I sh*t you not....a couple hours after posting this, my 2017 MacBook Pro 15 (A1707) booted up just fine, and the touchbar was working again. This is after 3 days of banging my head on the desk trying to figure out a way around it. I'm thinking the macOS 10.15.3 update had something to do with it, since it just came out and my system updated to it while in Safe Mode.
I do know for a fact what killed it was me wiping the entire drive (all partitions, including the one specifically set aside for the touchbar). It worked perfectly fine until I did this and then re-installed the OS. Why did I do this you ask? I just bought this MBP from someone on Facebook and I wanted to be sure I was starting from a completely clean slate.
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=== Update (02/03/2020) ===
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Everything I read online says you should not wipe all the partitions on the MBPs with the touchbar, only the main OS partition. This totally smells like a software issue to me and not a hardware issue. Especially since mine was fine until I nuked all the partitions. Also, this site gave me a lot of insight into what I potentially did to create the issue. See the author's 6th attempt (Workflow 6):
[https://blog.eriknicolasgomez.com/2016/11/27/the-untouchables-apples-new-os-activation-for-touch-bar-macbook-pros/|The Untouchables - Apples New OS Activation for Touch Bar MacBook Pros]
I sh*t you not....a couple hours after posting this, my 2017 MacBook Pro 15 (A1707) booted up just fine, and the touchbar was working again. This is after 3 days of banging my head on the desk trying to figure out a way around it. I'm thinking the macOS 10.15.3 update had something to do with it, since it just came out and my system updated to it while in Safe Mode.
I do know for a fact what killed it was me wiping the entire drive (all partitions, including the one specifically set aside for the touchbar). It worked perfectly fine until I did this and then re-installed the OS. Why did I do this you ask? I just bought this MBP from someone on Facebook and I wanted to be sure I was starting from a completely clean slate.
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=== Update (02/03/2020) ===
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Everything I read online says you should not wipe all the partitions on the MBPs with the touchbar, only the main OS partition. This totally smells like a software issue to me and not a hardware issue. Especially since mine was fine until I nuked all the partitions. Also, this site gave me a lot of insight into what I potentially did to create the issue. See the author's 6th attempt (Workflow 6):
I sh*t you not....a couple hours after posting this, my 2017 MacBook Pro 15 (A1707) booted up just fine, and the touchbar was working again. This is after 3 days of banging my head on the desk trying to figure out a way around it. I'm thinking the macOS 10.15.3 update had something to do with it, since it just came out and my system updated to it while in Safe Mode.
I do know for a fact what killed it was me wiping the entire drive (all partitions, including the one specifically set aside for the touchbar). It worked perfectly fine until I did this and then re-installed the OS. Why did I do this you ask? I just bought this MBP from someone on Facebook and I wanted to be sure I was starting from a completely clean slate.