Macbook Pro 2011 17" Suddenly died - Help Please!

[monkey man]

This is the only laptop I've ever bought. Never moved - lives on stand next to TV.

Used only to play iTunes through 828 interface to speakers and play movies and film clips via VLC into TV.

Battery cycled once a month through the years - still charges to 98, sometimes 100%!

Suddenly now it keeps rebooting but not quite getting there:
30 vertical pink-and-white stripes on screen whilst progress bar updates until it goes light-grey and then freezes or reboots.

Tried:
Resetting parameter RAM.
Booting from both internal drives - 500GB 840 EVO SSD and (750GB?) spinner.
Booting from recovery partition.
Disconnecting USB iTunes and movie drives.
Disconnecting 828 FireWire interface.
Disconnecting HDMI adapter used to connect to TV.
Disconnecting pawer cable.

OS 10.13.6 High Sierra.

At a loss. Unit's been flawless for 13 years. Seriously-bummed 'cause I rely on it for entertainment every day.

Any help will, as always, be greatly-appreciated guys.

[mikehalloran]

Sorry to hear. Too bad I can't just put it on my bench and swap out some parts.

You can try the suggestions here.
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/46 ... ortBy=best

Internet Recovery (reinstalling the original macOS through the Recovery Partition) only works if 10.7 or later was installed. The early 2011 had 10.6.6 from Apple and the late 2011 had OS 10.7.2. You should still be able to Reinstall the current OS, however (unless 10.6.6 and you never updated) – that is different than Internet Recovery.

If you have an early 2011, I have the disk image for the OS 10.6.7 Recovery DVD that Apple sent out for a few years – works on nearly 2009–early 2011 Macs. Because of Internet Recovery, it's not needed on the late 2011 on.

The battery or a drive can still be the culprit. A battery in bad health can charge to 100% but mimic a bad GPU. The way to test this is to pull the battery and run it off the power supply brick—it should boot. Some models have the keyboard cable between the battery and the back—it's fragile and can go bad the second the back is removed. The Mac will still start but the keys won't work—the cable is inexpensive and easy to find on Amazon last I checked.

One thing to try is connecting an external monitor if you can. If it boots up, that indicates an expensive internal condition with the dual GPUs.

[bayswater]

I had a similar experience with my 27" iMac i7 from 2011, although it wasn't quite the complete disaster you had. After much putzing about, I booted into recovery mode, and told it to restore from a TM backup. The oldest it could find was 5 years old, and I picked that. It took about three days to restore, but now it works.

[monkey man]

Lucky you Brother Stoivo. I can only hope for some of that success on this end mate.

Mike:
Thank you!

External monitor:
Been hooked up to the TV for 12 years. "Failed" whilst hooked-up. Disconnected now for the troubleshooting.

Internet recovery:
Neither internal drive (1 spinner, 1 SSD, both with 10.13.6 installed) will boot fully. Symptoms outlined in the OP.

If I Option-boot I only see 3 OS-boot options:
Internal spinner
Internal SSD
Recovery partition

As explained in the OP, none of these boots fully. All with the same symptoms.

Battery:
Can't remove it. I tried years ago and gave up - the connection was too-tight.

Keyboard:
Although the boot process doesn't go far-enough for the keys to light up, the board obviously works 'cause I was able to option-boot etc., as explained in the OP.

I was hoping you'd come back with an easy, no-brainer solution like replacing a CR-2032 or something. Does it have one? Could that be the problem?

Hey Brother Mike, thank you so much for your help. I'm kinda-lost without my baby working.

[mikehalloran]

Recovery partition is what you want.

From there, you have a number of options. The first I would try is Disk Utility and run Repair on each of your drives. If successful, try booting. If there are error messages in red, run again and again — 50 times if you have to until everything turns green. The drive is bad but you might be able to boot till it fails again.

Reinstall macOS is next. This will install the current OS and does not overwrite your data.

Restore from Time Machine — only if the drive tests good. Waste of time otherwise — save that for the new drive.

Avoid Internet Recovery if you can. That restores the Ma to its original state (this option is not available on an early 2011).

[monkey man]

Recovery partition is what you want.

As I said in the OP and my last post, none of the 3 boot options I have gets there Mike. After the striped screen, it goes light-grey and then either stays there or reboots.

As I said, Option-booting gets me to the screen where I can choose from the 3 options (SSD, spinner and the Recovery partition), but once I select one, it's back into the aforementioned boot pattern.

[mikehalloran]

Recovery partition is what you want.

As I said in the OP and my last post, none of the 3 boot options I have gets there Mike. After the striped screen, it goes light-grey and then either stays there or reboots.

As I said, Option-booting gets me to the screen where I can choose from the 3 options (SSD, spinner and the Recovery partition), but once I select one, it's back into the aforementioned boot pattern.

What macOS is this running?

[bayswater]

Recovery partition is what you want.

As I said in the OP and my last post, none of the 3 boot options I have gets there Mike. After the striped screen, it goes light-grey and then either stays there or reboots.

As I said, Option-booting gets me to the screen where I can choose from the 3 options (SSD, spinner and the Recovery partition), but once I select one, it's back into the aforementioned boot pattern.

So, you can’t even get to Disk Utility? Hard to go any further without that. Can you make an external startup drive and try to start from that?

[mikehalloran]

So, you can’t even get to Disk Utility? Hard to go any further without that. Can you make an external startup drive and try to start from that?

I have the installer files for everything from 10.6.7 on plus the instructions for making a USB installer from any of them (copy and paste into Terminal). On needs an 8GB or larger USB stick.

[monkey man]

What macOS is this running?

Internet recovery:
Neither internal drive (1 spinner, 1 SSD, both with 10.13.6 installed)...

Steve:
I'll look into creating a USB boot drive Stoivo; good thinking mate.

I'll be turning the cheese grater off for 3 days. High 30s (ºC) predicted 'til Tuesday and I don't run my computers above 32º or so, so first thing when I boot up I'll check in here. It's 31º in here right now so gonna sign off.

Thank you again Mike and Steve. Much-appreciated and fingers crossed.

[bayswater]

You can come over to my place. It’s 3.5 degrees at the moment.

[monkey man]

Well I'm glad that's over. 34ºC / 93ºF in the house for several days. Not fun.

Obviously I haven't made any progress; both 'puters switched-off. Have some catching up to do including forum-mod work.