Q: 2011 MacBook Pro and Discrete Graphics Card

Yep, that's totally me, and I do live in Moscow.

What do you mean exactly when you speak about joining forces?

Hi I complete the step 7C and the last thing that the bootrepair showed was:

"make BIOS boot on sda1/EFI/ubuntu/grubx64 file"

after of reboot the laptop without the usb the laptop show me three options:

- Ubuntu

-  Advance options for Ubuntu

- /EFI/ubuntu/Mokmanager.efi

The first options (Ubuntu) just show me a red screen with the message:

4.508320] Disabling IRQ #17

The second and third option just not work.

Also I want to say that when I edit the GRUB I can not find the "insmod ext2", all I can see is:

setparams 'Boot-Repair-Disk session '

set gfxpayload=keep

linux    /casper/vmlinuz file=/cdrom/preseed/lubuntu.seed boot=casper quiet splash --

initrd   /casper/initrd.lz

and the above is the content that I saw in every step of your tutorial in the GRUB

Any idea of what is wrong? Thanks.

egorsokolov wrote:

 

Yep, that's totally me, and I do live in Moscow.

What do you mean exactly when you speak about joining forces?

I was affected by the GPU glitch 1.5 weeks ago and I wrote here about my experience about a week ago. If you were also affected by the same glitch, I think that we need to talk about our future plans. Are you planning to have your machine repaired? Personally, I don't know what to do at the moment: I live in a small (300k people) town where we don't even have a single Apple authorized reseller or a repair company.

Moreover, you know that in general customer service in Russia is just bad, no matter what company you're dealing with. If we want to demand something from Apple, we need to find as many affected users as possible and provide our feedback to Apple representatives in Russia.

Anyway, I'll get in touch with you then.

For what it's worth, being to stubborn to cave into Apple's insufficient "fix" of charging $300+ for a stop-gap logic board replacement, I've taken what seems like the crazy route and tried to fix the problem myself. My experience (early 2011 MBP, 15"):

1. I disassembled the logic board, cleaned out any dust, cleaned off (and photographed, in case it ever comes in handy) the ridiculously sloppy thermal paste application, polished the heat sinks until they were super-shiny, then "baked" the logic board. I reapplied thermal paste correctly, reassembled, crossed my fingers, and voila! It worked perfectly. Temps ran cooler than before, staying in general around 50°-60°C. Fans hardly ever ran.

This fixed the problem for about 2 months.

2. Two months after the initial "bake", graphics glitches started popping up again, until the MacBook Pro crashed and restarted to black / gray screens. The system would work, albeit very slowly, when I removed the AMD and ATI kext's. So, I decided to try again with a more targeted fix, "reflowing" with a heat gun.

I disassembled everything again, cleaned the (now tidy) thermal paste, and used the "heat gun" method—applying some heat to the underside of the GPU first, adding a little flux around the GPU board which got drawn underneath, then heating the top of the GPU with the heat gun until about 220-230°C, the temps at which the lead-free solder would melt. After cooling, I reapplied Arctic Silver again, reassembled, and crossed my fingers. I reinstalled Mountain Lion (because I had done so much monkeying-around with kext's and plist's), and, though I still don't believe it, it's back up and running perfectly again.

And here's the best part: This time, it's running even cooler—35°-40°C, again, with the fans hardly ever (actually, never) running. And, as a bonus, my battery time has jumped from 2:30 on a full charge to 5:30. CRAZY.

___

This procedure is not for the faint of heart, but I figured I had nothing to lose—the computer was a brick otherwise, and after many long conversations with nice but unhelpful people in Apple Executive Relations, I just can't stomach paying them any more money. If this 2nd fix fails, I'll take advantage of one of the professional reballing services on eBay. I hope that the cottage industry of chip-reballing services takes off, that these folks make a fortune off of Apple's mistakes, and that Apple one day feels ashamed of the time they let thousands of MBP owners hang out to dry.

Like many, I'm a lifelong Mac user. But the next computer I buy, when this beast finally dies for good, will be a PC.

