Laptop won't start up

[NYMacGuy]

On powering up, a kind of green, slightly pixelated Mac icon and boot up progress bar appears. It takes forever for the bar to finish then the screen goes to not pure white but kind of a magenta toned white, then it goes to black then the whole thing starts over again.

I've tried holding D during boot up, then command R during another round and finally shift during another round. Nothing works, it just keeps going over and over again.

BTW I don't hear the chime when it starts, it just goes into this mode and infinite loop. I wish I remembered the stats of my laptop but I don't know them off hand. I know I'm NOT running Sierra, I'm pretty sure it's Yosemite but might possibly be El Capitan. It's a MacBook Pro from like 2011 or 20012.

There is a little bit of moire patterning from my phone's shot of the screen but hopefully you can see what's going on.

Any help is appreciated.

 

[Audit13]

The serial number is located on the bottom casing.

Possible hard drive cable failure if it is a 13" non-retina 2011 or 2012.

 

[NYMacGuy]

The serial number is located on the bottom casIng.

Possible hard drive cable failure if it is a 13" non-retina 2011 or 2012.

That's handy, I was able to pull this up:

MacBook Pro "Core i7" 2.0 15" Early 2011 2.0 GHz Core i7 (I7-2635QM)

Intro. February 24, 2011 Disc. October 24, 2011
Order MC721LL/A Model A1286 (EMC 2353-1*)
Family Early 2011 15" ID MacBookPro8,2
RAM 4 GB VRAM 256 MB*
Storage 500 GB HDD Optical 8X DL "SuperDrive"

I found this article and it seems like a common occurrence with models from this time period. I'm not proficient enough to try fixing this myself, I guess I should head to the Genius Bar?

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7794520?start=0&tstart=0

 

[Audit13]

If there is an apple store near you, maybe they'll change the cable for free if it is a cable problem.

 

[CTHarrryH]

Or just the whole HD. I has a similar problem last week - brought it in to Apple store and they ended up replacing HD and cable. Fortunately, I had time machine backup - took a long time to restore but actually seems faster now

 

[Audit13]

The 2011 maybe considered a legacy machine and apple may not replace anything for no fee. If that is the case, a third party cable from Amazon should work.

 

[CoastalOR]

It could also be "Radeongate". I had the dGPU fail in my 2011 15" MBP.
Check this MacRumors thread:
https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...pu-failure-which-models-are-affected.1763077/

 

[Fishrrman]

My bet is on RadeonGate...