Q: 2011 MacBook Pro and Discrete Graphics Card

I used some canned air on it to blow away dust but I don't think this should kill my GPU.

I also took it into a humid climate after being in the air conditioning.  I hope it's not water damage from the humidity. 

But I don't think this is the issue because this failure seems to be within the time frame that other people are experiencing failures.

I don't think that is the cause. If anything, the increased speeds may have put added pressure to an already existent fault. SSDs have only become reasonably priced in the last year or so, which is the time frame where these machines have begun failing enmasse. Possibly a contributing factor, but definitely not the cause.

Reballing is the highest level of logic board repair, you should feel lucky if you can find a reputable place that can do this repair in your country but trying to find one locally in your area or even your state you will be asking for too much, even if you find a local place they will most probably send it out for repair, there are many computer repair shops everywhere you go but non of those do this particular kind of repair , Reballing is a specialty repair so you need to find a specialized and reputable place in this particular repair. I never heard of one in New York. 

in germany there are several that seem to be good - here they even even offer a "macbook pro 2011 repair" because the problem is so common

and explain the process on their website (but they recommend the replacement of the gpu)

www.konsolen-junkies.de/PC-Notebook/Reparatur-Service/Apple/MacBook-Pro-2011-AMD -6750M-Grafikkarten-Reparatur::177.html

maybe this will be deleted too - but anyway everyone will get this post via email ;-)

i probably will go for it if my logicboard will fail for the 4th time (its only a matter of time) - but somehow i cannot accept

that now i have to fix a problem that was built-in in my laptop right from the start by apple

it would be the minimum that apple should regulate this whole issue - to the statisfaction of their customers

@junkbook pro

its a pity they deleted your post - was so funny and yet true! i can only repeat: reballing is needed, apple!

hello, message to the person who deletes posts (or is it automatically?):

you are obviously monitoring every word - but obviously don't care or understand what people are really saying here

this is somehow twisted! please report to apple about our concern - it is really important

Hi ps3specialist,

I know you're in the West Coast.  How much do you charge for the re-balling service including shipping from NYC?

Thanks,
Alex

Hi Alex, you can get the cost estimate from my website.

Another user with the same problem here.

I've tried to read the complete discussion, but it's so huge it's impossible.

The only solution working for me is smcFanControl (http://www.eidac.de/?p=243). It keeps fans cooling at a higher rate than normal so that temperature doesn't cause the computer to shut down. It's noisy, but at least it works

Hope it helps while we wait for a replacement program

I am one more un-happy Apple costumer who's 2011 Macbook Pro died with the blue screen of death. With GFXCardStatus I am able to work with it until I boot in which case I spend at least 2 hours booting until I can choose the integrated card. Then what I do is only put the computer to sleep. I think the least Apple should do is help us make the integrated card the one that gets selected when booting. I don't know, a fix patch or something. Anyway, I was among the affected with the 2006 Macbook Pro free repair and I just can't believe they won't do it again. I bought a new 2011 MBP after having the good experience of Apple fixing free of cost my 2006, I guess Steve Jobs was a tuff guy but he never messed up with costumers the way Tim Cook is doing it. Very bad policy toward costumers if you ask me....   

i too am having issues with the graphics card on my late 2011 MBP. 

i get the pinkish screen on boot up with all the horizontal lines.  sometimes i can get it to boot, other times it will sit forever at a grey screen.  i have tried all options - safe mode, single user mode zapping PRAM, resetting SMC, etc.  my latest attempt was to put a new drive in it and install the OS from scratch, which seemed to work but won't boot either.  i have removed the hard drive and attached it via USB to see if i could get it to boot that way.  No dice.  Nothing works.  Blue screen with vertical lines and the fan is going 90-nothing.

Take it as a rule , software will not fix hardware issues, you have a hardware problem and you need a address that and find a repair for the broken hardware component, no matter what you can do with software even if it seems to work it is very temporary because you still have the hardware problem.

