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Late 2011 MBP won't boot....

simon lefisch

simon lefisch

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Sep 29, 2014
1,007
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Hey guys,

The other day I was downloading something on my Windows 7 VM (Fusion). The screen went to sleep (as usual), but when I went to wake it up (pressing the space bar) nothing happened. I pressed it a couple times, then all of a sudden my Mac restarted. It went to the Apple logo, then went blank and sat there for a while (about 10 minutes). Has ever taken that long to boot before. So I held down the power button and restarted again....same thing. Tried to boot into safe mode, nothing. Even tried to boot into recovery/internet recovery and that wouldn't even boot. Same outcome as trying to do a regular boot. I even tried to boot from a USB thumb drive of Lion I had laying around (try to get to disk utility) and still nothing. I've tried resetting NVRAM and SMC, ran FSCK and nothing. After FSCK, it boots to logo, goes blank, sits there for about 3-5 minutes, then shuts off. I did take the HD out and attach it to my parent MBP via USB, boot to startup manager and chose the HD (which did boot). Placed the HD back into my MBP and still didn't boot. I ran extended Apple Hardware Test and all came back fine.

I am going to do one more test by removing my HD and putting into my brothers MBP (he has the same model as I do) to see if it boots, after which I will wipe my HD (after backing up my files) and try to reinstall the OS from scratch.

Has anyone ran into this problem or does anyone know what the problem might be? Could it be a hardware issue? Maybe the HD controller got corrupted (which I'm hoping it is) and reinstall is required? Any/all thoughts are appreciated.
 
Take it to an Apple store or authorised repair centre to get it checked out. There is an Apple Repair Extension Program running, which affects the 2011 MacBooks as some of them had dodgy GPUs, and your machine seems to be showing some of the signs. If yours fails the tests then they should replace the logic board under this REP, at no charge to yourself.
 
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Godzirra said:
Take it to an Apple store or authorised repair centre to get it checked out. There is an Apple Repair Extension Program running, which affects the 2011 MacBooks as some of them had dodgy GPUs, and your machine seems to be showing some of the signs. If yours fails the tests then they should replace the logic board under this REP, at no charge to yourself.
Click to expand...
I was thinking that it might be he GPU as I did about that. However if that were the case, the Apple logo wouldn't show up in the beginning, correct?
 
simon lefisch said:
I was thinking that it might be he GPU as I did about that. However if that were the case, the Apple logo wouldn't show up in the beginning, correct?
Click to expand...
It still would, because during the boot process, the dGPU isn't used. During boot, it runs a self-check and when it discovers that the dGPU isn't functioning, it'll just freeze into a blank screen.
 
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yjchua95 said:
It still would, because during the boot process, the dGPU isn't used. During boot, it runs a self-check and when it discovers that the dGPU isn't functioning, it'll just freeze into a blank screen.
Click to expand...
Gotcha. I'll make an appointment. Many thanks for your input. I've had this MBP since early 2012 so I guess it was only a matter of time before it went out. Surprised it lasted this long lol
 
simon lefisch said:
Gotcha. I'll make an appointment. Many thanks for your input. I've had this MBP since early 2012 so I guess it was only a matter of time before it went out. Surprised it lasted this long lol
Click to expand...
Mine lasted for exactly 3 years and 5 days before it succumbed to Radeongate.

Instead of sending it in to Apple, I sent it off to someone else for a reball and also repasted the thermal paste on both the CPU and GPU.
 
yjchua95 said:
Mine lasted for exactly 3 years and 5 days before it succumbed to Radeongate.

Instead of sending it in to Apple, I sent it off to someone else for a reball and also repasted the thermal paste on both the CPU and GPU.
Click to expand...
That was an authorized repair center?
 
simon lefisch said:
That was an authorized repair center?
Click to expand...
Nope. But since it was already out of the 3 year AppleCare, I saw no point in paying Apple a $700 repair (that was when I was still based in KL, Malaysia) for something that would fail within 3 months, so I just paid $100 for this chap to reball a new GPU (with proper leaded solder) and repaste the paste on both the CPU and GPU.
 
If you can get Apple to do it, then let them pay for the cost, but the reball that yjchua95 had done, is best if the machine is way out of Applecare or not part of the REP program. There's a thread on here about it somewhere, both the REP and the reballing option.
 
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