Early 2011 won't boot. Strange video artifacts covering screen.

[iamWALRUS77]

My MBP is an early 2011. At boot the screen is full of a strange video artifacts and never usually makes it past the boot screen. I tried this in windows with the same result. I've reset SMC, PRAM, uninstalled and reinstalled my ram, etc with no luck. I had this problem before and luckily was able to make it to the recovery menu to reinstall OSX and they did the trick. But this time I can't even get that far..... Check out the pic below. It's kind of crappy but you can see the artifacts if you look at the apple logo closely.

 

[Traverse]

It appears your dGPU is going bad.

Is it the 15"? It may be suffering from "Radeongate."

The 15" 2011 MacBook Pros were notorious for a supposed design flaw that caused the logic board to fail. My failed, was repaired, and then failed again a month or so later.

 

[T5BRICK]

Your laptop may be covered under a repair extension.

https://www.apple.com/support/macbookpro-videoissues/

 

[xylitol]

yup
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yG9TCQ-esH4

 

[iamWALRUS77]

Yeah it's 15" and looks like I may qualify for the free repair... the only thing is in the 4 years that I've had this macbook I've completely replaced the RAM, battery (non apple), and took out my superdrive and put a HDD in its place, added an SSD to main drive slot.... would they still service mine?

 

[JTToft]

Yeah it's 15" and looks like I may qualify for the free repair... the only thing is in the 4 years that I've had this macbook I've completely replaced the RAM, battery (non apple), and took out my superdrive and put a HDD in its place, added an SSD to main drive slot.... would they still service mine?

- Yes, they would - so long as it fails their GPU hardware test. The repair programme covers any and all affected machines regardless of modifications and age until Feb 2016 or three years from initial purchase (whichever provides longer coverage).

I took mine in with all sorts of modifications, too. Not even a raised eyebrow.