Random Shutdown Syndrome
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This black MacBook of mine has the look. It’s a sweet machine. However…
Random shutdowns plagued the laptop throughout July. I brought it in to Mac center here in Seoul. After a logic board replacement Aug. 8, I was back up and running, for a while. The problem has returned. RSS will never mean getting a feed again, to me, it means the death of a MacBook: Random Shutdown Syndrome.
There is no cure. Apple, we’ve donated thousands of dollars to support your efforts to cure RSS (I’m out $2k). Please come up with a fix! It’s enough to strain the devotion of this macaddict!
But dang, this is one sweet-looking computer. Now if I could only get it to stay on!
August 28th, 2006 at 8:08 pm
Hi,
I got my Macbook (the slowest one) in May. No problems until last weekend: I resumed the Macbook from sleep and after a few seconds the screen went black. It took me a while to figure out that the power had gone off completely. So I restarted the machine, logged in and same thing happened almost immediately. This was repeated about 4-5 times within ten minutes until I started investigating the problem. I was not aware that this has happened to other people, I assumed that this was a unique problem
I’ll repeat the steps I did as closely I can remember in case this would help someone:
1. Checked battery status: fully recharged
2. Removed battery, held power button for a few seconds, battery back in, start -> failed again
3. Connected the recharger, start, FAIL
4. I had installed 2*1GB memory myself, I removed them and replaced them with the original 2*256MB ones -> DOES NOT FAIL, at this point I was quite puzzled because although I’ve seen bad memory before, I’ve never seen memory “break” in use
5. I put the 2*1GB back in, rebooted, did not FAIL immediately, so I downloaded the OSX port of the mighty “memtest” utility and ran in single-user mode -> no problems found
6. I tried loading both cpu cores for a while to see if that would make it fail -> nope
I haven’t seen the problem since Saturday. This sounds like a really weird problem to me. My best guesstimate about the problem is that the memory modules had a slightly bad electrical connection to the memory socket and replacing the modules fixed this. However, I am almost 100% certain that the memory modules were inserted properly (deep enough) so I’m not entirely happy with this explanation. Another explanation could be that some part cooled down enough to work properly while I was playing around with the memory.
August 28th, 2006 at 9:08 pm
The symptoms youâ??re describing are exactly the same Iâ??ve seen.
I called Apple Support, and the guy I spoke with ed me through a procedure of resetting the Power Management unit – by shutting down the mac, removing the power cord and battery, and then press and hold the power button for 5 seconds. This procedure seemed to cure the problem for a few days, but I still see it from time to time.
The support representative also suggested there could be something wrong with the battery, and offered to send me a replacement. However, Iâ??ve also observed the problem even with the battery removed.
September 10th, 2006 at 3:24 pm
I have had the same problem – with 2 MacBooks. Both are in Apple’s bad serial number range recently given to dealers.
I also thought it was the 2 gigs of memory I installed. When I put back the original memory the machine ran fine – for a while. Actually, everytime I took memory in and out the machine ran fine for a while. I guess I was just jogging the motherboard enough to make it work for a while.
Finally the video card went bad and I couldn’t even use an external monitor. I had to wait 10 days for a new motherboard to come in.
FYI: Having more memory can mean more heat as the processor can do more work. More heat causes motherboards to fail more. Our company, Reflecture, did some research into this a few years ago (for none other than Apple) and it showed that low memory meant more HD failures and high memory meant a bit more motherboard failures.
I got the machine back with a new motherboard and it worked fine for one week. Now it is shutting down every 3 or 4 minutes.
So back to Apple it goes. When Apple decided to go Intel I didn’t think they would adopt PC quality as well.
William
November 4th, 2008 at 5:15 am
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I didn’t agree with you first, but last paragraph makes sense for me…