Macbook Pro (Early 2011) Stuck on Boot and WHITE screen

Question

Macbook Pro (Early 2011) Stuck on Boot and WHITE screen

Dear Apple Community,

I sincerely hope someone can help identify what my issue is with a 17" Macbook Pro (Early 2011) model.

I APOLOGIES IN ADVANCE IF THERE IS A FIX FOR THIS WHICH HAS BEEN DISCUSSED IN THIS FORUM.

The unit is in mint condition, and used solely by me since the purchase from Apple back in March 2011.

Its been running fine, no issues whatsoever.

Back in 2019, I changed my factory installed HDD for a SDD and installed High Sierra on it. Its been running absolutely fine, until today!

While in the middle of an email, the screen displayed vertical lines, flashed, and the machine rebooted on its own accord. Since then, when booting it chimes, and the scroll bar below goes all the way, and then a BLANK SCREEN.

Today I have reset my SMC, and NVRAM to no avail. I then removed back cover, disconnected the battery, and mem-sims (2 x 4GB), re-inserted them, which made no difference.

As mentioned above, when I replaced my original HDD, I kept it as a backup in a safe place. Today I put that into my machine, to see if it would boot. It made NO difference.... If I connect the HDD via USB, and hold the ALT key at boot, I can see my INTERNAL SDD and the USB HDD. If I select either, nothing happens.

I then did a HARDWARE test on the machine by keeping "D" pressed while it powered on. I ran the extensive hardware diagnostic test, which showed NO HARDWARE ERRORS FOUND.

I am now at a complete loss and hence turning to any online community person who may have seen this behavior before, and what I can do to fix it.

If there is any supplementary information you need from my machine, please do not hesitate to ask, and I will try and get that for you, or any other suggestions for me to try. It would greatly be appreciated.

Thank you.

Red.

MacBook Pro 17″, 10.13

Posted on Mar 10, 2021 8:35 AM

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Answer 1

HWTech

Level 9

60,284 points

Mar 10, 2021 7:46 PM in response to red.barchetta

If you have a 15" or 17" model, then most likely you have a bad GPU which is extremely common. If you can boot into Safe Mode, then you can try using the gfxCardStatus app to force the laptop to use the Intel GPU instead of the discrete GPU.

https://github.com/steveschow/gfxCardStatus/releases

If the laptop cannot boot into Safe Mode, then you can try to force the laptop to use the Intel GPU using these instructions:

http://dosdude1.com/gpudisable/

Keep in mind the latter instructions modify the NVRAM so a PRAM Reset will remove the custom GPU settings.

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Answer 2

Mar 11, 2021 5:41 AM in response to HWTech

Dear HWTech,

This did the trick! I cannot thank you enough. So good to know there are some clever people out there who really know what they are talking about.

When I reached out to Apple, they got me to try a few things and then said I'd need to book my machine in for a repair with an authorised repairer. They could not do anything for me as my machine is a vintage item.

I could not go into Safe Mode, and hence followed the instructions of http://dosdude1.com/gpudisable/

With the 2nd part of that article where I need to install the program, will it be possible to remove it if it causes any adverse effect? I am sure it won't but because just wondered of an SMC/NVRAM reset causes this also to be reset? Whereas, if it is installed, it is 'fixed' permanently?

When I shutdown my machine without the 2nd part installed, I had to reenter the nvram line of code again and repeat the process. In the past I would just shut the lid, and let the machine go into sleep mode.

Let me know you think? Apologies if you made it clear in your original response...

Thanks,

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Macbook Pro (Early 2011) Stuck on Boot and WHITE screen

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