NEGOSENTRO.COM | My MacBook turns on to a white screen, and Here is What I did | When I turned on my MacBook Pro, there was no startup chime, no Apple logo but a white screen. I knew I was experiencing a white screen issue so I didn’t panic because the problem is completely solvable. If you are encountering the same problem as I did, I’d like to share my experience to relieve your concerns.
What does it mean when a Mac screen turns white?
If the Mac computer shows the white screen at startup, AKA the White Screen of Death, it means that your Mac can’t boot up because the operating system has sensed a problem. The problem may come from the hardware, software, or even the firmware. Besides the situation I came across, there are two other different scenarios of a white-screen Mac.
You turn on the Mac and the Mac sings the startup chime and shows the Apple logo, but your Mac whites out after you type the password into the login screen. The other situation happens during your using the computer – the screen suddenly gets frozen with a spinning wheel or a cursor.
No matter which white/blank/grey screen your Mac is stuck in, my experience of solving the problem might give you some ideas for a start.
How did I fix the white-screen issue?
Before going to anything too technical, I disconnected my peripherals first. As far as I know the third-party peripherals often crash a computer due to the hardware incompatibility. I disconnected all wired and wireless peripherals, including the external hard disks, the mouse, the USB hub, and any other removable hardware. I restarted the MacBook but the computer still couldn’t start up right.
Apparently third-party peripherals were not the cause to my non-booting MacBook. Then I decided to check and repair the potential software errors on the startup disk, which could be the reason why my MacBook Pro couldn’t finish starting up.
I restarted the MacBook again and held Command and R keys before the Apple startup chimed. Then, I released the buttons until I saw the Apple logo and a progress bar. If you can’t boot into Recovery Mode using Command and R keys, try to use Command + R +Option or Command + R + Option + Shift keys. After successfully booting in to Recovery Mode, I selected Disk Utility and clicked Continue in the macOS Utility window. Next, I selected the startup disk in Disk Utility. Last, I clicked on the First Aid tab at the top menu and chose Run to repair the disk. Unfortunately, First Aid did little to this problem.
During an event of a system crash, the reinstallation of macOS is always the easiest way to make the Mac boot. However, not many people want to reinstall an OS because the reinstallation of OS will format the startup disk and make all stored files inaccessible.
If you have a habit of backing up important files regularly like me, it will be easy to restore data using your own backups or Time Machine. If you don’t have a copy of your important files, I recommend iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac as your best choice. It can restore your important pictures, videos, email files, documents and other files from an unbootable Mac successfully without a bootable disk. In addition, if your Mac is secured by a T2 chip, the software is the only software now to make Mac files recovery from T2-quipped Macs possible.
After making sure that all valuable Mac files were safe, I left the First Aid screen and chose Erase. I have a suggestion here – do not use Reinstall macOS option directly. That is because the errors on the startup disk that prevent the Mac from starting up may fail the reinstallation as well. The best way to do it is to format the startup volume first as the formatting will fix all errors on the startup disk. It will get rid of the errors and ensure the success of the reinstallation.
In the Erase pop-up, I filled in “macOS” as the name for the startup disk and chose APFS as the Format because I was going to reinstall macOS 10.14 Mojave. If you are not sure what file system you should format the disk with, the Mac usually displays a default file system in Format and you can just leave as it is. Click on Erase to confirm the operation.
At last, I went back to the macOS Utilities home window and checked the Wi-Fi connection. Then I chose Reinstall macOS. By following the wizard, I successfully reinstalled the OS and made the Mac boot past the white screen.
Conclusion
Starting a Mac to a full white screen is not as scary as you expected. I finally came to reinstall the macOS to solve the problem, but you may be luckier to find additional ways to make the Mac boot before the reinstallation. If you do need to reinstall the OS, remember to secure the Mac files first.
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