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Hi Guys,

Newby here, very inexperienced with Mac Support.
I have a 2011 MBP with El Capitan, not networked.
One day during use it just turned itself off, was conected to the power and everything.
I turned it back on and the screen was white.
I can hear the startup chime but the display doesn't load up.
Tried opening it up and checking for loose connections, cleaned it.
Tried booting in macOS Recovery (cmd + r)
Internet recovery (cmd+option+r) shows the globe and takes some time but then the globe disappears and the screen is still white. Tried safemode (shift)
Tried to reset the SMC (shift+ctrl+alt)
Reset NVRAM (cmd+option+P+R) which rebooted various times as I held down the keys.
Called Apple who repeated the above steps and asked me to book it in.
I read something about upgrading EFI firmware but not sure how to proceed. If I bought a new HDD would I be able to use internet recovery and install OSX to that?

Thanks in advance.

Have you tried connecting it to an external monitor and then booting it? I had similar issues with an older OS and that was the only way I could get it to come up to do any troubleshooting. Sorry, I don't recall what the issue was.

You can also try any of the solutions at this link:
http://macreports.com/mac/

No luck with the external screen
tried all the steps in the article already however, someone commented about trying verbose mode (cmd+v)
It looked like a command line screen with lots of code flashing up but then went back to the white screen.
One of the lines of code said

fInterfaceSanpshots is missing. Was repeated loads of times. Not sure if that's relevant?

Kind of a long shot here, but have you tried booting the Recovery Partition or external drive? Maybe there's something FUBAR with the OS.

Regardless, this will confirm whether this is hardware or software.


Holding option got me to a menu where I could see my hard drive but there isn't a recovery partition and if I double click the drive or click the arrow, white screen (actually grey screen).


Holding option got me to a menu where I could see my hard drive but there isn't a recovery partition and if I double click the drive or click the arrow, white screen (actually grey screen).


Went to the Genius Bar and looks like it's the GPU. They booted from the network and ran a hardware diagnostic. All tests passed apart from the video test. I need a new logic board. Lucky for me my model is covered under a quality program so I get the replacement free of charge. Thanks for all your help guys.

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