Chosen Solution
As stated above, When I power on my 15: Macbook Pro Early 2011 (A1286), it does the chime and Apple logo a loading sign appears and disappears like normal, when that is finished it goes into a white screen and stays there…forever. Extra detail: When the Apple logo appears, it has a strange yellow highlight, not normal. I have attempted every Macbook short cut available. Safe boot wil not boot.I’ve reseted PRAM.The hold D for hardware diagnostics does not run.Recovery mode will not boot. I’ve unistalled HDD for a disk check up on a different macbook and everything was squeky clean. No problems. and booted as normal. I’ve tried to boot my mac with my HDD in a adapter and still same problem. Apple logo and loading sign appears and disappears then white screen. I’ve tried booting it with only one ram and alternating slots and ram, no dice.
Sounds like a hardware (cable) problem If this Answer is helpful please remember to return and mark it Accepted.
There is only one solution to me that is helpful indeed. Shut down computer manually. Wait 10 seconds. Start again and when you hear the first sound/signal, press cmd/alt/P/R all at the same time until you hear the second start sound. Then release the keys. At the beginning it worked every time. Later (now) i have to do it up to 4 times. But: it works. Good luck folks!
The proposed answer was for someone who had replaced their display. There appears to be a more general situation where an early 2011 MBP can get to this state without a hardware change. Update (08/20/2017) I ended up agreeing that a repair, even at $440 was worth it to me to keep this machine running longer. I was prepared to do it myself, but was only able to find replacement main boards on eBay. I ended up coming across a post though that referred me to the good folks at KT Electronics in San Jose who although not able to simply repair my board for the lower advertised price were able to replace the board with a new one (it looks new to my visual inspection), and although it is only the 2GHz version ( previously I had the 2.2GHz) the machine is back to me and seems to be running fine again.
