Disabled Macbook air (2011)

edain55337
New Contributor III

After sending out a batch "lock" to several macbook air's (all mid 2011), I am getting several that will not boot to the "unlock" screen but only show the error message of "computer disabled try again in 60 minutes" but never get the opportunity to try again - the timer resets. I am able to netboot (tried turning off firmware password was able to do it but when reboot still getting a disabled mac message) and am currently trying to try a net restore (and then try resetting firmware password - turn it off then on).

Anybody have a tried and true method other then trying to convince apple to take care of it?

4 REPLIES 4

edain55337
New Contributor III

Ok, came up with a solution.
1) Netboot. (Had to enter the passcode)
2) In the Utilities, there is a Firmware Password Utility. Opened it, told it to turn off the firmware password. Had to enter the passcode.
3) Restarted (believe it or not, had to enter the passcode again) and Netboot (again).
4) Ran Disk Utility - repaired rights, and fixed disk.
5) Restarted to disk. Guess what? Had to enter the passcode (again). Computer self started, pass code was gone.

rmoline
New Contributor

Forgot to add one thing (and it's rather important). On step 5, you need to zap the P-Ram (CMD-OPT-P-R on boot) 3 times.

So far fixed 3 machines I was having issues with.

roiegat
Contributor III

I've noticed on some machines that you really do need to zap them three times. Not sure why that's the magical number but seems to work well.

mmiklosz
New Contributor

im stuck in the same issue with my macbook pro. I know my pin but it was disabled from guessing to much and now i cant enter the 4 digit pin. Can you please explain how netboot works? ive looked everywhere on to to boot it up with deploystudio but im confused with it all.