I have a MacBook Pro late 2011. It displays error code 0xc0000255 on startup. If I hold down the Option key on startup, it displays 3 devices: the main disk volume, the recovery volume, and another EFI disk).

If I then attempt to boot the main volume, this shows the apple logo and the startup progress bar. It progresses to about half-way and the screen greys out and nothing further happens. Trying the Recovery volume yields the same result. Trying the unnamed EFI disk produced the original error.

I then tried to boot in single-user mode after selecting the main volume. This works! I also tried to boot the system using USB. It also shows the apple logo and progress bar and then fails in the same place. The USB startup was created from a different machine and works fine.

I then used a Windows 10 startup USB and a different hard drive. This installed fine and most things seemed to work (no Wi-Fi) but ethernet was ok.

I tried to run the recovery from the network (Wi-Fi) it also stops after its initial load (but displays nothing).

I then swapped the MAC hard drives between my two MacBooks. The original machine continued to fail, and the additional one booted fine. I have tried to reset NVRAM, but that had no effect.

How can I find out what's wrong? I have access in single user mode. Is there anywhere I can look to find out what is causing this problem?