Resurrecting the Donated 2011 MacBook Pro (Bypassing AMD GPU)

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Welcome back to another video in the 2011 MacBook Pro Saga! Today I’ll be attempting to bypass the on-board AMD GPU and get the laptop to boot using integrated graphics. Let’s see how that works out…

A huge thank you to everyone who sent me messages with info on how to fix this issue!

Dosdude1’s Guide/Tool: http://dosdude1.com/gpudisable/

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39 Comments

  1. michael should have at least 100k subs, his videos are useful, enjoyable and have clear instructions!
    Good job Michael, Subed to you since 2014!!! 😀

  2. hey mjdi just boUGHT A 2011 MBP WITH FAILED GPU ON PURPOSE!!…… n i am doing this mod right now! n so far it worked! the laptop was 40$ and my 2013 mbp died so i did this rather than fixing it… update: it took two hours but i did get the bypass to work! i had to stick the ssd in another mac just like you did in the video but in the end everything worked out! FYI if you use dosdude1s catalina patcher to upgrade from 10.13 high sierra to 10.15 catalina the brightness control will work again without having to do that hardware mod!

  3. @MichaelMJD How can you delete kext files? When I try, macOS says that those files are necessary for mac and don't let erase them

  4. Yo @MichaelMJD, If you still have this machine, I figured out a method of getting it to boot without moving kexts or anything. There's am NVRAM variable called GfxMode that sets what GPU to use on boot. If you set it to 4, it powers down the dedicated graphics and exclusively uses the integrated graphics. This even sticks between updates, and even entire OS reinstalls.

  5. thanks for the tutorial,
    its very helpfull for me,
    but, after disabling my AMD GPU, I cannot use external monitor.
    air display cannot turn on and thunderbold connector can not use to display my screen to external monitor.

    I also buy USB to HDMI (Hagibis) and done installing driver, it still cannot showing mya screen to external monitor.
    anyone can help me?

  6. but after that , we can not connect to external display. is there any tutorial for that? after disable discrete GPU.

  7. Thank you very much you save me and my poor Laptop from spending a lot of money! I was trying The comands trick and it was working for a while but after a short period of time i was on Grey screen again… But The software solution you have gave
    us Works like a charm!!! Thank you thank you again!!!

  8. Sometimes my late 2011 MacBook Pro boots into safemode. I just had the logic board and battery replaced. Help.

  9. it seems to be that it in a possible way to run recovery from the el capitan partition, because you would have applied the system integrity check in the situation that the partition for it that way.

  10. Thanks for the video! Would you also know how to re-enable the GPU? (for example when a new motherboard is placed)

  11. When my Mac goes to sleeping mode it does not awake anymore, after completing successfully all this process. Do you have any idea of what’s going on?

  12. Hello Does the process of BYPASSING normally cause some issues with the Thunderbolt port?
    My UPGRADED MBP early 2011 running High Sierra can't detect my external monitor using a thunderbolt to HDMI adapter. Thank you very much

  13. Even in recovery mode, when we enter Csrutil disable, it still tells me I need to do it in recovery mode. How can you give me this message if I am in recovery mode?

  14. Not sure what happened in your case. However, I followed most of your vid before switching to dosdude instructions after your future self dropped in, lol. My goal was simple, disable the dGPU and install Catalina. After about an hour of multitasking, I was able to install the patched OS and have been enjoying my retired 2011 MBP which feels like a true MBP once again. Thank you immensely. I've waited over a year to finally do this. BTW looking at your procedure it's one step different from what I did. As I intended to install the Catalina OS, I made an OS bootloader for it. After using S mode initially for the prefs you described, that was the only time I needed it. I disabled csrutil from the Recovery via the USB bootloader as I did get the enabled SIP error. Since I was not sure why it wasn't disabled I rebooted into the USB bootloader and ran the terminal command from that. Once I rebooted everything was green and I ran the program without further issue.

  15. Looks like the answer – at least worth a shot – to my many hours, days, even weeks of frustration. Unfortunately, so far after booting into/with "single user mode", no typing is permitted. That is, keyboard doesn't function. Any suggestions? Anybody? Please and thank you.

  16. Thanks for your wonderful video. I followed your advice but when I get to recovery mode there is no terminal tab – now what?