Apple has designed their Mac and MacBook computers to be highly reliable. You may never encounter a hardware related issue with your machine, but even the best engineering can run into unexpected problems. Luckily, there are some remedies built into your computer.
The macOS has a number of diagnostic tools such as Disk Utility and Activity Monitor which can help pinpoint software or hardware issues. They can help identify disk problems or subsystems that are impacting the overall performance of your computer. You can attempt to boot your system in Recovery Mode when faced with an unresponsive machine. At times, these solutions will not be sufficient to get you up and running again.
When faced with unresolved hardware issues you may need to make use of Apple Diagnostics or Apple Hardware Test. These are modes in which to boot your computer to run diagnostic hardware tests.
Macs and MacBooks released after June 2013 use Apple Diagnostics whereas on earlier machines the Apple Hardware Test is employed. We will look at both so you can choose the one appropriate for your computer. There are slight differences in the procedure to use with the two variants of the tool.
The tool should be installed on your hard drive or SSD storage. If it is not, your machine will automatically download the tool from the Internet as long as you have an active Internet connection. You can also start the test by booting your computer from a Mac install disc from machines running OS X 10.7 or earlier.
Apple Diagnostics will help you determine the hardware problem affecting your Mac. It can identify the troublesome component and suggest possible solutions. The tool can also help you get in touch with Apple support if needed. If you are using a firmware password, turn it off before attempting to run Apple Diagnostics.
Follow these steps to use Apple Diagnostics on your computer.
Selecting more detailed information will start your machine in macOS Recovery mode and brings up a webpage through which you can obtain support.
Owners of older Macs will use Apple Hardware Test to identify issues with their machine’s hardware. As it was the foundation for Apple Diagnostics, it is very similar in functionality. Follow these steps to run it on your machine.
Both Apple Diagnostics and Apple Hardware Test can be started from the Internet by pressing Option + D rather than simply D when starting the test.
We hope that you never need to use these tools, but it’s great to know that Apple has made them available to help you diagnose hardware issues with your Mac. We hope that we have made it easier for you to make use of another of the great features that came with your computer.
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