Late-2011 MacBook Pro will not reboot after perhaps 100 tries (a month ago ... put aside since)

[SemeeNerdy]

Hello:

My MacBook Pro, 15", my second since I spilled coffee on no. 1, has been through the wringer. I believe it's a late-2011 one, and my unofficial Mac expert has opined that it's a very solid build. Poor man is a government PC tech but his real love is for Apple ...

I do not trust the local Apple agent, who every time installs software that allows him to see whatever I do, though perhaps it's not that sinister. (My go-to guy, above, says it's unethical and takes it right off.)

I should add that i'm retired, and cannot afford proper repairs. I don't want to call the go-to, because it's just not fair to him...

The monitor died a while back--that is, the video card or whatever. No screen real estate is useable. Seeing this, the go-to guy dashed back to the "dump" bin at work and got me a Dell monitor that has, to my eye, only one pixel "out," and i've saved thus a bit of landfill space. Government waste. Although I cannot be hauling that to the local WiFi hotspot, at least I can use the MacBook--or, could. He found me the bit of hardware that allows a Mac to talk to a PC monitor, as well. My 2nd external keyboard for the Mac was also fraying the USB cable, so he even got me a discarded Dell keyboard.

Sometimes it would hiss the hard drive awake and then give up multiple times. Sometimes it would try once and go black.

I have an older refurbished HP ProBook that I was able to use to Google possible solutions--hold down the shift; hold down the D--but no success.

I have so many documents and photos saved on there. I do have a backup TimeMachine, but it's fully used up and if I were to plug it in again (were the MacBook Pro working) I'd only be overwriting older histories. I also purchased another backup external hard drive and used a program whose name I cannot recall (it's stuck on the troubled machine) to back up and delete duplicates to. I doubt either would, of course, install to a PC.

Dare I plug in the TimeMachine, hold down some key, and expect my Pro to start up again?

Thanks for reading this long-winded tome ...

--MM

 

[Cory Cooper]

Hello and welcome.

I guess it would depend on if the MacBook Pro will startup on its own at all. It sounds like it may be some form of logic board or power issue.

You could always try to power it up without having the drives connected, just to see. If the MBP doesn't startup reliably, you may be able to remove the hard drive/SSD from the MBP and install it in an external enclosure, as the 2011 models have a 2.5" form-factor drive in them.

Hope that helps.

C

 

[SemeeNerdy]

Hey, Cory:

Thanks for the welcome and the suggestions, and sorry I've taken so long to respond. No real excuse, but it sounded to me from your suggestion that my Pro is cooked. I don't know what you might mean by an "external enclosure."

Do you mean I should take my hard drive out and see if the MacBook starts up without it? Isn't that like a cellphone with no SIM card?

Anyway, thanks.