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trajan2448

macrumors member
Original poster
May 3, 2010
72
2
My late 2011 MBP 17" is having a recurring flashing ? on cold startup. I then do startup with command option, choose internet recovery (WHICH TAKES AN HOUR) run disk utility repair , which takes a few seconds, restart choosing my MAC HD INTERNAL DRIVE, AND it works fine until the next time I turn it off. For some reason it is not seeing the internal HD on start up without this laborious process. The ONLY thing I can find out is that the logic board battery might have failed. I've also tried the PRAM/VRAM reset. Any other suggestions?
 
My late 2011 MBP 17" is having a recurring flashing ? on cold startup. I then do startup with command option, choose internet recovery (WHICH TAKES AN HOUR) run disk utility repair , which takes a few seconds, restart choosing my MAC HD INTERNAL DRIVE, AND it works fine until the next time I turn it off. For some reason it is not seeing the internal HD on start up without this laborious process. The ONLY thing I can find out is that the logic board battery might have failed. I've also tried the PRAM/VRAM reset. Any other suggestions?

Sounds a lot more like a dying hard drive.

Swap in a known good hard drive in there and install OS X on it, see how that goes.
 
Sounds a lot more like a dying hard drive.

Swap in a known good hard drive in there and install OS X on it, see how that goes.
Hard drive is fine. Already checked. Started up from external same prob.
 
You can take it into apple and have them give your system a test. But I do agree with you, sounds like the system battery killed over. It's happened to me in desktops before. When it happened, the thing wouldn't even get past the BIOS because it couldn't see the HDD.

If that is your issue though, I don't think the system battery is user replaceable, is it?
 
It's not replaceable for Apple's targeted market. It is user replaceable, technically, but the average customer in their target market will not have either the tools, desire, knowledge, and/or skill to do the job.

If it were me, I'd have them do it. I don't have the patience or desire that I once did to bother doing something like that myself. Hard drive and RAM upgrades? Fine, I can do it. Anything beyond that, though, I couldn't be bothered with.
 
It's not replaceable for Apple's targeted market. It is user replaceable, technically, but the average customer in their target market will not have either the tools, desire, knowledge, and/or skill to do the job.

If it were me, I'd have them do it. I don't have the patience or desire that I once did to bother doing something like that myself. Hard drive and RAM upgrades? Fine, I can do it. Anything beyond that, though, I couldn't be bothered with.

Considering the amount of testing they have already done, and is already under the assumption that the logic board battery failed, I'm assuming they have the know-how of replacing a logic board battery. If it is user replaceable, sweet. I don't think it is however, due to having to play with the logic board itself.
 
Considering the amount of testing they have already done, and is already under the assumption that the logic board battery failed, I'm assuming they have the know-how of replacing a logic board battery. If it is user replaceable, sweet. I don't think it is however, due to having to play with the logic board itself.
logic board issues are covered under Applecare so should be ok.
 
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