Vertical Pink Lines

[filmdreams]

Hi,

An elderly friend of mine has a late 2011 MacBook pro. Its the 13", 2.4ghtz, Intel i5 model. She has had the HD upgraded to an SSD and Ram upgraded from 4GB to 8GB with apple approved RAM. Both the SSD and RAM have passed their tests in a known good machine so I'm pretty certain they aren't at fault.

She's experiencing random intermittent screen corruption as shown in the attached photo. On the corruption appearing the system beeps and then turns off or freezes.

I've done some research and there are a few other people who have had these problems and some people have suggested that these models have a known GPU fault or that the logic board has gone bad? One person suggested they'd "fixed it" by only running a single RAM board rather than two?

Before I sit down with her to discuss her options would any one else have any other suggestions about this issue?

Many thanks in advance.

 

[DeltaMac]

The 2011 MacBook Pro models certainly have experienced lots of graphics problems.
Search for "radeongate"...
However, your friend has a 13-inch, which does not have the radeon card, so does not have the usual problems that the radeon cards caused. That is mostly on the 15 and 17-inch models.
The tip that you found (remove one RAM stick, and use it with half the RAM) might help, as the integrated graphics chip uses memory shared with main memory, so there could be some kind of fault with one of the RAM cards, which might affect the graphics. Try one chip alone, then try the other. You may see more frequent issues, if one of the RAM sticks is causing the issue.
And, the problem that your friend has may still be similar to the more-affected models, where a possible fix is to removed the logic board, and "cook" it in a low heat oven, hot enough to melt the solder which may reflow to make better connection on the various soldered connections on the logic board.
But, I would more suspect a RAM problem, something about that shared memory. Maybe that "known-good" machine did not make use of shared main memory for the graphics, so that issue would not be apparent? The system beeps, then shutdown, also makes me suspicious of the RAM, even though it might test good. The ultimate test is actual use, and trying other RAM is one of the easier/cheaper things to try.
BTW, that late 2011 MBPro CAN be upgraded to 16GB (or a single 8GB in one slot, if you discover that a single slot helps the issue.

 

[filmdreams]

@DeltaMac Thank you for your detailed and considered reply - that is really helpful. I'll take all this onboard and have a chat with my neighbour about her options and what we can do to try and resolve the issue for her. (The work on the upgrades was carried out by a third party but as I've worked in IT for many years I can comfortably advise her and do the basic checks/tests/ram switch outs for her and hopefully get it back up and running consistently again).

 

[jav6454]

Hi,

An elderly friend of mine has a late 2011 MacBook pro. Its the 13", 2.4ghtz, Intel i5 model. She has had the HD upgraded to an SSD and Ram upgraded from 4GB to 8GB with apple approved RAM. Both the SSD and RAM have passed their tests in a known good machine so I'm pretty certain they aren't at fault.

She's experiencing random intermittent screen corruption as shown in the attached photo. On the corruption appearing the system beeps and then turns off or freezes.

I've done some research and there are a few other people who have had these problems and some people have suggested that these models have a known GPU fault or that the logic board has gone bad? One person suggested they'd "fixed it" by only running a single RAM board rather than two?

Before I sit down with her to discuss her options would any one else have any other suggestions about this issue?

Many thanks in advance.

Graphics issues. My guess the logic board is starting to fail.