MacBook Pro 15" 2008 freezes with colorful screen

Starting a few days ago my Mac froze mid usage, was using Chrome when it did it. I got all these crazy colors everywhere, and it froze. I turned off the power, waited a few, then turned back on.

It came up with some text telling me it didn't shut down correctly and hit Esc to reboot. I did, it showed that text again. So I turned off, took out the battery, waited 10 min.

After that, I turned back on and it came on and booted up. Again, I used it about 10 to 15 minutes and the colors went crazy again and it froze. Had to turn off again. I've done this a few times since then, trying to figure out what's wrong with it.

I booted into Mac+S console, ran fsck and it said drive and files were good. I mounted the drive, all my files are there. So I exited console and rebooted.

At this point, I can't get past that text telling me to hit Esc to reboot.

It's a MacBook Pro (15-inch Early 2008) with Sierra.

Solution 1:

Those visual artifacts are very typical of a failing GPU. This looks pretty advanced and you can usually confirm by seeing an external display fail as well.

It could be cabling or the LCD, but that’s far less likely. Super rare would be driver or software issue.

Make sure you have a good backup in case when the GPU fails it takes down the logic board as well. Worst case, removing the drive or booting in target mode is likely to be an easy data transfer if it should stop booting our the display finally fails.

Solution 2:

As @bmike mentions, the issue is the nvidia GPU. The early 2008 MacBook Pro was later covered under an Apple repair program due to the common event of its nvidia GPU failure. More on that here. Sadly, the machine is well outside the terms of the repair program by now. To be absolutely certain of GPU failure, connect the computer to an external monitor through the machine's DVI port. If the same issue appears on the external monitor, it is certain the issue is not related to the internal video cable running to the LCD. A new logicboard can be found on eBay, used, for roughly $50. Another option is replacing and flowing a new GPU on the board though this is difficult and impractical.

If the original disk is still in it, I recommend cloning it for safekeeping. You can find a SATA USB reader on eBay for $5 that will allow you to read the contents of the disk on another Mac.