If you came across this post, there’s a good chance you’re staring at your Mac with the T2 chip in horror, because is giving you one of its recovery errors.
These recovery errors occur when attempting Internet Recovery mode and tells you to go to apple.com/support with the error code -2101F or -3403F.
I recently purchased a 2018 MacBook Pro and from day one the thing has been a nightmare. But if there’s one piece of advice I can give you or anyone else: DO NOT EVER ATTEMPT TO WIPE YOUR INTERNAL SSD! But if you’re here, it’s probably too late for that.
I was able to resolve this error by resetting the NVRAM. With your Mac off, press the power button, then immediately press and hold COMMAND + OPTION + P + R. Continue holding until the Apple logo appears, disappears, then appears again. You may also need to perform a DFU restore similar to the iPhone prior to resetting the NVRAM.
At that point Internet Recovery should work (COMMAND + OPTION + R).
Now that you’ve escaped a heart attack, I encourage you to keep reading.
Protect yourself against bricks
Your internal SSD contains special tokens that “belong” to your unique T2 chip. The idea is that if your SSD is ever tampered with, the T2 chip’s on-the-fly encryption prevents extraction of your data. By default, the T2 chip prevents your hardware from booting from anything other than a trusted, signed version of macOS. It also prevents booting from any external drive. I would equate this feature to BMW’s infamous “deadlock” feature.
This also means that if something goes wrong with your installation of macOS, CONGRATULATIONS! You now own a $3,000 brick.
Unless you absolutely need the T2’s extraction prevention, I implore you to disable these security features and allow external booting until Apple releases a reliable method to recover the internal SSD.
Dear Tim,
I CANNOT THANK YOU ENOUGH for publishing this! You saved my Mac’s life after my dumb self really screwed up! THANK YOU SO MUCH!!! I couldn’t get this help from apple!
Happy to help, Mandi!
Bro, you saved my mac! Thanks a lot!
I want to thank you. Good job and well understood what we felt!
I wonder why Apple just write numbers as 2101F?
They have 1 TB in computer and they don’t write what the error is on the error page. Abbreviation is sometimes good, but crazy on a computer screen. I hope someone from Apple see what I mean and use some bytes for explanation.
Last words; All the best Mr.Tim.
Thanks, this really worked! 2018 mbp 13….holy fk
Thanks very much! It really helped overcome the 2101F problem. I was able to get through to the disk utility. I have not be able to complete the re-installation yet (i have a poor internet link and i guess it is painful for it to download some 5 Gb, but that’s a different story), but at least i could get over through that problem. Thank you
Very cool, thank you so much man. You are the best!!!!
THANK YOU SOOOO SUPER MUCH!!
You are such a life saver!! Wish more people could see this post too if they are encountering a 2101F error!!
All the blessings and love for you!
And everyone who might need help with this!!
Thank you so much! Thought it was gone forever <3
Hi! Is somebody there? i have exactly this problem with my MacBook A2159 but began after update from Sonoma to Sequoia Beta, for a while the system was well after suddenly never again finish the started process. So i tried with different ways to restore but only can start with “command + r” to restore from internet and appear this error “starup- 2101f” and reset the nvram doesn’t work for me. Any solution I can try? Thanks!
Did you try the DFU restore?