Q: 2011 MacBook Pro and Discrete Graphics Card

I wouldn't take it as a showstopper. Your Macbook Pro isn't supposed to work normally without a battery. In order to make sure it isn't the battery you have to swap it with a new/working one.

Yeah, my batteryless success didn't last long. I worked normally for a like two hours running Illustrator and Photoshop, no glitching and everything was fine, then the screen just turned that freaky blue again and I had to force it to power off. Tried re-seating everything including the screen links but it still won't get through startup, either turns bright blue or freezes on blank grey screen after the spinning thing. A friend said it might be the cable that links the hard drive to the macbook that needs to be replaced, so I took the hard drive out, put it into a hard drive reader, plugged that into the laptop and started it up holding command+option to boot from the drive while it was connected externally. It showed up and I selected it but again it couldn't complete startup, so I don't think that cable is the problem. I'm going to take it into a shop tomorrow and see what they say.

Just got mine back from repair. So far, so good: had been shelved for many months and, despite swearing-off Apple from this issue, it's great to have it back.

Based on the poor results/value from Apples own repair offerings, I opted for a local shop and was very pleased with their work (full disclosure, they're a client of mine but I'd recommend them nonetheless).

They ordered and reinstalled a new GPU, I believe.

If you're in downtown Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, I recommend:

The PC Room

546 Gladstone Ave.

613-907-ROOM

http://thepcroom.ca

Good luck!

I also have had a failing battery for a few months ("service battery" warning) before this GPU failure.

All,

This just started happening to me.  I went to Apple and they declared it DOA.

The weird thing is that I used to be able to do an SMU reset to get the computer back to the Intel GPU and it would boot fine.  The moment it falls over to the AMD GPU I'm dead. 

So, I'm trying to boot now, and it seems "stuck" in the AMD GPU, so the computer dies during boot-up (after a strange looking screen.)

Does anyone know any way to "force" the computer back to the Intel GPU so I can boot it up?  At the very least I'd like to wipe my personal files from the SSD before I send it off to the computer graveyard.

pop the case, remove the SSD... it's pretty easy. If its going to the GY, then it's not going ot matter.

Mark,

Thanks for the kind reply. 

First I just now realized that this thing has standard screws.  (Not those weird things Apple's been known to use ... glad you mentioned this.)

One potential issue is that it's my I.T. department that's going to deep-six this thing.  I think they may want all of the parts back.  Now that you've helped me crack this open (pun intended), I'll see if I can mount it on something else and do the erase process.

Any ideas on how to force the laptop back into Intel mode?  (Mostly just a curiousity at this point.  This was quite frustrating.)

Flip  back a few pages, you'll find at least one post  by me that talks about the procedure to get  it booting again. This is definitely a YMMV situation, and seems to depend on your exact hardware and OS version, but in my case I've gotten it back into a very usable state with the intel graphics fully functioning and the AMD card disabled. You should at least be able to get it booted to a very flickerry but booted state with no hardware acceleration at all, which would suffice for rifle retrieval/cleanup.

Matt,

Thank you!  I'll start scrolling back.

One more user with the graphics card issue, at least the workaround to boot with the internal graphics is helping me to keep up with university deadlines.

Just incase anyone in the USA is considering using WPBComputerTECH from EBay (cost about $150.00 repaired, pay half up front and shipping to him in West Palm Beach, FL and the other half if it is fixed), I just wanted to make it aware that so far my experience with the service has been pretty bad.  Lack of communication from the seller and it has been over 2 weeks so far.  Honestly i'd be shocked if I get the laptop back.  Not sure if anyone else has used him but I can't even get him to respond to e-mails.  Just a warning to anyone who may be considering that option, if I had to do it again I wouldn't.

On the upside it was collecting dust anyway, so I guess if I never get it back not to much lost in the end.

@kittyKatKS I completed the step 7C that @CatFisce published 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.

Hi @CatFisce

I completed 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 edited 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 the GRUB every time that I entered in the GRUB in order to follow the steps that you published.

However I added the outb commans before the first line and I replace the quiet splash -- by quiet splash i915.lvds_channel_mode=2 i915.modeset=1 i915.lvds_use_ssc=0

Any idea of what I'm doing wrong? Thanks.

Same problem here as original post! 2011 MBP - screen started glitching with lines and freezing up, would initially allow me to reboot, eventually wouldn't even let me do that.   Now it tries to start up, shows horizontal lines, then goes to a gray screen while somethign (I think the fan) inside starts spinning fast.   When I start up in the safe mode it does the same thing and then goes to the blue screen.

This is in no way an isolated issue.  Apple could you help us out here?   I've been using macs for over 20 years, have never had anything like this before.

Forget Apple, they wont help you in this case! They can`t fix the problem, that`s why (i`ve been told)!

And hope for your reballer to not use correct solder, thats why the problem show up in first case!

Soldering without lead, for the enviromental and rules is the problem (for Apple). It`s not the same solder quality i´ve learned. I`ve got my machine reballed and the unauthorized technician told me they instead use solder with lead for longer durability (they could do it, but not authorized Apple service)! Reball is probably best solution for all of us out there, i`m sorry to tell!