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My daughter's MBP recently had a hard drive failure. I replaced the hard drive and purchased the Snow Leopard install disc from Apple.

During the install start up, at a certain point the screen goes white and after a bit the fans go to a high speed. It then sits there running hot until it is powered down.

Things I have tried:

With a Crucial MX300 SSD (525GB, SATA III) installed:

  • Install using the Snow Leopard disc Install using Yosemite on USB thumb drive (from App Store)
  • Install using High Sierra on USB thumb drive (from App Store)
  • Install using Internet Recovery (Command—Option—R)

With a HGST Travelstar 7K1000 (1TB, SATA III) installed:

  • Install using Yosemite on USB thumb drive (from App Store)
  • Install using Internet Recovery (Command—Option—R)

Original System Details

  • MacBook Pro (15-inch, Early 2011)
  • 2.0 GHz Intel Core i7 (Sandy Bridge) 2635QM
  • 8GB RAM
  • 500 GB, 5400 RPM Hitachi HD
  • 10.6.6 Snow Leopard

Other notes

Booting in verbose mode (Command-V) shows various messages before the white screen depending on which install version is used.

The extended version of the hardware test over internet (Option—D) reports no issues.

The MBP was working fine before the hard drive failure.

I am pretty much out of ideas.

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  • When booting the install in verbose mode, it varied based on which version I was booting from. For Yosemite it was: IO88211Interface::efiNVRAMPublished() and bpfAttach len 64 dlt 12
    – Xevious
    Oct 29, 2017 at 21:29
  • SafeMode boots to a white screen. Single user mode does boot to a bash prompt. This is on the HD that I installed Yosemite on from my MBP Retina.
    – Xevious
    Oct 29, 2017 at 22:08
  • That the MBP in question is a 2011 model that doesn't boot known good OS X media but can boot SingleUser looks to me like the AMD GPU went south. Screen issue and heat support this theory as well. Repairing it should be done by replacing only the GPU (if you do not have a logic board handy). One fix in software might be found here: GPU problem
    – LаngLаngС
    Oct 29, 2017 at 22:15
  • For another data point, booting from the Snow Leopard install disc in verbose mode hangs at "Loading System\Library\Caches\com.apple.kext.cache\Startup\Extensions.mkext" followed by a bunch of dots.
    – Xevious
    Oct 29, 2017 at 22:29
  • Have you tried an Installer medium with Yosemite or newer? I had many machines from 2011 exhibiting symptoms like this, but never tried SnowLeopard on those. With 10.10 and later a line with gIOScreenLockState should be among the last few lines in verbose mode.
    – LаngLаngС
    Oct 29, 2017 at 22:38

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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I would take the new drive to another Mac and run the installer there.

You'll know soon what the weak link is with perhaps an inexpensive USB to SATA adapter.

Assuming you have the resources for that, I'd probably have that Machine download Sierra and make a bootable USB installer and just use Sierra to wipe and reinstall the OS on your daughter's Mac (or her hard drive connected to the other Mac).

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  • Following your advice, I used my MBP to install Yosemite to a drive on a SATA / USB adapter. It boots fine on my MBP. On the MBP in question, it boots until it hangs on: "en2: promiscuous mode enable succeeded"
    – Xevious
    Oct 29, 2017 at 21:20
  • Ugh @Xevious If a known good OS boots on one but not the other, you might be facing a hardware issue needing repair. Disconnecting the WiFi / Bluetooth isn’t super easy on that model and can cause follow on issues. Not sure what avenue you might go at this point.
    – bmike ♦
    Oct 29, 2017 at 21:29
  • Could a WiFi / Bluetooth issue be caused by the fact that I installed this using my MBP Retina (2015) and am trying to boot a MBP 2011 with it?
    – Xevious
    Oct 29, 2017 at 22:12
  • Yes but typically, the os still boots completely and you can use Ethernet to install updates and fix things up.
    – bmike ♦
    Oct 30, 2017 at 0:22

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