MacBook – 2013 Macbook Air can’t get past grey screen

bootdiagnostichardwaremacbook prorecovery

We were camping, I was trying to pull up a movie and it froze. It was completely unresponsive, I didn't see the kernel panic message but I forced a restart by holding down the power button.
On booting again, it went straight to the "prohibitory symbol." I forced another restart, and since then, the screen has just been grey. No Apple logo, nothing.
After 30-45 minutes, I get the flashing question mark folder.

I have reset the SMC and NVRAM. Resetting the NVRAM seems to work, it does the startup chime, the screen flashes, and then shortly after it chimes again. It didn't help.

I can't boot into recovery ⌘ CommandR., Internet recovery ⌘ Command⌥ OptionR, or diagnostics D. Safe mode ⇧ Shift
and single-user mode ⌘ Commands didn't work either.

I have tried booting off of a Lubuntu flash drive ⌥ Option and a SliTaz live CD via a USB CD drive C; neither of those did anything either. If I leave it for a while, the flash drive will start blinking and the CD spins up, but the computer is still grey and unresponsive. I have a Mac at work, so I might try creating a bootable flash drive from that once I go back.

I've ordered one of their cursed pentalobe screwdrivers; does anyone know if this machine has diagnostic LEDs like the older iMacs? I'm thinking it's definitely a hardware issue at this point but I don't know how to move forward, I figure I can at least recover the SSD.

Thanks in advance, let me know if you need any other details. I haven't seen anything like this before.

I think it was running 10.8 or 10.9 but I don't know for sure, I haven't really used it in a couple years. Model is A1466, EMC 2632.

Best Answer

... does anyone know if this machine has diagnostic LEDs like the older iMacs?

There are no diagnostic LEDs on the logic board.

I'm thinking it's definitely a hardware issue at this point but I don't know how to move forward, I figure I can at least recover the SSD.

This is a big jump in determination when two very conspicuous clues were presented:

Now, I'm not ruling out hardware - it's entirely possible your drive has failed. But breaking out the screwdriver prior to doing any sort of diagnostics or even examining the symptoms a bit more is putting the cart before the horse. You can run Apple Diagnostics by holding D while booting from a powered off state.

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