Can't install High Sierra on 2011 late year MacBook Pro

Greetings. The Apple support page that discusses upgrading current OS with late model MBP states that they should be able to load the new OS as long as it's 2009 or newer and has at least 2G of ram. Well, a late year certainly qualifies. I tried to upgrade and I had a Kernal panic. Took it into the Apple Store and the tech tried to get it to work and could not do it. He says it has to be some sort of hardware problem. But I can run Sierra just fine. What kind of hardware problem can it be? I really want to upgrade because Pages will not update iCloud documents created with my iPad 2 mini. The tech said that this is probably because I don't have the latest OS on the MBP.