Q: 2011 MacBook Pro and Discrete Graphics Card

As an engineer, a 2011 owner who gets paid by clients for fixing and maintaining Macintosh and PC's and in his spare time helps others out for free with zero points reward mostly on macrumors here's two quotes by the late but very great Richard Feynman which I apply in my whole life never mind just work.

"The worthwhile problems are the ones you can really solve or help solve, the ones you can really contribute something to. … No problem is too small or too trivial if we can really do something about it."

"The idea is to try to give all the information to help others to judge the value of your contribution; not just the information that leads to judgement in one particular direction or another."

I suggest anyone who tries their very best to be helpful but can't help fail themselves sometimes to go on youtube and watch his old BBC documentary "The pleasure of finding things out"  He shunned awards and explains it all in the most delightful and insightful way and I doubt anyone intelligent and rational could possibly fail to not learn something after.

@Csound1 As expected thank you for reporting my post. This is my last post here. I hope people with this problem get some clarification from Apple soon. I am waiting as well.

Even hypothetical ones - surely not?  You and Carl really both need to sit down and watch that YouTube video

Ok, following the advice of a fellow user from this topic I just "fixed" my macbook by wrapping it with a bathroom mat and letting it overheat to the point where it would shut itself down. After that I let it rest for 3 minutes and then I booted. It started normaly in the first attempt.

Sounded like a crazy idea at first, but it makes sense that if the GPU gets hot enough it could force a "reflow" in the solder, just like a real reflow would work.

I am running a GPU stress test right now and it is working flawlessly, I will report again with results later.

If this works I think will be throwing a party to celebrate this weekend!!

mondesigns wrote:

 

@Csound1 As expected thank you for reporting my post. This is my last post here. I hope people with this problem get some clarification from Apple soon. I am waiting as well.

Yes, we know that.

Good luck.

GavMackem wrote:

 

Even hypothetical ones -

Hypothetically?

Yes.

I don't have a second computer...

no I can't start up in safemode either...

I have tried joining the serial number discussion - I get the response  Unauthorized

which doesn't surprise me.

My serial number is C0*******F91 and I have had three logic board replacements - 700 € the first one, the others free under the guarantee of the repair.

This last replacement is also failing as soon as I need to do any real graphics work and will go back in for a further "repair".

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I'm afraid I see nothing about hypothetical there, perhaps you and your friends need to study this document more.  There are also some interesting points in those terms of use as regards to behaviour though..

I am not the one who brought 'hypothetical' situations up, I really couldn't care less about them frankly. Stick to the terms in reality, let the hypotheses stay in the box.

I had this problem about five months ago, got my logic board replaced at the Apple Store and now it's happening again - bit of graphic distortion at first then blue screen of death again and won't get through startup or boot into recovery mode. I don't get this, how can a new logic board not last farther than this. I haven't even been doing heavy duty work much on it. Havent been following the issue since I got the repair so has anything new happened? Has Apple issued any kind of recall or acknowledged this at all?

My understanding -- for what its worth -- its that the replacement board would not have been 'new' but 'reconditioned' and as a result, carrying the latent fault in the soldered connection between GPU and board. This is the aspect of this problem which has been generating so much heat (pardon the grisly pun) over these past months.

It's now over a month now, that my MacBook Pro 2011 has returned from repair with a new logic board and the battery replaced which costed me over 700 Swiss Francs. Now I try to avoid overheating and I'm really afraid my MacBook Pro will die any time soon again. It is really unprofessional the way apple handles this problem on every level.

And why are disruptive trolls like CSound1 still allowed to post here? Apple seems to have a problem with people who are destroying it from within: fake loyal employees who don't have a sense for what the customer needs. Apple should remember to focus on quality products instead of relying on (paid) trolls for their disastrous disaster management.

I specifically asked the guy at the store if the replacement would be a new or refurbished part and he said it would be new. Gah. This is so stupid.