Macbook Pro GPU Problem Fix

This can't be good!

If your Macbook is giving you a white screen of death during boot up, you might want to try this procedure.  My 2012 Macbook was getting about 1/3 of the way through the boot process, blinks the screen, coughs, then starts over.

It turns out a major problem with older macs is the AMD GPU eats itself and prevents bootup.  You have two options: go to the Apple Store and pay big dollars for a new graphics card, or disable the GPU.

If you decide to disable the GPU, just know that 3D applications that normally use the GPU will be slow.  But for normal operations, your Mac will work fine.

Here is the procedure I successfully used:

Reset the SMC

Shutdown, unplug everything except power and hold

leftShift + Ctrl + Option + Power 

Hold this for 5 seconds

Reset NVRAM: Power up and hold

Command + Option + p + r

Until you hear the startup chime two times.

Shutdown computer

Power up and boot into Single User Recovery by holding

if you are on high sierra 10.13.6+ you might need to use Command + r instead

Command + r + s

On the screen that loads choose a language. Next, on the screen which appears next choose the following options in the menu Utilities -> Terminal (see below.)

In the terminal that comes up, type the following commands:

Disable SIP (This is slow)

csrutil disable

Disable Discrete GPU on boot by running

nvram fa4ce28d-b62f-4c99-9cc3-6815686e30f9:gpu-power-prefs=%01

Reboot

reboot

Boot into Single User-mode by holding

Command + s

It might look as if it hanged, but press enter and you should see the shell (root#)

Mount root partition writeable

/sbin/mount -uw /

Make a kext-backup directory

mkdir -p /System/Library/Extensions-off

Move ONLY ONE offending kext out of the way

mv /System/Library/Extensions/AMDRadeonX3000.kext  /System/Library/Extensions-off/

Inform the system to update its kextcache:

touch /System/Library/Extensions/

Reboot

reboot

I hope this helps you get more life out of your Macbook.  Let me know if this worked.

Mac OS Mojave Dark Mode - Set Mail Background to White

This is an example bad-looking email.

I don't entirely hate the Mac OS Mojave Dark Mode.  It's kind of a cool, different view of our real estate.  I don't know that it was entirely worth the download, but at least my Mac isn't bothering me every day to upgrade.

Anyway, one problem I had was that email backgrounds were all dark.  This made reading emails super-tough when I got replies in dark text.  Emails never quite look right.  Well, there is a fix for it!

To return your Mac Mail emails to defaulting to white, follow these steps:

1. First be in Dark Mode (Apple -> System Preferences -> General.  Set Appearance: Dark)
2. Next, open Mac Mail and go to Mail preferences.  Mail -> Preferences
3. Select the Viewing icon
4. Un-check the Use dark backgrounds for messages

Have an awesome, productive day!