Macbook Pro white screen on RESTART only

I have MBP Early 2011 model i7 with dedicated graphics.

I had been running OSX 10.6 Snow Leopard until last week, which I know is completely outdated but I was forced to keep it due to FCP7 compatibility.

Anyway, finally I installed Yosemite (fresh install) and all worked out okay. But whenever I restart the machine it will hang on white screen after the apple logo appears. Then when I shut it down by holding down the power button and start from shut off, it boots fine. It only happens when I "Restart". Shut down and start is okay. Then I thought it might be a problem with Yosemite so I then wiped out the machine again and installed Mavericks, but same problem. Then I went back even further and installed Mountain Lion, but same restart problem.

Thinking this is hard drive issue since it still have the stock 500GB drive, I went and bought Samsung 850 Evo SSD 250GB and reloaded Mavericks, but it's giving me the same issue. I tried zapping the PRAM and SMC reset, ran Disk Utility repair, hardware diagnostics, pretty much everything and turned out fine.

What could be the issue? Memory? GPU? Everything except the new SSD is stock Apple including the memory.

Again, to summarize the issue, I only get white screen after the startup Apple logo disappears when I RESTART, but it boots up fine when I shut down and start. Any help would be appreciated.