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kvncrw46

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jul 14, 2015
16
4
Vancouver, BC, Canada
To treat my wife, I had an SSD drive on her beloved 2011 17" MBP. Upon first use, it froze when opening photos and the cursor disappeared. After a restart, vertical purple lines appeared. After chatting with the company who instaled the SSD, they said it was a failing GPU. Essentially, death by costing too much to fix. The company is reluctant to associate the installation with the problems that followed it. Could they be right? The MBP did overheat this summer while off and just with power connected, but that's all. After cooling down, all was fine.
In an attempt to resolve the problems, I ran DU first aid, Onyx permissions, reset pram, apple hardware test, all to no avail. Finally, I reset SMC and the MBP returned to normal. Alas, only for a few hours of use, and the 'twilight zone' in photos reappeared. I discovered, however, that by unplugging the mag power connector, it immediately worked perfectly, with youtube and photos simultaneously without a hitch for hours. The secret is the power connection, I thought. Maybe not the GPU. Alas again, I disconnected the power and did an extended apple hardware test to see if the GPU would be flagged, but after humming along for 30 min., the purple lines returned and the BMP was frozen and very hot underneath. A pram reset has brought it back to normal while disconnected from power. So far, it's happy to all that is requested as long as the power is disconnected. I realize there an eighty-page thread on how to bypass the AMD GPU set, but that is beyond my little brain. Any thoughts? Thanks.
 
To treat my wife, I had an SSD drive on her beloved 2011 17" MBP. Upon first use, it froze when opening photos and the cursor disappeared. After a restart, vertical purple lines appeared. After chatting with the company who instaled the SSD, they said it was a failing GPU. Essentially, death by costing too much to fix. The company is reluctant to associate the installation with the problems that followed it. Could they be right? The MBP did overheat this summer while off and just with power connected, but that's all. After cooling down, all was fine.
In an attempt to resolve the problems, I ran DU first aid, Onyx permissions, reset pram, apple hardware test, all to no avail. Finally, I reset SMC and the MBP returned to normal. Alas, only for a few hours of use, and the 'twilight zone' in photos reappeared. I discovered, however, that by unplugging the mag power connector, it immediately worked perfectly, with youtube and photos simultaneously without a hitch for hours. The secret is the power connection, I thought. Maybe not the GPU. Alas again, I disconnected the power and did an extended apple hardware test to see if the GPU would be flagged, but after humming along for 30 min., the purple lines returned and the BMP was frozen and very hot underneath. A pram reset has brought it back to normal while disconnected from power. So far, it's happy to all that is requested as long as the power is disconnected. I realize there an eighty-page thread on how to bypass the AMD GPU set, but that is beyond my little brain. Any thoughts? Thanks.

Sorry but that is ia very common problem withat mode of MacBook Pro. The only person who might help you is louis rossmann. He is on youtube. To be honest, even if itcan be fixed, it most like cost more than it is worth.
 
Sorry but that is ia very common problem withat mode of MacBook Pro. The only person who might help you is louis rossmann. He is on youtube. To be honest, even if itcan be fixed, it most like cost more than it is worth.

Sure, if you feel like being berated as an idiot for your purchasing decisions, then go ask that person.

Alternatively you could ask any local repair shop, literally any, for help on the matter. If you're in over your head, then spending the $50 or whatever can save you a lot of time and money. If it is the GPU that has died, then bypassing it will help, maybe someone can help translate the process for you.

I would suggest however you hold out on spending money on the machine. It's old and obsolete, if you can fix it for $50 or spend 10 minutes doing a quick band-aide fix then sure. But I wouldn't go about reflowing connections and spending $200 getting it sorted, it's not worth it.
 
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As New_Mac_Smell wrote, it just doesn't worth fixing it...
I had the same problem with the 15" 2011 model, twice. First time after 4,5 years of usage, the logic board was replaced under Apple's logic board replacement program (known issue with those 2011 models), and after a year or so the faulty GPU problem again.

Apple official repair shop didn't accept my laptop to be fixed again (with me paying this time) because there were no more parts available for the specific model here in Greece. You see, for the faulty GPU issue, they were replacing the whole logic board.

I ended up doing a GPU replacement at a local repair shop. The guy there told me, that because of the high temperatures, there is no guarantee that the replacement will last. The whole fix was 180€ that is approximately 247 USD if I'm not mistaken.

I am still using this machine from time to time, and it's working quite well (I have Macs Fan installed so as to keep temperatures as low as possible) but the truth is I can't rely on this machine anymore (I am a professional graphic designer). At the time I fixed the laptop was because I didn't have any other machine to work with.

I don't know about bypassing the AMD GPU, never tried it, to be honest, but I know people that done it and it works well for everyday usage. Maybe that is your best bet if you want to keep the machine.
 