Well, add me to the list of MBP owners with failed discrete GPUs. Sadly, this heavily affects my income as a freelance designer- hoping Apple really will respond before we're dragged through a class action that won't solve my immediate issues.

Anyone know a realistic turnaround time for the reballing services on eBay? (Apologies if that has already been asked and answered.)

Add me to the list also. Posting here to add to the many thousands of replys - my Macbook Pro froze up and eventually I couldn't even get to a boot screen. Baked the logic board as a last resort - working now but for who knows how long...

Is anyone else on here with this problem from Ireland?

I performed the logic board bake for the two clients who couldn't afford a re-ball - wrapped the entire board aside from the two processors in tin foil, placed it absolutely level in the oven with a couple of copper coins on top of the chips and baked for 8 mins at 200 degrees c then opened the oven door to let it cool without moving it.  As I said before, post baking both machines are still working fine up to 11 months after this drastic fix.  If my 2011 suffers the same fate, unless Apple take action I shall have to take the re-ball option and save my invoice to claim from them when they finally initiate an exchange program. I am hopeful that my preventative thermal measures will allow my board to last long enough till it is initiated, plus the 17 inch has always got less hot than the 15 inch inside and nearly all the re-balls have been for the smaller model. Fingers crossed!

Having read through a lot of this thread and seeing users are having problems with replacement logic boards it seems pretty obvious these replacement boards must have been manufactured at the same time as the originals with the same lead free solder problems for the AMD GPU.  As the layout for the logic board and heatpipe design is roughly the same since the launch of the unibody in 2008, these 2011 models with The Sandy Bridge CPU/AMD GPU generates the most heat out of any other combination which when compounded by the lead free solder ban must exacerbate the chances of the boards going bad.  The 2012 15 inch models do not suffer from the same problem as they use the ivy bridge CPU which is a die shrink of the sandy bridge and generates less heat, and likewise the Kepler architecture of the GTX 650m GPU.

Unless Apple take the course of getting these replacement logic boards re-balled properly or remanufacturing new ones I can't see how this problem is going to go away anytime soon..

This happened after 10 minutes of my work with photoshop apple why are you still silent!!!

Is your machine working fine by now? I've bought a private additional care service, but they don't seem to know anything about this issue. They are not an apple authorized center...

SurfsUpSD wrote:

 

I stopped following this thread a long time ago but wanted to share that I used this guy on eBay and got a quick, CHEAP fix with 1 year warrenty.

 

http://www.ebay.com/itm/MACBOOK-REPAIR-GRAPHICS-CHIP-REBALLING-REPLACING-SERVICE -1-YEAR-WARRANTY-/271139379677

 

I have given up on Apple. I will continue to spread my disappointment with Apple among friends and family making sure that people avoid doing business with such a #*&*$&# company.

 

I am back to Windows and typing this on an HP Envy which costs less than 1/2 a MBP and has more power.

 

My next phone will be an android and I can't wait. Bye bye Apple.

Thank you for that information. I'll take it as my one of my main argumentation - next friday I have an appointment at the genius bar.

Several users have posted already the same problems with their replaced logic board. This prooves, the replacement is definitely not as reliable as the original board. otherwise your replaced logic board should bring up its first graphic issues in 2016, not today!

I am curious... let's see, what they will offer to me. Maybe the issue is "well known" until friday

Just joining the thread...

Have the same: MacBook Pro 15-inch, Late 2011 with discrete graphics card AMD Radeon HD 6750M

working temporarily using integrated card only (forced by gfxCardStatus).

Did anyone heard about self replacement of that card??  Would love to switch to some nVidia ones...

I'm afraid, but the so called discrete graphic card is hardwired. It can't be replaced like you might be used to it at classic desktop pc. The only parts you can replace manually are RAM and HDD / SDD. Ok, the optical drive can be replaced, too.

It's replaceable, but not by your average user.

Oh, ok. But I must admit that I don't want to try open heart surgery on my MBP ;)