MBP 1,1-10,2 Ooooopsie...dropped it.

[DCBassman]

Macbook Pro 8,2 late 2011. Slipped out of my hand and landed with a thump. edge-wise. on carpet. Absolutely no external damage, and screen is fine. But...it now either boot loops or just stops. Wondering if I've cracked the thermal paste? Is there anything else I should check for besides anything loose or disconnected?

 

[TheShortTimer]

Have a look at the logic board and check whether you can spot any damage? It might be worth taking photos of the entire area including the SSD location and sharing them here.

Speaking of the SSD, does it work/boot when connected to another Mac?

 

[theMarble]

But...it now either boot loops or just stops. Wondering if I've cracked the thermal paste? Is there anything else I should check for besides anything loose or disconnected?

Cracked thermal paste won't do anything, but a cracked chip die. I'd find this usually near impossible from a drop onto carpet, but knowing how weak the solder is inside the dGPU (from substrate to die, not logic board to substrate), it is within a very tiny realm of possibility if the GPU solder was already starting to crack (that is how the Radeongate failure happened).

I would definitely first open it up and check for any loose connectors (eg: LVDS, SATA...) or possibly even damage. I would find the latter much less likely than the former though.

Speaking of the SSD, does it work/boot when connected to another Mac?

I was thinking about that too. I doubt that the SSD got damaged, given that they are typically pretty tough, but it could be a connector or cable issue. Definitely would hook it up to another Mac and see what happens.

 

[DCBassman]

I'll be opening it up later, will post what I find.

 

[DCBassman]

OK, here the sitrep: this one already had a dead GPU when I got it. All else was fine.
Thoroughly checked all cables and reseated the RAM, nothing changes. Gets hot. Fans are running but not quickly.
I can get to an MX Live desktop and it will survive maybe ten minutes max. Trying to install any kind of macOS causes it to declare, "absolutely not, old chap" and powers off immediately.
Still thinking it's a board-out and repaste job, which might well be a good idea anyhow...
Rats. This is my favourite Mac.

 

[DCBassman]

Stripped, cleaned, re-pasted, re-assembled. Absolutely no different. SSD tested, all good.
Unless I can find a solution fairly soon, and I'm not confident of that, I'll swap in the board from the other MBP.

 

[DCBassman]

Bought another late-2011 for 50 notes, all there, looks like the HDD has died and they've offloaded it. i7 2.5GHz.
Will attempt to transplant the early board into the now-broken late to give it the hi-res screen. The incoming one is also a hi-res screen.

 

[TheShortTimer]

Bought another late-2011 for 50 notes, all there, looks like the HDD has died and they've offloaded it. i7 2.5GHz.
Will attempt to transplant the early board into the now-broken late to give it the hi-res screen. The incoming one is also a hi-res screen.

Good luck and let us know how you get on.

 

[DCBassman]

Spent some time yesterday cloning an MX Linux install onto the drive to see how long it would last if install loads were removed.
It seemed stable. Then I let it run updates, and things started to get hairy.

It's compiling software at this point. It wasn't long before it crashed and rebooted. I gave it a 5 minute rest, then restarted. I let it idle on the desktop. It managed 90 minutes without issue before I gave up and went to bed.
Did the drop disturb the dodgy GPU chip, I wonder?

 

[DCBassman]

Further idle time on the desk. 4 hours 40 minutes as I type, on the desk, in the partial sun. Let battery run down to 32%, now back at full. Charger off, let's see what the afternoon brings.

 

[DCBassman]

OK, it was basically on all day. It did do some light compiling of an update, but stayed stable, and no hotter than the other MBP. Whatever I disturbed when I dropped it seems to have settled. Probably did no harm to bake it all day. It still will not look at anything macOS. Patched Catalina installer powers down in less than 2 seconds. Anything else just fails and stops.
No matter, it's back to running MX Linux, which was its job, so if it continues, I'm not complaining. Except, of course, there will be another one incoming next week! Oh well...