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Level 1

6 points

i7 MBP 8.2 AMD 6750M 2011 Crashes, Red Horizontal Lines, won't boots

Crash, horizontal red lines, won't boot, SMC PRAM reset, failed boots, successful boot cycles:

For about a week, I have been struggling with crashes, followed by red horizontal lines on the screen, and inability to boot into multi-user mode. It will boot into single user mode, with red stripes on black background. To get it to boot again I "shutdown -h now" from single user mode, SMC reset, PRAM reset 3 times, and attempt boots with <command> R two to three times unsuccessfully. Then, if I am lucky, when I do a boot into single-user mode (power, <command> S), it boots into single user mode with a black background and no stripes, then I "exit" to boot. If I am unlucky, the black screen will have red stripes or red snow in single-user mode. After several crashes, I also have to remove my hard drive, and do a disk repair and permission repair, while connected to a different mac, or format and restore ML. (I have two backups of my personal data.) The failed multi-user boots are terminated by grey or black screens of death, accompanied by heat and the fands running fast. The fans also run in single user mode without processor load if they red stripes are on the screen. A successful multi-user boot is cool without fans running. I didn't have any crashing problems before switching to ML recently.

Memtest fails in multi-user mode (but not single-user mode):

Running memtest on 8GB RAM in multi-user mode fails at a single address on the most significant byte (with 1 bit difference). However, memtest does not show a failure in single-user mode, nor with only a single 4GB module in multi-user mode.

Increased stability with gfxCardStatus and Flash unininstall:

Using gfxCardStatus Integrated Only mode, and uninstalling Flash, seems to help. However, I do get crashes or inability to wake up display which seems to be associated with processes like (google Chrome renderer) which forces gfxCardStatus out of "Integrated Only" mode. http://gfx.io/switching.html

Future plans:

I am in Mexico where RAM is outrageously expensive. So I will order RAM from the USA and try new 16 GB RAM because it is cheaper part swap than the logic board. It makes sense to try the cheap stuff first. I would rather switch to Linux and continue my bioinformatics work than pay and wait to replace the i7 logic board which warranty expired a few months ago. 😟 I refuse to hit it with a heatgun to reflow the BGA solder on the GPU. I really need the i7 data processing throughput I paid for. 😢

Suggestions?

Does anyone understand the ambiguous memtest results?

MacBook, Minis, Mac OS X (10.5.2)

Posted on Dec 19, 2012 9:13 PM

Best reply

spritrig Author

Level 1

6 points

Posted on Dec 23, 2012 5:32 PM

Memtest passing in single-user mode, failing in multi-user mode:

Memtest documentation says "Suspect the CPU caches if the tests pass in single-user mode but fail in a terminal window under the full OS." Since I won't have new RAM for over a week, I am delaying suspicions.

www.memtestosx.org/downloads/memtest422/Users_Guide.rtf

http://osxdaily.com/2011/05/03/memtest-mac-ram-test/

Installing ML on an empty partition seems to work:

I noticed that most all of the complaints I saw about Mountain Lion crashing, corrupting disks, and not booting were associated with updating to Mountain Lion on a machine that did not have ML pre-installed. So instead of updating from Snow Leopard, I cloned a bootable Snow Leopard, and re-partitioned the drive with another seperate partition and installed Mountain Lion on the empty new partition. So I could use System Preferences-->Startup Disk to select the partition to startup with Snow Leopard or Mountain Lion. The important difference was the Mountain Lion partition started empty and did not have an OS installed before ML.
I found that multiple Snow Leopard boots could not flush out the graphical problems. The best I could do booting Snow Leopard was boot, but wide vertical red lines on the screen would not disappear.
However, booting Mountain Lion in recovery mode multiple times unsuccessfully, seemed to flush out the graphic problem and restore normal multi-user mode booting. For good measure, I booted in recovery mode and shutdown in the apple pulldown menu 6 times. My thinking was the recovery mode startup was flushing out bad states and I was attempting a deeper flush of bad states. http://www.apple.com/osx/recovery/
Since doing that yesterday morning, my laptop has had normal beautiful graphic appearance of ML, no glitches, no crashes, and boots fine, for 36 hours now. I have also fully loaded all the cores of the i7 processor for several 10 minutes with bioinformatics processing to heat up the processor as a stress test. I also installed flash and watched YouTube videos without crashing.

I belive the important steps were:

Install ML on seperate partition where no OS exists.
Lots of OS X Recovery mode boots and shutdowns to flush out bad state.

(Note: before this mess, ML was running stable for a couple months and I didn't reboot for a month or so.)

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25 replies

May 31, 2013 6:53 PM in response to spritrig

OH NO! This morning, the same laptop, with the Depot Repair replaced logic board, had a dead battery. It only boots to grey or black screen!!! 😟 The SSD drive boots a Mac Mini just fine! Looks like a second bad logic board! 😟

Jan 13, 2014 12:24 AM in response to Karl Ihrig

My colleagues (two) and myself are having this problem. Based on our troubleshooting, discussion and observation. We suspect that all 3 of us having a bad Logic Board/GPU (MBP 8.2). There are a significant occasions when the fan will run very fast (>6k rpm) for no clear reasons (was just running a few tabs of web browser). And one day, the MBP will just crash and refuse to boot, even with other hdd or USB restore disk. Red horizontal lines on apple boot screen and then turned to blue screen while fan is spinning very fast, at this point the MBP will get very hot.

