My work laptop, a 2018 MacBook Pro, needs a new battery and so I will be shipping it off to have that serviced. Prior to getting that serviced, I need a temporary system, so I went to the office to grab one of the spares we have, another 2018 MBP. This system was used by a former coworker, one who retired months ago, and he no longer remembers the firmware password he configured on the system.
I thought this system was a brick, until an Apple expert pointed me to the DFU restore option using Apple Configurator 2. The startup key sequence for this is ... tricky. I tried it a few times, but was not successful until I watched this YouTube video that demonstrates the process.
Using DFU mode, I first tried the Revive option. The laptop booted back to the firmware prompt, so I then tried the Restore option, which caused this laptop to boot into Internet Recovery mode. Perfect! Now I have this unit installing its original OS -- Mojave -- and will update to Big Sur once it is done.
Internet Recovery is cool, but slow. It's a little faster over ethernet versus wifi, especially with a gigabit connection, but it's still slow. Anyway, this thing is working now and is no longer a brick, so it's good now.
I am a system engineer in the Raleigh, NC area. My main interests are Unix, VMware, and networking. More about me, and how I got started.