MacBook Pro 2011 17" hard freeze

We've all been ragging on Apple over this issue and for good reason. But it's only fair to report when they do the right thing, so...

After months of my MBP being either at Apple for repairs or not functioning correctly, I believe that Apple finally fixed the problem. The final time I sent it to Apple, it remained there for over 2

weeks due to a back order of logic boards.

I'm guessing that this last replaced board came from a different source than the 2 others I had replaced in the previous repairs.

It's now been 2 full months of no freezes, no hard reboots,and no problems whatsoever. So in fairness to Apple i need say, having the extended 3 year AppleCare policy made a lot of sense. I paid no money out of pocket for any repairs, was offered a replacement MBP if this last repair didn't work, and even though I lost a lot of time due to the puter being in the shop, I was treated fairly and now have a working MBP...We'll see if it holds....

Really dissapointed, it was 2 years back since it happens to my precious 9000 sar mbp 2011 15 inch and till now nobody cares from apple regarding our issues, and it will be two years that i will keep my mbp in my storage room if i did not go for re-flow. As of now still working but disabbled discrete gpu By Gfxcard, useless mbp for my photography works... Hope apple will have a recall program. Apple should care for this issues....

I have an Early 2011 MBP with high-res screen that has suddenly displayed crazy pixel screen then when restarted froze on gray screen. The computer will not boot from Recovery or from Disk or USB drive. The hard drive seems ok when tethered. Hope Apple can fix this issues with so many users seeing the same problem.

I have an Early 2011 MBP with high-res screen that has suddenly displayed crazy pixel screen then when restarted froze on gray screen. The computer will not boot from Recovery or from Disk or USB drive. The hard drive seems ok when tethered. Hope Apple can fix this issues with so many users seeing the same problem.

Estoy teniendo los mismos problemas con mi MacBook Pro de finales de 2011. Al parecer la mayoría de ordenadores de esta serie da ese fallo a corto plazo. El problema es claramente de la fabricación de dicho ordenador por parte de Apple, se están recogiendo firmas para que Apple lo reconozca y comience el programa de sustitución.

Ruego que firmemos todos los afectados:

https://www.change.org/en-AU/petitions/timothy-d-cook-replace-or-fix-all-early-2 011-macbook-pro-with-graphics-failure

Saludos.

Estoy teniendo los mismos problemas con mi MacBook Pro de finales de 2011. Al parecer la mayoría de ordenadores de esta serie da ese fallo a corto plazo. El problema es claramente de la fabricación de dicho ordenador por parte de Apple, se están recogiendo firmas para que Apple lo reconozca y comience el programa de sustitución.

Ruego que firmemos todos los afectados:

https://www.change.org/en-AU/petitions/timothy-d-cook-replace-or-fix-all-early-2 011-macbook-pro-with-graphics-failure

Saludos.

This problem come after me, after 3 years of usage - after upgrading to SSD and 16GB (2x8GB PC1333) to my early 2011 MBP, and had a fresh 10.9 installation. Screen suddenly freezes and sometimes become blue. Nothing can do other than a hard power rest to reboot the machine.

Surf the Internet for troubshooting, installed "gfxCardStatus" to force some programs like "hugin" that I open frequently, to use the "Integrated Graphic card" to solve the problem.

That means, I couldn't use the AMD graphic card anymore on a such a "Pro" notebook. Made me sad.

My early 2011 17" MBP just suffered its first graphics card failure today. I was simply browsing a static website, the whole computer froze, so I hard-reset it. When it booted back up, pink and grey vertical lines appeared, and the fans ramped up. It wouldn't boot, so I did a hard shutdown again. I couldn't even boot to my recovery disk, or a recovery USB drive.

One commenter here suggested to let the fans run until it overheats and shuts down, so that's what I did, and now it booted up again, but I now know that it's simply a ticking time bomb. I don't even want to sell it now, because I'll be selling someone a lemon. This is ridiculous.

I redid the thermal paste about 8 months ago, and I dust the inside of the laptop every other month, so there is no reason my laptop should be experiencing overheating issues. I can't believe Apple isn't doing anything about this.

Yeah, my MBP 17" is failing much more frequently now - even though it just started yesterday. Had to hard reboot about 15 times today, and some of those times I had to wait about 10 minutes in between to get it to actually boot back up. This is definitely maddening.

Making plans on building a PC next, since I'd rather have 3-5 year warranties on all my parts than the 1-year warranty on my Apple products. I've been an Apple user since my BlackBook in 2006, but this is definitely making me move in a different direction.

EEaudio08, I also thought about going to alternate hardware. Searching images.google.com for GPU failure shows all sorts of PCs failing. So my constraint was no discrete GPU. I wanted Linux/UNIX. So I looked into the Dell XPS, but the price is higher than the MB Air and reviews comparing them favor the Air. I considered building, but felt the price of assembling an i7 PC plus the risk was more than the cost of a Mac Mini. I got a Mac Mini with i7 (without discrete GPU) on the first MBP 8.2 repair. I bought a MB Air i5 on the third MBP 8.2 warranted repair. The i5 on the MB Air ran a lot cooler than I expected. (I was afraid an i7 would be too hot, but the Air runs cooler than any laptop I have had). I like them and neither has failed in the year I have had them.

$310 depot repair is cheaper than another computer. I do think an alternate computer is needed for the repair time(s).

I did get some android devices, on which I am playing with Linux, as toys.

When I google 'GPU Failure', I get results on the first page all about this 2011 MBP, actually. My point in building my own hardware is that most GPU's (PCIe) come with multi-year warranties, whereas Apple's overpriced hardware only comes with one-year of attached warranty. And if a GPU fails on a desktop I build, I can RMA it and replace with another one - not losing the entire machine's functionality, like the case with this MacBook Pro.

I am so upset that this computer basically only lasted 2 years (I got it in 2012). It is failing more and more often, and I'm pretty sure within the week I won't even be able to turn it back on.

Karl Ihrig, you are totally missing my point. Buy an NVidia Titan card, and you get a three year warranty with it. It dies within those three years? RMA it and get a new one. It dies after those three years? Buy another video card for much less than the cost of the entire machine.

You buy a MacBook Pro with no AppleCare, and the video card dies after one year? The whole machine is now a paperweight.

I understand that GPU's fail. What I don't comprehend is how Apple gets away with only offering a 1-year warranty on their products, and I especially don't understand how they're getting away with doing nothing about this thread's specific problem, when so many people have been affected.

EEaudio08, I see your point now that a removable card is easier and cheaper to replace. That would be a PC rather than a laptop, like you said. Another alternative is a Mac model with no discrete GPU, which is about half the cost.

Entities get away with things until a judge says otherwise. Lawyers cost more than laptops.

My last response was deleted for "questionable information". So Apple, what is your answer to EEaudio08's question?

2011 MBP 8,2 15" with a Radeon HD 6750M

Hate to say it , but the same thing just happened to me , and this is the SECOND graphics card/logic board issue I've had-I bought this MBP to replace a 2009 MBP that cooked it's NVIDIA....How thoroughly depressing! Really- both times while using an external monitor....(nothing fancy either....a 22" viewsonic)

out of warranty, and no applecare.

Anyone out there know if the Apple Store still offers the $300 flat rate depot repair?

I removed my Crucial M4 from this laptop to use in a new laptop I got (the 17" MBP 2011 shutdowns became unbearable), and I put the original HDD back in it, to try and restore Mavericks to it via USB, and the video card freaked out so much that it made the screen look like a static-filled TV station, until it completely shut down. Every. Single. Time.

So I can't even restore OSX to another drive, the video card is so botched. This makes me so upset.