Chosen Solution
Hi IFIXIT community. I have a real mystery on my hands (at least for me) Here is brief history… I have this (cursed) MacBook Pro 2010 13" machine. it’s my girlfriend’s machine and one day the WiFi just stopped working. So I replaced AirPort card. I also replaced HDD cable as had ripped it. So everything worked fine for a bit. In short, there are 2 pieces of hardwares that I have replaced. Now about a year goes by without a hitch, but now the laptop starts acting up! Symptoms: One day, the laptop just refuses to go past the Apple logo, it always gets stuck about 3/4 of the progress bar and restarts. It keeps restarting at the same 3/4 progress bar mark. I thought it was HDD so I made a bootable USB drive with MacOS High Sierra and try to reinstall the OS, but it also gets stuck at the progress bar. This is a bit different as it doesn’t restart itself, but never boots up the welcome screen. So to try to diagnose the problem I tried following: Removed the AirPort card and tryRemove everything except keyboard and tryRemove everything including keyboard and boot it using power padsTried booting it up without battery All of them same results, still 3/4 of the progress bar. So for me the only logical answer left is graphics card issue, so I ordered a new logic board just to confirm that it’s logic board issue (I wanted to beat this monster!). BUT… The new board also still gets stuck at exactly same 3/4 of the progress bar with Apple logo. At the brink of giving up and burning the whole thing, I thought wise guru might be able to help me beat this demon and give me peace of mind. I know that there is a possibility that the logic board I received is also faulty. Another thing i was thinking was HDD cable, but if i try to boot into bootable usb without HDD, it still gets stuck on progress bar, but doesn’t restart. Any ideas on what’s causing this? Anything else I can try or should I just burn it?
I think you need to go back with your bootable USB drive and test again but this time you need to press and hold the Option key so you get to the Startup Manager to then select the USB drive. Let us know if that worked. Reference: Mac startup key combinations
