hi guys, you're kind of my last hope... I was just kindly kicked out of the Genius Bar with my MacBook Pro because it's now "vintage" status and they can't do any repairs on it.
Anyway, here's the story... First, the configuration. It's a MacBook Pro late 2011, 17", quad core 2.5ghz, with the AMD Radeon HD6770 and Intel graphics 3000 graphics card, running El Capitan, featuring a data doubler with a HD inside, and a Samsung 840 pro 256GB SSD where the HD used to be. I had 16GB ram but one of the first things I did when I started to troubleshoot was revert to the original 4GB original apple ram that came with the computer.
Here we go :
Last week, unbeknownst to me, my MacBook Pro woke up from sleep and crashed, overheating for several hours by itself. When I found out, I tried to wake it up, but I had to force it to shut down. I powered it up again, no problem. I put it to sleep. The next day, I decided to do some stuff on it so I logged in and I launched a few things. Suddenly, as I was in the next room, I hear the start up chime "your computer has restarted because of a problem". Okay, then, why not. But then, I got more and more random crashes through the day. On Friday, I decided enough was enough and I would seek what the problem was.
Apparently, there was some issues with permissions, so I fixed that, but I could also see that there was some GPU restarts. Also, I had a very nice "too many failures, system is giving up". A AHT gave me a false positive in the name of the Sata error (don't have the code name right now) but it can appear if you have an SSD inside the computer.
At this point, I have to say : the first time I did the AHT, it crashed during the test, freezing the screen and pushing the image to the right with a gray veil on top of it. Weird. Second time, it passed with that weird error.
With the help of some friends from the French forum, we decided it was the hard drive (also, when I opened the computer, I could see it was slightly unplugged). I removed it, to leave only the SSD I place. I then used a brand new session. It worked fine for hours. I was sure the problem was fixed and my computer was saved. It passed the AHT with flying colors.
I decided to plug in my thunderbolt screen.
It crashed instantly. On reboot, it would get stuck on the chime in a loop. Only a SMC reset got it past the chime. Then it booted normally. I thought, no more thunderbolt for you.
So at that point, we were pretty much sure the problem was with the graphic chip. I ran the Apple Service Diagnosis. Which began by crashing in EFI mode after completing about 99% of the test successfully (it crashed on the memory test. I know my memory is perfectly fine. I tested it already, and I had just replaced it with the original ram I got with the computer). It crashed with nice vertical lines in the screen. Graphic chip, right?
I ran it again, in OS mode. It PASSED. All the tests were successful. I decided to run the user interactive tests, because why not. All went well, and one of the last test is "successful wake up from sleep". It never woke up. It tried and got stuck in limbo, started to overheat (with a black screen) and was unresponsive. I had to force it to shut down.
I could get it back up and running, and a friend suggested I installed gfxcardstatus (or whatever it's called) to be able to switch from the Intel Graphics to the AMD Radeon and see which one was faulty. I put it on the Radeon first and after about five seconds it crashed.
After that, I was never able to boot it again. It would either loop chime, either chime then show a screen filed with horizontal lines (I made a video =
), either with vertical lines, either do nothing. No chime, no lines, black screen, but still it was powering on (a plugged in hard drive would light up and one could here a very faint hum coming from inside the computer. Also, the led in front of the computer would light up). SMC reset would sometimes make it switch between these three states.
By leaving it alone for hours, I could get the one chime white screen with moving horizontal lines followed by a gray screen back. Once, I even got the apple (except it was on far right side of the screen) and the boot progress bar stopped a third of the way.
I forgot to mention at that point I had also removed the SSD and had tried booting from an external system, both in thunderbolt and USB (I have a LaCie thunderbolt SSD with a clean El Capitan OS) to rule out anything OS or internal SSD related. Before I had the problems with the thunderbolt and the whole system not booting again, I could work fine with the external disk.
Right now, it's not doing anything anymore. No chime, no gray screen, nothing. Just the faint hum, nothing else, powering on any external drive that's plugged in, an external display is obviously showing nothing, SMC reset doesn't do anything anymore. I tried unplugging the battery for two minutes and plugging it back, because why not, it didn't change a thing. Battery is charging, battery status light are working perfectly, I changed the MagSafe adapter twice already to rule out a bad power brick.
The guy at the Genius Bar was unable to get it to boot so he couldn't tell me anything new. He also thinks it's graphic related, but like I do, he guessed maybe there's something else on too causing all the chaos.
So, I'm coming here as a last resort in case any of you has an idea. I don't have any computer repair shop in the vincinity, the guy at the Apple Store told be they could not replace the motherboard because they simply don't provide support for that machine anymore, and that no apple certified shop will do it.
There are some services in Germany that do GPU chip replacement, but if it's the Intel Graphics that's fried, it won't help. Moreover if it's something else entirely.
I'm in France, BTW.
