Q: 2011 MacBook Pro and Discrete Graphics Card
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Apr 9, 2014 11:57 AMby triffski,I think that's the key if you're in the EU, certainly seemed to do the trick for me the other day. I think Apple are well aware that a recall is most likely on the cards, but either attempting to delay the inevitable or only looking after those customers fortunate enough to have bought their MacBooks in a country with solid consumer protection laws.
Interestingly, the same member of Apple's Exec Relations who emailed me before my Genius appointment on Monday just phoned to see if I was happy with the resolution and if there was anything more she could do.
I said I was satisfied with how my situation turned out, but I was aware of thousands of other cases exhibiting exactly the same flaw and I felt that to fully restore my faith in the brand, Apple should look after those customers too. She said they couldn't respond to other cases or unconfirmed reports on third-party websites, so I told her I'd seen well over a thousand pages of replies on discussions.apple.com alone, that I'm very tech savvy and it was my assessment that the root cause of most of the problems I've seen there is the well reported GPU/logic board failure that my own machine exhibited.
We left it that my feedback had been noted, I doubt it'll make much difference but it had to be said given their attentiveness.
So yes, I'd strongly advise researching EU consumer law or the Sale of Goods Act, specifically the sections on quality and durability.
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Apr 9, 2014 1:23 PMby monstruowong,My first graphic card failure happened early november last year. Luckily, the machine is covered by applecare.
Prior to that, there were some problems as well. SD card slot not working, Matt screen was badly tinted.
Applecare had it all fixed, replace logic board along with new screen.
bShortly after, barely 2 months later, same discrete graphics failure. Sent in for applecare and logic board was replaced.
As of today, another sight of failure: glitched screen, hang when switching to discrete card. This is the 3rd time it failed. On top of that, complete hard disk failure (**** fortune to retrieve my data) + battery service warning.
All the replacement boards lasted only between 2~4 mths. It's really alerting. I'm going to call applecare and speak to someone senior about my problem.
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Apr 9, 2014 2:16 PMby egorsokolov,Man, you've paid for applecare but you don't do backups?
I advise you to start immedeately, it will save you a lot of worries and money.
It's quite easy and not that expensive these days, I got a NAS + 6 TB storage for like $350 (and that's 6 TB, you don't really need that much for your backups).
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Apr 9, 2014 2:34 PMby monstruowong,I did. However, I could only afford do a weekly backup since I spend a lot time moving around and work at different areas.
Though the last backup was just days ago, there were plenty of work done. I managed to get my local IT guys to clone the HDD onto a new HDD and had to use since I was rushing for deadline.
Didn't expect the graphics card to fail again within such short interval.
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Apr 9, 2014 8:45 PMby Guitarax,Flamenco13 wrote:
- I booted into single user mode (you can also access the startup disk from target disk mode from another machine, or take the drive out)
- I navigated to the driver directory (cd /System/Library/Extensions)
- I moved all ATI drivers out (sudo mv ATI* ~/Desktop/)
- I rebooted
Essentialy what this does is makes those files inaccessable, thus making the discreet GPU inoperable. Simply moving the files from that folder into a safe area where they will not be deleted has worked for the last month in my machine. Though I believe a system update will replace them, I kept these files and noted their location in case Apple finally decides to own up to the fact that their hardware is failing.
Though using gfxCardStatus is an option, it does not override software's graphics choice, so using integrated only is switched back to dynamic switching automatically when running some apps. By using this workaround, you make it virtually impossible for the discreet graphics to be used. This option does, however, disable using an external dispplay.
I have interacted with support online, by phone, and in person. The only promise of some kind of accomodations for the failed hardware has come form the genious bar where they offered reballing or a logicboard replacement. Everytime I talk, they tell me that it is not hardware related and that it is software, which doesnt make sense seeing as my board is showing heat-damage exclusively at the GPU terminals (melted logic board). They also responded with the graphic failure in bootcamp windows as a software problem, as if I am running the same software on 2 different OS. From this, it can be assumed that Apple knows about this and is gonna pull every exscuse possible to avoid giving free replacements and repairs.
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Apr 9, 2014 11:59 PMby KrAfTy31,Hello everyone,
I had the same issue on my mac boop pro Early 2011 but I found THE solution to solve this problem and it works !!!
In fact, the solder of GPU has micro lesions. The pewter of GPU must be soften in order to suppress these lesions.
For information, the logic board without thermal grease must be placed in a stove at around 175°C during 7 minutes and 30 seconds. For all details, the original post is on macgeneration and the article is “Réparation réussie GPU Macbook Pro 15" 2011“.