This model (MBP 8.2, Early 2011) is no longer under Apple warranty. We appreciate any updates on this particular model. I am very interested to know what happened to you unit @Karl Ihrig. It seems like you have a second bad logic board?

Thanks.

Jan 13, 2014 12:36 AM in response to muzaaliff

muzaaliff,

I had problems very, very similar to your own. My GPU blipped out first but I could run the Apple Hardware Test and no problems were found (except for the horizontal lines on the screen). But I could not boot from any device and when I tried Internet Recovery I had black and blue vertical lines.

I ended up having my logic board replaced (gratis as I have AppleCare until 2015). That's been 4 days ago. So far everything's fine but I've no idea if this will 'last.'

Good luck with your machine,

Clinton

Jan 13, 2014 12:49 AM in response to clintonfrombirmingham

@clintonfrombirmingham,

Thanks for your prompt respond. It's a good thing that you have AppleCare extended warranty. All 3 of us didn't opt for AppleCare at the time of purchase. Since it's 3 of us having same problem and I believe many more out there; I am just wondering if it's a design/manufacturing flaw for this specific model and if there's any recall program by Apple to fix this. I'm Not sure how much a logic board costs in UK ( I assume you are from Birmingham? 😉). But it is quite expensive here. Anyway, I don't imagine it'll be cheap anywhere.

I wish you all the best for your new LB/GPU. Hopefully it'll last another few years of good service.

Thanks.

Muzaaliff

Jan 13, 2014 12:58 AM in response to muzaaliff

Birmingham, ALABAMA, US. But I'm not a native - just landed here by a series of accidents.

My quote for the logic board and labor (before the Genius realized that I had AppleCare) was just under $500USD. Costs are probably less expensive in the US than in any other country, though.

I believe, now, that the problem is with the lead-free solder used on the GPU. Folks that have had the old GPU BGA reballed seem to have solved their problem. And some, of course, have gone so far to have a new GPU 'expertly' installed (which seems a perfect solution).

I do hope this machine lasts me awhile - I'm not really enamored of the closed Retina models...

Clinton

Jan 13, 2014 1:38 AM in response to spritrig

Another thread for reference.

problems with amd gpu on early 2011 macbook pro

May 21, 2014 12:16 PM in response to spritrig

Just had this problem with my MBP 17inch.

Typical as the extended warranty has just ended. Wish I had seen this tread before as I did have problems going back a couple of months, which was in the warranty period. :-(

Jul 2, 2014 10:47 AM in response to bassoonman2

bassoonman2,

Take it to Apple. They aren't telling people how to fix it themselves. Have the genius look at it. They should offer you depot repair warranted repair for 90 days for $310. Just keep bringing it back to Apple until it gets fixed. Mine took three times, and they refunded the repair price, without me asking, saying I could continue with cycling 90 day warrantees. So they fixed it for free but wasted a lot of time and logic boards. I bought computers to keep me working through this process. The last time I bought another power supply just in case the old one was the problem in an effort to break the repair cycle. Mine has been working for almost a year since then.

Tu Lu

Level 1

0 points

Jul 8, 2014 8:56 AM in response to Karl Ihrig

Hi All,

I just been through this f**king s**t , details description of issue is as follow:

red horizontal lines display right after you startup,
it will go on to show you the apple (still in red horizontal lines),
then it show the gray screen,
and your fans start running like crazy.
If you switch to window OS
you will be able to run on safe-mode, and the screen look like... well you know

My conclusion is the RAM. not normal issue, a special RAM issue. I followed these steps and fixed it.

Take out one RAM
reboot on recovery mode, (press and hold: command + R)
then it will display a crappy screen again still the apple sign
then it will turn blue.
Dont panic, shut it down
this time do the RAM boot (press and hole command + option + P + R)
if the RAM you are using is ok, everything should back to normal.
if not, then replace it with the one you just took out and do the whole thing again.

i try command + R singly, and it not work. I tried reboot RAM (press and hole command + option + P + R) alone, it not work. only when i combine them, then it working. Also, it you put the faulty RAM in and take it out, even though you are on the "ok" RAM, the problem still exist without doing the process that i just described

Hope this help, and stop paying apple for non-sense things. 😎

P/s: I keep wondering why all macbooks suddenly have the same issue at the similar period. If Apple do this on purpose to make us purchase new stuffs ?

Silbe

Level 1

0 points

Aug 5, 2014 5:44 AM in response to Karl Ihrig

changing the logic board doesn't solve the problem! I have the same problem with my MacBook Pro 2011 and now it is at my "Service Provider" for the 3. time. They will replace the logic board for the third time now but i have no hope that it will help for long because the same bad gpu is on it and that is really all s..t! I do it because i am still on extended warranty but wouldnt spend any money on this! I am now - after 25 years with Apple - looking for alternatives...

i7 MBP 8.2 AMD 6750M 2011 Crashes, Red Horizontal Lines, won't boots