Horizontal lines and no boot

Portfox wrote:

Have an older Mac book pro 15, been working fine, then one morning horizontal lines and only gets 3/4 through loading and then fails. Video hardware was my first thought, but hoping someone may have a suggestion.

I have tried the resetting all the PRAM, NVRAM, and SMC with no joy.

https://youtu.be/foaVkt7mbFo

In or out of warranty you can get a free over the counter 'Apple Service Diagnostics' test /assessment

Make an appointment for a "hardware issue"

Genius Bar Reservation and Apple Support Options - Apple

Outside the USA

Contact Apple for support and service - Apple Support

Most likely a bad GPU which was common on many of the 2008 to 2011 15" & 17" models.

You can try running the Apple Diagnostics to see if any hardware issues are detected. Unfortunately the diagnostics rarely detect the GPU issues.

You can try forcing the laptop to use the Intel GPU instead of the discrete GPU, but there are limitations....assuming you can even boot the laptop into Safe Mode in order to utilize the third party software:

https://gfx.io/

https://github.com/steveschow/gfxCardStatus

Portfox wrote:

Thanks for the info, tried to get into Apple Diags, but i get the Cannot Load EFI/Drivers/TestSupport.efi

That is not unusual for those older models. Apple broke the diagnostics with a system firmware update which made it incompatible with the online diagnostic files that must be pulled from Apple's servers.

No ordinay diagnostics can detect these problems. But your eye-balls can.

The diagnostic that actually can detect the bad Discrete GPU is a special diagnostic they used to keep at the Genius Bar. It takes nearly 1/2 Hour to run before reporting OK, but may report Failure in somewhat less time.

Macs before 2013 models use Apple Hardware Test (Not Apple Diagnostics). This is a World of Hurt because it was installed only on the original Boot Drive and on the release DVDs. Replacing/Erasing the boot drive REMOVES the diagnostic. Later versions of MacOS with System Integrity Protection make re-placing the diagnostic back into the System nearly impossible.

When you invoke Apple Diagnostics on pre-2013 Macs, it goes through the motions and always fails to load.