workaround for installing Sierra in combination with updates. I will chech the install routines from the time when I installed Sierra a cople of month ago....may be there are some changes.

Thanx, cal

 

[honestone]

What Mac OS were you using prior to Sierra? And were you experiencing such issues with that OS/

It is difficult, at best, to try and fix an issue with an unsupported OS on your machine. I'm surprised it worked as well as it did for those few months.

 

[Uwe]

Well, before it was El Capitan.
Sierra was reported to work without any issues for my MBP. Therefore I installed it a few month ago.
I think one of the updates broke my USB (silent updates)...I am going to do a manual upgrade to the latest version from an USB with the patches needed.

For the moment thank you very much.

 

[honestone]

First, when you say "Sierra was reported to work without any issues for my MBP", where did you see that?

Secondly, did you just "upgrade in place", from El Capitan to Sierra? That is, did you download Sierra, and run the installer without doing anything else? That could be problematic, especially on an unsupported machine. The other way to do it would have been to first download OS 10.12.x, then make a backup to an external device, then boot the machine "externally". Next, use Disk Utility there to Erase and Format your internal drive, do a fresh, "virgin" installation of Sierra, and finally use Migration Assistant to "migrate"/copy stuff from the backup.

Third, exactly what do you mean by doing a "manual upgrade to the latest version from an USB with the patches needed"?

Last, for any third party software you are using, is it compatible with Sierra?

 

[Uwe]

This was reported in "macrumors.com" in the unsupported macs area/ thread.....a site with an overview for unsupported systems.

In the meantime I found the error. It was the system integrity protection that somehow got enabled again. This needs to be disabled to be able to use Sierra on officially unsupported systems.

Anyway, thank you for taking ur time.....

The solution is to check if system integrity is still disabled. (only needed for use of OS on unsupported systems)