Apple - MacBook Pro black screens and shuts off after a few minutes' use

As discussed on the MacRumors forums thread, Help! Updated to macOS 10.12.4, MBP randomly shuts off, it is likely that AppleThunderboltNHI.kext is the culprit:

So if you disable (move out of /System/Library/Extensions) AppleThunderboltNHI.kext driver then reboot. Everything runs ok, you can connect external screens via Thunderbolt.

The only drawback is that Ethernet via Thunderbolt will not work.


Been having the same issue for about a year now, right now the only way to prevent it from shutting down randomly is to have the Thunderbolt Gigabit Ethernet Adapter plugged in all the time. Brought my unit to Apple multiple times but were to no avail.


I have now hit on a solution. I'm not sure if it's the correct one, but it works for me so I thought I'd at least post it.

My vague suspicion: things worked perfectly in Windows, but not on Mac OS. This means that it's probably a hardware issue manifesting itself due to differing driver implementations between the two OSes. So, I started disabling driver kexts until Mac OS stopped crashing.

I created a folder under /System/Library/DisabledExtensions/ and moved these files from /System/Library/Extensions:

AppleFWAudio.kext
AppleThunderboltDPAdapters.kext
AppleThunderboltEDMService.kext
AppleThunderboltIP.kext
AppleThunderboltNHI.kext
AppleThunderboltPCIAdapters.kext
AppleThunderboltUTDM.kext
AppleUSBAudio.kext
AppleUSBDisplays.kext
AppleUSBEthernet.kext
AppleUSBEthernetHost.kext
IOUserEthernet.kext

It now works.