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To treat my wife, I had an SSD drive on her beloved 2011 17" MBP. Upon first use, it froze when opening photos and the cursor disappeared. After a restart, vertical purple lines appeared. After chatting with the company who instaled the SSD, they said it was a failing GPU. Essentially, death by costing too much to fix. The company is reluctant to associate the installation with the problems that followed it. Could they be right? The MBP did overheat this summer while off and just with power connected, but that's all. After cooling down, all was fine.
In an attempt to resolve the problems, I ran DU first aid, Onyx permissions, reset pram, apple hardware test, all to no avail. Finally, I reset SMC and the MBP returned to normal. Alas, only for a few hours of use, and the 'twilight zone' in photos reappeared. I discovered, however, that by unplugging the mag power connector, it immediately worked perfectly, with youtube and photos simultaneously without a hitch for hours. The secret is the power connection, I thought. Maybe not the GPU. Alas again, I disconnected the power and did an extended apple hardware test to see if the GPU would be flagged, but after humming along for 30 min., the purple lines returned and the BMP was frozen and very hot underneath. A pram reset has brought it back to normal while disconnected from power. So far, it's happy to all that is requested as long as the power is disconnected. I realize there an eighty-page thread on how to bypass the AMD GPU set, but that is beyond my little brain. Any thoughts? Thanks.

Yeah it's a common failure colloquially referred to as Radeongate. Nothing you can do I'm afraid.

Most people download gfxCardStatus (https://gfx.io/) and force it to always run on the Intel HD rather than the dGPU to bypass the point of failure. But this is much slower. The boards are inherently faulty to be honest so any repair/refurb won't last.
 
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Yeah it's a common failure colloquially referred to as Radeongate. Nothing you can do I'm afraid.

Most people download gfxCardStatus (https://gfx.io/) and force it to always run on the Intel HD rather than the dGPU to bypass the point of failure. But this is much slower. The boards are inherently faulty to be honest so any repair/refurb won't last.

Not exactly...

Yes, it is a very know issue 2011 MBP's, called Radeon-gate

When the mac is powered on, during the boot sequence, defined by the EFI, in first place is turned on the Radeon GPU, and if you have a failed GPU, the system can't manage this order and reboot. Therefore the gfxCardStatus can't do nothing, so, your suggestion won't work at all.

But out there is a very simple procedure, which disable the Radeon GPU and force the mac to use always the integrated Intel GPU.

The procedure allows you to use your mac almost normally. You will lose the video output, and you maybe will need to repeat the fix after certain circumstances.

Here is the tread

https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...ntel-integrated-gpu-efi-variable-fix.2037591/

And the short history:

- Reboot your mac in safe mode:
  1. Start your Mac
  2. Press and hold the Shift key
  3. The Apple logo should appear
  4. When the login window appears release the shift key and log in
- Download and unzip the contents to the root of you boot drive
https://forums.macrumors.com/attachments/roxy-zip.715054/

- Reboot your mac in single user mode:
Hold down Command-S on your keyboard immediately after pressing the power button to turn on your Mac.
Then, type "bash roxy" (without the quotes and press enter.....it will type out the long tedious commands and reboot automatically)

Credits to AppleMacFinder and mikecwest (and probably many others)
 
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I had the same problem and I tried to get repair parts for a month or so with no luck. The solutions posted by @JMVB sounds great and I would recommend to give it a try.

I did something else, maybe a little bit crazy, but I found some reports from people who baked their MBP 17 in the oven. It seems to work for some GFX cards, too. I tried it and I am typing this post on my beloved resurrected MMP 17 2011.
But caution! You might kill your MBP with this method, it worked for me does not mean it will work for you, too!

What I did:
1) You will need some thermal paste, buy this before.
2) My guide to disassemble the MacBook is form iFixIt. You find everything here, needed tools and a really good step by step guide.
3) Remove the CPU cooler and clean the cpu / gnu from thermal paste.
4) Remove the RAM. Now you should have just the logic board left.
5) Take aluminium foil. Important - don't put the logic board directly on a baking try! Build some "legs" using aluminum foil.
6) Cover the ports on the left side with some aluminium foil.

It should look like this:
edit: please see image in attachment, link does not work...

7) Heat the oven to 200 degree celsius.
8) put the try with the logic board in the oven, bake it for 7 minutes
9) After the seven minutes, get the try out of the oven and give the logic board time to cool down, about 30 minutes or so.
10) Assemble it again, reverse order with iFixIt. Add some thermal paste to CPU and GPU. Oh yes, and take a moment to clean everything from dust etc.

That's it. It worked for me, the purple line were gone and I can use the GPU again.

But remember: There is no guarantee that this method will work for you. You should know what you are doing, I mean you should be familiar with assembling computer parts. Read the iFixIt guide closely, ask yourself if you can do it.
 

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The OP wrote:
"After chatting with the company who instaled the SSD, they said it was a failing GPU. Essentially, death by costing too much to fix. The company is reluctant to associate the installation with the problems that followed it. Could they be right?"

