Resetting SMC & EFI for MacBookPro8,3 (early 2011)

Hi, I'm experiencing a problem where sometimes on Start-Up the system just hangs on my MacBookPro8,3 (early 2011) with a grey screen and the spinning fan symbol below it - when this happens the 'cooling fans' run very fast and noisy.
This issue happened a few times in the first year that I had the MacBook Pro, but I managed to cure the problem then (nearly 3 years ago) but can't remember what I did that fixed it. Since then the MacBook Pro has been impeccable with 100% reliability that almost defies belief, however the problem has only recently resurfaced after having some issues on Mavericks which I had recently installed but now have uninstalled and gone back to Mountain Lion.
At first all seem well on Mavericks but then started getting freezes/crashes where the graphics would go a bit strange with lines or something and then the whole system would freeze. Rebooting forcefully back into Mavericks on the main system boot did not always work, however if I booted into Windows in Bootcamp then all was 100% ok and sometimes this was necessary in order to boot back into Mavericks straight from Bootcamp (i,e, 'Bootcamp Control Panel > Restart in Mac OS X'). Equally I was able to boot from an external drive running OS X Mountain Lion.
Therefore after much frustration and not knowing what was causing the system freezes/crashes, I then got rid of Mavericks and even Bootcamp by doing a complete reformat of the internal SSD and then installed Mountain Lion 10.8.5 on it's own without Bootcamp just for the time being. This resulted in no-longer getting the graphical glitches nor the system freezes/crashes anymore which was a relief, however I'm now getting the odd seldom occasion where it gets perpetually stuck on power-up with the grey screen and spinning fan below. I've done Disk Utility disk Verify and Repair permissions, I've also run a full system check with Tech Tool Pro which showed no hardware issues to report at all for CPU, GPU, RAM, etc. Also before removing Bootcamp previously, I had run the SSD's manufacturers Utility and update checker to ensure SSD was both healthy and firmware was up to date in which all was well. DriveDX also reports the internal SSD to be very healthy.
I decided to again completely erase the drive and single partition on it, then reformatted the internal drive with a single partition - this time I did this from a bootable Mountain Lion 10.8.4 Install DVD and not booted from an external HDD (I kept the system at 10.8.4 and did not update to 10.8.5). The result is that the computer runs fine most of the time with apprx 12 second start-ups and 2 seconds at best shut-downs, however the 'stuck at grey screen on start-up' issue still crops up very seldom'ly which is perplexing.
One important thing to note is that the initial graphical glitch problem followed by the system freeze/crash I was experiencing in Maverick, had completely vanished after going back to Mountain Lion and has not happened since; instead it's now just the occasional stuck at grey screen on start-up issue (something I once experience a few years back).
I'm scratching my head on this one - therefore could I and should I do a complete factory 'reset' of the SMC and EFI if this is possible and what would be the procedure to do this on a MacBookPro8,3 (early 2011)?
Is there anything else it could be such as the external power supply adapter? I do have another unused newer external power supply, so I might swap them over but fail to see how it could be that and am clueless as to anything else it could be.
It hasn't done it for days now, but I know it will happen again.

Ok appologies. The problem is undoubtedly the GPU related design-manufacture flaw as experienced by the majority of other early 2011 17" MacBook Pro (MacBookPro8,3) owners as overwhelmingly reported in the following Apple Support post:-
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4766577?tstart=0

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Do a SMC reset:
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht3964
Run an Apple Hardware Test:
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1509
You may need to use OPTION D to start it.
Install iStat pro and open Activity Monitor. Set Activity Monitor to show 'All Processes' and '%CPU' to display values from high to low. Post images of the two such as these:
Ciao.

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Sadly... they don't have all the answers. As someone who use to serve in the capacity (Mac Genius) it can definitely be a challenging position. You're "the voice" of Apple's service policy & procedures. Sounds like the person you spoke with got it wrong this time. It's definitely worth a follow up, because like I said, I've got a machine in my household that's living proof of compatibility between a 7200 RPM drive and 13" MBP (Early 2011).
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Resetting SMC & EFI for MacBookPro8,3 (early 2011)

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