Relative has an older 2011 MBP 15", upgraded with a Samsung SSD a couple years ago in the hopes we could squeeze a few more years' use out of it. A week ago it started going into a reboot loop. It would drop into the desktop, start opening certain apps, then kernel panic and reboot. It did this a couple of years ago but we reset the PRAM and SMC and it started working again. So this time, they managed to get it working by dropping it into safe mode and disabling all the startup items with my help. Seemed to be fine.
This week it started freezing randomly and crashing, now won't even boot to the login screen. sometimes get the Apple logo with the loading bar, it gets about 1/2 way before the screen goes black and it reboots. Other times it displays a blue (brings back BSOD memories) or gray screen, and other times nothing at all (black screen) before rebooting. Tried booting in safe mode, that didn't work either. The load bar got 3/4ths of the way and it rebooted.
Tried to load Apple Hardware Test, it said it couldn't load it three times before finally succeeding. Ran the extended test, no problems. So next step was running Internet Recovery to format and reinstall, but it again, fails a bunch of times. Have also reset PRAM and SMC.
The irregular performance has me thinking it's a hardware failure of some sort. Any other thoughts/steps before we throw in the towel? Thanks.
This week it started freezing randomly and crashing, now won't even boot to the login screen. sometimes get the Apple logo with the loading bar, it gets about 1/2 way before the screen goes black and it reboots. Other times it displays a blue (brings back BSOD memories) or gray screen, and other times nothing at all (black screen) before rebooting. Tried booting in safe mode, that didn't work either. The load bar got 3/4ths of the way and it rebooted.
Tried to load Apple Hardware Test, it said it couldn't load it three times before finally succeeding. Ran the extended test, no problems. So next step was running Internet Recovery to format and reinstall, but it again, fails a bunch of times. Have also reset PRAM and SMC.
The irregular performance has me thinking it's a hardware failure of some sort. Any other thoughts/steps before we throw in the towel? Thanks.