Here's what I've done. I went to Wal-Mart and got one of those high-velocity fans and stuck it in front of my MBP pointed down toward the keyboard. It's loud and ***** but at least I've been able to work all day and not have to restart.

Also… when it does freeze up and die on me I restart in Safe Mode. (Hold "Shift" while booting… for anyone who didn't know.) Let it do it's thing and then restart again normally. It's ironic because as I'm typing this one of my screens just started flickering off and on, randomly.

Sure wish Apple would at least respond. This is really getting old.

One more thing… should we also be beating on the door of AMD? I mean it's their GPU that's overheating. Or am I missing something here?

Please someone let me know if I've overlooked something in this regard.

atomant

There's usually no problem with the GPU itself - it's a manufacturing problem wherein too much thermal paste was used and the unleaded soldered used did not create a good connection to the GPU. Apple's 'fault' - not AMD.

Clinton

MacBook Pro (15-inch Late 2011), OS X Mavericks 10.9.5, 16GB Crucial RAM, Crucial M500 960GB SSD, 27” Apple Thunderbolt Display

Hi all, this is a hardware issue. No software hacks will permanently fix the problem. This has been posted many times but here are instructions in order to get your computer into a "working" state for basic web browsing + word processing: (you are just tricking the computer not to use the AMD GPU drivers)

1. Start in console mode: Start your computer holding Command + S
2. Mount the hard drive: Once there, type mount -uw /
3. Create a backup directory: From the root directory (where you should be), type:
   mkdir /Users/your_user_name/AMDDriverBackup
4. Move the files: To move all of the files type:
   mv /System/Library/Extensions/ATI* /Users/your_user_name/AMDDriverBackup
   mv /System/Library/Extensions/AMD* /Users/your_user_name/AMDDriverBackup
   
   Moving just two of the files initially worked for me, but I had to revert to moving all of them with time (not sure why). Moving just ATIRadeonX2000.kext and ATIRadeonX2000GLDriver.bundle were all it took.
5. Restart: Type sudo reboot to restart, or sudo shutdown -h now to shutdown.

To reverse the procedure, repeat, but change step 4 to:

mv /Users/your_user_name/AMDDriverBackup/A* /System/Library/Extensions/

Here is my experience with this issue, hoping it helps others. Let me first say that since I've been in contact with the executive relations team they have been 100% reasonable, kind, and understanding.

• March 2014: First failure.
• April 2014: After 2 emails to Tim Cook's address & multiple calls to Apple's customer service (nearest Apple store is too far away), I finally got a call back from Apple executive relations. I was informed of the flat-rate repair option (US only) costing ~$360 with tax + shipping. I took it with a 90-day warranty.
• September 2014: Second failure.
  • Emailed the exec. relation contact I had and got a call back in 24 hours.
  • Diagnosed the issue over the phone with a "senior tech" who was very experienced. He was really insistent that the issue wasn't occuring. After sending my "capture data" in to the engineers, they confirmed it was indeed a hardware issue. (Not sure exactly what they said, but it seems they diagnosed it as a GPU issue.)
  • Even though I'm out of my warranty I was offered a free mail-in fix since I paid for the last one. Took it.
  • Talking to another "senior tech" today (who was also great), he directly said to me that they would put a new LB in where this issue doesn't occur. I call BS, but I'll post here once I get it back.

Throughout this whole process I've been adamant that I'll leave Apple unless they do the right thing. I genuinely mean it, and think others should also take this stance.

<Edited By Host>

I took my relatively lightly used (<200 battery cycles) late 2011 mbp 15 to the Genius Bar and all diagnostics passed, although it did take a couple of tries 'cause it wouldn't boot in order to run the diags.

In the end they correctly concluded it was the logic board. As usual, very nice staff and not an unpleasant experience. An unsatisfactory outcome, but, hey, they are limited as to what they can offer.

I wasn't ready to hand over the $500+ for a replacement board that most likely has the same production flaws as the original... so I'm hoping Apple will step up and help us all out.

If that doesn't happen soon I may have to take a gun (okay, a heat gun) to my logic board... and either put it out of its misery or get it back on limited life support.