I got a 2011 MacBook Air 13”, the device was slowly dying. Now it only boots intermittently and crashes/freezes within 15 seconds of boot up. Many times it does not boot at all - just black screen and 3 beeps followed by 5 second pause.
It appears to be memory (RAM) corruption, maybe; logic board corruption.
I think my hard drive is encrypted/password protected (asks for password when I boot with ⌘ Command^ Control⦿ Pwr
How do I fix the logic board/ memory corruption on 2011 MacBook Air 13”
I'm trying to determine the most economic way to fix my Mac, so I am looking at various options:
I can buy a working, used MacBook Air off ebay (~200$ on auction or 350$ buy now) and swap hard drive into that one using a set of specialized screwdrivers
-or-
I can buy a refurbished logic board for up to 250$ and pay a technician 100$ for an hour labor to swap it.
Do I have other options? I tried hard reset and reset NVRAM (which got the device to show login screen). As I log in, the screen gets progressively more corrupted - see screenshot. Then, the Mac turns off shortly after.
If I buy a new device I would still have to pay for data recovery and transfer service, as the old device is non functional?