Is there anything I could try to at least get the computer to boot so that I could deactivate whatever chip might be causing the trouble? (In my case, most probably the Intel graphics, although at first we were all pretty sure it was the Radeon)
Thank you so much for any help or advice. It's an old machine but I really love it and I'd hate to part from it.
Anyway, here's the story... First, the configuration. It's a MacBook Pro late 2011, 17", quad core 2.5ghz, with the AMD Radeon HD6770 and Intel graphics 3000 graphics card, running El Capitan, featuring a data doubler with a HD inside, and a Samsung 840 pro 256GB SSD where the HD used to be. I had 16GB ram but one of the first things I did when I started to troubleshoot was revert to the original 4GB original apple ram that came with the computer.
Here we go :
Last week, unbeknownst to me, my MacBook Pro woke up from sleep and crashed, overheating for several hours by itself. When I found out, I tried to wake it up, but I had to force it to shut down. I powered it up again, no problem. I put it to sleep. The next day, I decided to do some stuff on it so I logged in and I launched a few things. Suddenly, as I was in the next room, I hear the start up chime "your computer has restarted because of a problem". Okay, then, why not. But then, I got more and more random crashes through the day. On Friday, I decided enough was enough and I would seek what the problem was.
Apparently, there was some issues with permissions, so I fixed that, but I could also see that there was some GPU restarts. Also, I had a very nice "too many failures, system is giving up". A AHT gave me a false positive in the name of the Sata error (don't have the code name right now) but it can appear if you have an SSD inside the computer.
At this point, I have to say : the first time I did the AHT, it crashed during the test, freezing the screen and pushing the image to the right with a gray veil on top of it. Weird. Second time, it passed with that weird error.
With the help of some friends from the French forum, we decided it was the hard drive (also, when I opened the computer, I could see it was slightly unplugged). I removed it, to leave only the SSD I place. I then used a brand new session. It worked fine for hours. I was sure the problem was fixed and my computer was saved. It passed the AHT with flying colors.
I decided to plug in my thunderbolt screen.
It crashed instantly. On reboot, it would get stuck on the chime in a loop. Only a SMC reset got it past the chime. Then it booted normally. I thought, no more thunderbolt for you.
So at that point, we were pretty much sure the problem was with the graphic chip. I ran the Apple Service Diagnosis. Which began by crashing in EFI mode after completing about 99% of the test successfully (it crashed on the memory test. I know my memory is perfectly fine. I tested it already, and I had just replaced it with the original ram I got with the computer). It crashed with nice vertical lines in the screen. Graphic chip, right?
I ran it again, in OS mode. It PASSED. All the tests were successful. I decided to run the user interactive tests, because why not. All went well, and one of the last test is "successful wake up from sleep". It never woke up. It tried and got stuck in limbo, started to overheat (with a black screen) and was unresponsive. I had to force it to shut down.
I could get it back up and running, and a friend suggested I installed gfxcardstatus (or whatever it's called) to be able to switch from the Intel Graphics to the AMD Radeon and see which one was faulty. I put it on the Radeon first and after about five seconds it crashed.
After that, I was never able to boot it again. It would either loop chime, either chime then show a screen filed with horizontal lines (I made a video =
By leaving it alone for hours, I could get the one chime white screen with moving horizontal lines followed by a gray screen back. Once, I even got the apple (except it was on far right side of the screen) and the boot progress bar stopped a third of the way.
I forgot to mention at that point I had also removed the SSD and had tried booting from an external system, both in thunderbolt and USB (I have a LaCie thunderbolt SSD with a clean El Capitan OS) to rule out anything OS or internal SSD related. Before I had the problems with the thunderbolt and the whole system not booting again, I could work fine with the external disk.
Right now, it's not doing anything anymore. No chime, no gray screen, nothing. Just the faint hum, nothing else, powering on any external drive that's plugged in, an external display is obviously showing nothing, SMC reset doesn't do anything anymore. I tried unplugging the battery for two minutes and plugging it back, because why not, it didn't change a thing. Battery is charging, battery status light are working perfectly, I changed the MagSafe adapter twice already to rule out a bad power brick.
The guy at the Genius Bar was unable to get it to boot so he couldn't tell me anything new. He also thinks it's graphic related, but like I do, he guessed maybe there's something else on too causing all the chaos.
So, I'm coming here as a last resort in case any of you has an idea. I don't have any computer repair shop in the vincinity, the guy at the Apple Store told be they could not replace the motherboard because they simply don't provide support for that machine anymore, and that no apple certified shop will do it.
There are some services in Germany that do GPU chip replacement, but if it's the Intel Graphics that's fried, it won't help. Moreover if it's something else entirely.
I'm in France, BTW.
Is there anything I could try to at least get the computer to boot so that I could deactivate whatever chip might be causing the trouble? (In my case, most probably the Intel graphics, although at first we were all pretty sure it was the Radeon)
Thank you so much for any help or advice. It's an old machine but I really love it and I'd hate to part from it.
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