Yes.
They are right.

With a failing GPU, there's not much left to do.

Apple won't touch this anymore.

You -might- find a 3rd party repair place that will do the replacement, but the replacement boards are just as likely to fail as the original. Not worth the money.

There -is- a way to permanently disable the discrete GPU and run with the integrated graphics only. There are threads here on macrumors that outline what to do. It's complicated.

The best option:
Time to start looking for a replacement.
Take the SSD out of it, and put it into an external USB3 enclosure.
You can also use the enclosure to migrate your wife's data from the old HDD to a new MacBook.
 
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Greetings, everyone. Thanks very much for your thoughtful replies, especially those that gave very detailed recommendations. Before posting, I went searching hopefully, always in denial, that a solution could be found. Little could I imagine that someone would think of putting an MBP in an oven. Thanks for the step by step advice, nachtfrost, you are a braver person than me. Thanks, JMVB, for a precise and clear guide to disabling the AMD chip. I looked at other forums and articles with this guide, but yours my little brain probably could follow. Thanks, slam5, New-Mac-Smell, Nicalm, keysofananxiety, and Fishrrman for your recommendations.
Upon returning to the repair shop, he offered to remove the SSD and replace the old drive for free. Or, replace the board (which I know might fail but buy time) for a very modest price. The spouse will ponder. Five stars on Yelp for a reason. Five stars to the helpful strangers on Macrumors who have helped with advice in the past and in this post.
.
 
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OP:

Again, your best bet at this point is to shop for another Mac.
Take the SSD out (you can do it yourself with a Phillips #00 driver), and save it and the old HDD for use with the new Mac.
 
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OP:

Again, your best bet at this point is to shop for another Mac.
Take the SSD out (you can do it yourself with a Phillips #00 driver), and save it and the old HDD for use with the new Mac.
[doublepost=1535682556][/doublepost]My best bet is to do what my wife wants which is to take it back and get refund. More to these decisions than just the technical. Thanks again.
 
Yeah it's a common failure colloquially referred to as Radeongate. Nothing you can do I'm afraid.

Most people download gfxCardStatus (https://gfx.io/) and force it to always run on the Intel HD rather than the dGPU to bypass the point of failure. But this is much slower. The boards are inherently faulty to be honest so any repair/refurb won't last.

Sadly it doesn't entirely bypass the point of failure, in that the AMD is still powered and will continue to progressively degrade (albeit at a much slower rate) until the laptop wont boot again. The plus side is the HD3000 isnt that bad for every day use. I mean the laptop wouldve run the HD3000 the majority of the time anyway.

I've had Apple replace the logic board (multiple times), and had the AMD/Radeon replaced entirely with a newer manufactured batch and leaded solder, but eventually they all fail. There really is no permanent "proper" fix. I've also run gfxCardStatus in almost every instance, and continuously since the last repair, the laptop still died. I've also reflowed the AMD multiple times myself (I own a reflow station), this really the most temporary fix at best.

I think the best solution, one that I did myself the other day, is the resistor mod (in combination with setting nvram variables as described earlier in the thread). It stops the AMD being powered entirely. Once done, you've got a long term fix - albeit at the expense of the dGPU. On the plus side the laptop runs a lot cooler with longer battery life. More info at RealMacMods, which provides enough info to do this yourself (if you have the soldering skill). It's a breath of fresh air not worrying about when the AMD will die again.
 
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Sadly it doesn't entirely bypass the point of failure, in that the AMD is still powered and will continue to progressively degrade (albeit at a much slower rate) until the laptop wont boot again. The plus side is the HD3000 isnt that bad for every day use. I mean the laptop wouldve run the HD3000 the majority of the time anyway.

I've had Apple replace the logic board (multiple times), and had the AMD/Radeon replaced entirely with a newer manufactured batch and leaded solder, but eventually they all fail. There really is no permanent "proper" fix. I've also run gfxCardStatus in almost every instance, and continuously since the last repair, the laptop still died. I've also reflowed the AMD multiple times myself (I own a reflow station), this really the most temporary fix at best.

I think the best solution, one that I did myself the other day, is the resistor mod (in combination with setting nvram variables as described earlier in the thread). It stops the AMD being powered entirely. Once done, you've got a long term fix - albeit at the expense of the dGPU. On the plus side the laptop runs a lot cooler with longer battery life. More info at RealMacMods, which provides enough info to do this yourself (if you have the soldering skill). It's a breath of fresh air not worrying about when the AMD will die again.

I did the EFI fix in 2 differents 2011 macbook pro's

First one with El capitan, no kexts remove, the Realmacmods Linux procedure and resistor remove, and the second one with the mac os Roxy bash, AMD kexts remove, with Yosemite.

In both cases, the macbooks are resurrected and working well
 
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