I was involved in a serious accident which I survived but my old M1 Macbook Air didn't. I couldn't afford a new one so I turned to the Facebook Marketplace and found an iCloud Activation locked 2020 M1 Macbook Air exactly like mine for $100 and couldn't resist not buying it. The guy selling it didn't look like he even knew what a Macbook is so I figured it was stolen.
I was able to harvest my HD and Touch ID from the old one and did the whole switcheroo and ended up with an almost brand new Macbook after doing a Time Machine restore with no issues and used it for 1 year.
The only thing I wasn't able to do was enter recovery mode. For some reason whenever I hold the power/Touch ID button for longer than 2 seconds the Macbook would immediately power off no matter how many times I tried. I eventually gave up troubleshooting the thing because not being able to enter recovery mode was something I could live with given all that's happened.
2 weeks ago my Touch ID stopped working and I don't know if it was long overdue or because I'm a slob and eat and smoke over the keyboard. Even my password wouldn't get accepted so I needed to reinstall MacOS. I was able to erase my Mac (from Disk Utility) and reinstall after pivoting from the Apple ID reset and then restored from an earlier back and I'm back to normal running Mac OS 15.1 Beta 2 but without a functioning Touch ID.
I hate being back in this scenario but I now realize the importance of being able to boot into recovery however I still can't afford a new laptop and trying to fix the Touch ID button costs $120 which I'm trying to avoid-- plus I don't even know if that would fix the problem, even though the fingerprint reading function returns.
I tried running a Python script from my Documents directory that forced boot-args on the nvram thinking maybe that would get me into recovery. It worked by shutting down the Macbook but then after restart it booted straight into MacOS.
Can someone please give me an expert's opinion? Is this the work of the SIP after I swapped the components or is it because of a faulty power button?
My ideal scenario is to be able to run a script but I don't know how feasible that is, otherwise, my next option is to replace the TouchID system but even with this there are doubts.
Appreciate any help.
