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MBP 2011 15’’ Grey Screen

G

Glmnet1

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Oct 21, 2017
973
1,093
Hi,

When I opened my MBP this morning it wouldn’t wake up so I forced it to shutdown by holding the power button. After that it started, went to the grey screen with the Apple logo, loaded the bar, went to the grey screen and suddenly rebooted, over and over again.

Here what I tried:
- Resetting the NVRAM and the SMC seems to do nothing.
- Booting into Internet Recovery, OS X original installation CD, Safe Mode —> All stuck on grey screen for a long time until I reboot. I’m not sure how long it makes sense to wait, I waited for 20-60 minutes for each of them and figured they were stuck. The fans are working until the grey screen where it just seems to be waiting for something.
- Single user mode works to the stage where it asks to enter ‘exit’ to load the system. I wasn’t able to notice any obvious error but there isn’t much time to read. After typing exit it also goes to the grey screen and gets stuck there.

I’m really not sure what to do now. Any idea? Can it be a comeback of the GPU issue? I got it resolved about 18 months ago by Apple and the symptoms are not at all the same (I had a green screen and a crossed circle then).

I was hoping to keep it until WWDC... Hopefully this isn’t too bad.

Thank you!

EDIT: Hardware test revealed nothing but a known false error for my crucial SSD. I’ll still find my old HDD and try to boot from it but I’m doubtful since even internet recovery doesn’t get past the grey screen...
 
Last edited:
"I’m really not sure what to do now. Any idea? Can it be a comeback of the GPU issue? I got it resolved about 18 months ago by Apple and the symptoms are not at all the same (I had a green screen and a crossed circle then)."

It could very well be "RadeonGate" striking you a second time.

That's because the "replacement" motherboards that Apple installed (back when they had the free replacement program) are no different from the originals -- they are also subject to the same kinds of failure.

At this point, it's not really worth repairing again.
I would advise you NOT to spend any money on doing so.

There IS a "workaround fix" that is able to permanently bypass/disable the discrete GPU.
When you do this, the MBP will always boot and run using the integrated GPU (but it can run more slowly).
There are threads here at MacRumors on how to do that.
I have no personal experience, just advising you that such a fix does exist.

Could that "keep you going" until the new ones come out?
 
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Fishrrman said:
"I’m really not sure what to do now. Any idea? Can it be a comeback of the GPU issue? I got it resolved about 18 months ago by Apple and the symptoms are not at all the same (I had a green screen and a crossed circle then)."

It could very well be "RadeonGate" striking you a second time.

That's because the "replacement" motherboards that Apple installed (back when they had the free replacement program) are no different from the originals -- they are also subject to the same kinds of failure.

At this point, it's not really worth repairing again.
I would advise you NOT to spend any money on doing so.

There IS a "workaround fix" that is able to permanently bypass/disable the discrete GPU.
When you do this, the MBP will always boot and run using the integrated GPU (but it can run more slowly).
There are threads here at MacRumors on how to do that.
I have no personal experience, just advising you that such a fix does exist.

Could that "keep you going" until the new ones come out?
Click to expand...
Yeah I’m not planning to spend a dollar on it!

Such a workaround would be great for the next 2 months but I have no idea how to do it without booting. I’ll look for those threads on MR and see if I can figure it out.

Thank you!
 
I couldn't wait anymore to get out of safe mode so I rebooted and it failed to boot up properly...

Thankfully I burned an ArchLinux CD while I was in safe mode. I booted from it and followed the instructions from the sticky post and it works. The MR community is awesome!
 
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