Macbook Pro 2010 white screen

Question

When I start my MacBook, I have an empty folder with a question mark. If I start Internet Recovery, I get stuck at a white or gray screen. I created a boot USB stick with El Capitan and I received a white screen. I tried several times and I received a blue screen, a gray screen, but most of the time I had a white screen.

I ran diagnostic tests from Apple (press D when the MacBook starts) and no problems were found. I reset NVRAM, but doing so did not help. Safe Mode does not work. Target mode worked. Also, I tried a USB stick with Yosemite and it does not work either. The white screen appears instead of showing the menu with Disk Utility, install OS X, etc.

I tried three different HDDs. All of them working on another Mac, but not this one. Also, I thought that I may have broken RAM and replaced it with another one, but I have the same white/gray screen issue every time. Also, I tried to create a bootable HDD via createinstallmedia (like a USB stick) and MacBook load from HDD without USB stick but I had a white screen too.

I tried running verbose mode and It's working https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOqs0li48mc

I tried running single-user mode and it's also working

Verbose Mode and Single-User mode is working only if USB stick with ELCapitan connected to mac (Also HDD connected to MacBook). USB stick locked to write.

system_profiler SPHardwareDataType:

some errors(NSLocalizedDescription = The bundle bSPDisplaysReporterb couldnbt be loaded because it is damaged or missing necessary resources.)

Hardware Overview:

Model Name: MacBook Pro
Model identifier: MacBookPro8,2
Processor Name: Intel Core i7
Processor Speed: 2GHz
Number of Processors: 1
Total Number of Cores: 4
L2 Cache (per Core): 256 KB
L3 Cache: 6MB
Memory: 8 GB
Boot ROM Version: 87.0.0
Serial Number (system): C2QGW0BQDRJC
Hardware UUID: 5589AB99-C00A-5637-BE0E-A2E8D95D7DDA

Solution:

My MacBook has broken discrete GPU so I edit efivars to switch GPU from dGPU to iGPU

1: Create ArchLinux bootable USB stick (via Rufus, UniversalUSBInstaller etc.)

2: Load from your USB (hold Option while MacBook startup)

3: Mount efivars folder to root directory:

cd /
umount /sys/firmware/efi/efivars/
mount -t efivarfs rw /sys/firmware/efi/efivars/
cd /sys/firmware/efi/efivars/

4: Delete previous gpu var if exists

rm gpu-power-prefs-[press TAB key]

5: Create new gpu-power-prefs var. This command changes the default GPU for use from discrete GPU to integrated GPU

printf "\x07\x00\x00\x00\x01\x00\x00\x00" > /sys/firmware/efi/efivars/gpu-power-prefs-fa4ce28d-b62f-4c99-9cc3-6815686e30f9

6: Lock write for this file

chattr +i "/sys/firmware/efi/efivars/gpu-power-prefs-fa4ce28d-b62f-4c99-9cc3-6815686e30f9"

7: Unmount directory efivars and reboot

umount /sys/firmware/efi/efivars/
reboot

Now it should work. Thanks to @pion and AppleMacFinder

Improvement:

Also when your MacBook boot macOS It can stuck on 75% so you can do next:

1: Boot into Recovery by holding

CMD+r+s

2: Disable SIP

csrutil disable

3: Disable dGPU on boot

nvram fa4ce28d-b62f-4c99-9cc3-6815686e30f9:gpu-power-prefs=%01%00%00%00

4: Enable verbose boot mode (optional, for debug if your system doesn't boot)

nvram boot-args="-v"

5: Reboot into single user-mode by holding

CMD+s

6: Mount root partition writeable

/sbin/mount -uw /

7: Make a kext-backup directory

mkdir -p /System/Library/Extensions-off

8: Only move ONE offending kext out of the way:

mv /System/Library/Extensions/AMDRadeonX3000.kext /System/Library/Extensions-off/

9: let the system update its kextcache:

touch /System/Library/Extensions/

10: wait for the kextcache process to finish then

reboot

Links:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/force-2011-macbook-pro-8-2-with-failed-amd-gpu-to-always-use-intel-integrated-gpu-efi-variable-fix.2037591/

Also maybe another solution:

https://youtu.be/2DIoFoSGv1o

Answer 1

I re-read all of your troubleshooting efforts in detail and it seems like you've done all the expected software and hardware isolation experiments, so I started to suspect bad hardware along a critical path, quite possibly the display or GPU. Then I looked for related questions here and immediately found that it seems like the 2011 MacBook Pro, which you have, has a known design defect that affects the discrete GPU:

GPU problem - Boot Hangs on Grey Screen

Macbook Pro 2011 white screen - can't install MacOSX

MacBook Pro early 2011 hangs at “white screen”

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/force-2011-macbook-pro-8-2-with-failed-amd-gpu-to-always-use-intel-integrated-gpu-efi-variable-fix.2037591/

Several of these mention a procedure for disabling the dGPU and living on integrated graphics. You're likely to need to do that if you want to keep using this machine. In any case, it would be wise to boot to Target Disk Mode right now and save any data that you care about before doing anything else.

Answer 2

An Empty folder with a question mark means that there is no valid system to boot from.

If your 12-year-old Mac still has its original hard drive, then it is quite likely that this has failed.

However, that would not explain a failure to boot to Recovery, or to a USB stick. Failure to boot from more than one different device suggests a problem with some other part of the hardware, apart from the disk and software.