Screen of Death OSX 10.5.6 update

[davidnix71]

http://www.macfixit.com/article.php?story=20081230075219806

has the fix. Use screen sharing. Close the cover after booting, attach an external display, keyboard and mouse, then do the firmware update again.

Jobs is an iD10T. Firmware updates are risky and should ALWAYS be done alone. There better be a damn good reason to flash the video bios.

[worker201]

Screen of Death?  It's just a blacked out screen.  I'd say the multi-language kernel panic screen is the one Apple users are afraid to see.

As many commenters note, this is only a problem for late-2008 versions of the MBP.  Old-ass models like mine are totally unaffected.

[Lead Head]

I would have thought it would have checked for compatibility before hand

[davidnix71]

It's not compatability that's the problem. Apparently the firmware flash doesn't have checksums or check itself. If it's corrupt, it just goes ahead anyway. It also doesn't check to see if you password protected the firmware, so it will fail on that, too.

Inexcusably stupid. Firmware updates should always be standalone and with a backup power supply, and then only to fix a major bug. People set auto updates, trusting Apple.

I don't understand why video driver updates require a firmware update. That's apparently what started all this.

Worker, there were reports of kernel panics with this. If the video driver update was corrupt, then the boot fails.

[bedouin]

Inexcusably stupid. Firmware updates should always be standalone and with a backup power supply, and then only to fix a major bug. People set auto updates, trusting Apple.

Well, they do warn you beforehand that you should connect to a power source.