Q: 2011 MacBook Pro and Discrete Graphics Card

May I join the club? Same problem as you guys, blue, black, white screen, impossible to boot, can't get to login screen, if i manage to log in, well it doesn't take long till i get a split screen or something alike.

MAcbook pro 15' late 2011. Amd Radeon Hd 6750.

I bought it in France 2 years ago, now i'm in brazil, the cost for replacing the logic board is more than half of its price. What now?

Of course, i'm out of warranty...

Talked to an Apple senior advisor, they won't do anything, plus they're not even aware of that issue (or so they say).

Noltari,

  If your logic board replacements were "fixes" for a GPU failure that occured within your original warranty or Apple Care period, it seems to me that you are still entitled to a proper fix - based on the terms of the original warranty and your timely exercise of that warranty promise (Apple has not yet provided what you were entitled to by the terms of their original warranty... that is a proper repair, not a short lived repair). IMHO

Sorry to hear that... I'm on my fourth logic board for my MacBook Pro (17-inch, Early 2011) as well, so far it has been holding up - the first one failed in September 2013 with a blue pin stripe scenario. Then two replacement ones died right away (one with a likely unrelated problem). Fortunately that was under Apple Care, I'm now five months into #4 and Apple Care is about to expire... fingers crossed.

A german tech newspaper has written about the problem. (http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/MacBook-Pro-Nutzer-kaempfen-weiterhin-mit -Grafik-Problemen-2158845.html)

In the end auf the article apple respones to the newspaper that customers should call the apple support.

That's good that this is getting some news coverage.  However, Apple should be ashamed of their response--calling support has only resulted in additional frustration and no support or even recognition that this is a widespread issue.

I don't know if you are in the United States or not, but if you are you should be covered under the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act.  It's a lemon law that covers consumer electronics.  If Apple can't fix your computer then it's a lemon and they must give you a new one.  That is why so many people are offered new computers after the third or fourth failure. 

From computerlemonlaw.com: "Under a Federal law, known as the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act, consumers have an absolute right to satisfactory warranty repairs. If the company is unwilling or unable to make successful repairs, the company has breached its warranty obligation to you, regardless of whether they acted in good faith to remedy the concern or not.  ... In such a case, the consumer is entitled to either a NEW COMPUTER (or printer, scanner, software etc.) or a FULL REFUND without charge, in exchange for the defective unit."

Hey ixaviers,

I didn't see your comment until now... sorry about that.

Personally, I never used boot repair.  When I installed Ubuntu, I encrypted my home folder (for some reason that helped me boot).  Once it was all installed, I restarted and nothing happened, so I restarted again.  Then the Grub came up.  So I had to start the computer twice to get to the grub menu.  When I get the grub I hit "e".    You're right, there is no "insmod 2."  Before all the text create a new line and enter the outb commands then replace quiet splash like you already did. 

If you can't get in, I would reinstall Ubuntu w/an encrypted home folder.   Restart twice, see if the grub comes up and then enter the code to disable the graphics card.  Once your in, CatFisce gave excellent directions on how to permanently alter the grub. 

Ubuntu is a pain in the *** to get going but once you do it's worth it.  I had to reinstall it more than a few times but everything works now.

@paigoomein I already tried that last time and it didn't work :/. They told me that the only thing they could do is replace me the logic board until it gets fixed.

@Dahlialady that's what I've told them the last four times...

@uk04 sound pretty much like my case.

@kittykatKS I'm in Spain (Europe) and I don't think that kind of law exists here. I think that here they must repair the device and it's up to them to decide if they keep repairing it or give me another one.

Regards.

Same here. MacBookPro8,3, late 2011 17" i7 with a Radeon 6770M, it's under two years old.

As of about two days ago, I have intermittent graphics glitches/crashes, Windows 7 has more issues and Mavericks so far only in discrete graphics mode. Anything that uses the GPU pretty much guarantees a crash and an exciting new stripy pattern.

I have insurance but on past experience I'd expect them to say this is a manufacturing defect, I doubt Apple will agree but they can't both be right. I'm also in the UK so there's the Sales of Goods Act, £2,500 for a laptop that lasts under two years sounds fairly unfit for purpose to me.

http://www.which.co.uk/consumer-rights/problem/what-do-i-do-if-i-have-a-faulty-p roduct

Noltari,

Re:@Dahlialady that's what I've told them the last four times...

Well, that is a sad story. I hope, however, that eventually you have a satisfactory ending.

I guess this might already be buried in amongst the 269 pages here, but there's a story over on Tech Republic with some useful information about this issue.

It mentions this thread had 200k views in late January, now two months on it's got over 450k..... That's a lot of unhappy MacBooks.

We have the same problem here as well. Only double crossing our fingers that the discrete card will not be activated helps to keep the MBP usable.

Got my MBP to turn on again and it would run for an hour or so then heat up and go blue screened. And I couldn't do anything too graphics heavy which, as a graphic designer, renders it almost useless to me, the ironic part being that powerful graphics processing is supposedly a reason why designers prefer Macs. After the MPB cooled down for an hour or so it would turn on again then same cycle. Then I downloaded gfxcardstatus to keep it running on the intel instead of discrete but it seems to need to switch to discrete if I want to use Photoshop or whatever? Need to test it more. It's stayed on, on sleep, since last night but I've yet to see if I can work on it with any degree of efficiency.

I also own an early 2011 17" Macbook Pro, bought in march 2011, and experience the same problems.

I started noticing problems on friday, the computer would sometimes freeze and I would get strange vertical lines about an inch wide on the boot screen, similar to the pictures triffski posted few posts above.

I did a Mavericks clean install, and it worked well for a day or two.

But now it refuses to boot most of the time.   When the vertical bars appear on the boot screen, it does not boot.  When they don't appear, the computer boots fine... but will freeze eventually.

I installed gfxcardstatus and will see if it helps.

I expected that 2,500 euros computer to last more than three years and am quite disappointed.

You can definitely request a replacement MBP.

Guess now I'm on the same boat with you guys, except that after hanging + blanket tricks, the laptop is still usable for several hours. But it's just a matter of time. Eventually it will broken.

2000eu on a laptop that last for 2 years and 3 months. Well .....