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Last active January 16, 2026 22:49
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Booting Arch on a 2011 Macbook Pro

I recently got a Macbook Pro 2011, it had a few scratches as you would expect, however when I powered it on, it showed the no drive error.

I got an SSD from an old PC I had, installed Arch, messed around with macOS, etc.

A few days later, I got graphics issues, then it wouldn't boot at all. I figured out disabling GPU would fix this. I used the command from the DosDude1 website and it worked! (after a lot of trial and error)

But Arch just wouldn't boot, specifically archiso but both wouldn't boot.

How I fixed it:

I went to the boot-loader screen, systemd, though this should work on Grub too and hit "e" on the menu option for Arch

[some stuff here] nomodeset radeon.nomodeset=0

add nomodeset radeon.nomodeset to the end and hit enter. Do this again after install...

Now, mount /boot as read/write and edit

image run these commands

See those files ending with "linux", these are the boot entries, take the default one, likely the first in the list, and run:

sudo nano [entry name, hit tab for auto complete]

see the line starting with options

image

and add the same

nomodeset radeon.nomodeset=0

to the end!

Congrats, restart and try to see if it boots!

If you would like me to add a guide for drivers, please just ask.

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