MBP Logic board failure

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tannujyot wrote:
True my friend... its a hole the the pocket. and that is not even our fault. We purchase a Mac thinking that we will get a hand on some good piece of technology, but no....it is totally unreliable. May be this is the reason why most of the time they press us to purchase an Apple Care Protection plan.

Well i dont know about you but i am a student and cannot afford this huge expense, moreover i can add in little bit and buy another laptop. Who knows today the logic board has gone tomorrow hard disc or something else can blow. H*ll with Mac, i am back to Windows now.

*Another word of caution, as your mac is 2 years old you might have to change the battery as well. Even my battery has died, works only 30 min in full charge. Check your battery health by putting it in another macbook pro. If it is below 60%, you might have to add more money for that as well.*

Best of Luck...

Just wanted to update you on my "quest for justice" 🙂

Last week I've spent hours in the phone with Apple Support. At the end I only got a "If you are not pleased with this you can write a letter to Apple Customer Relations department".

I have also contacted Customer Support organizations in the area. They say that I should send Apple a written complaint as a first step. I'm writing them this weekend and see how this turns out.

I really doubt Apple will do something about this. But I'm CERTAIN that I'm not paying that repair (and yes, my 2nd battery in 2 years was also half-dead after 150 or so cycles).

I'm exploring new "horizons" right now. Testing Windows 7 and newest versions of the Linux distributions I used to use before switching to Mac 5 years ago.

Regards...
Daniel

Hi Daniel

Well try, try and u will succeed. I have my operation on standby, as i m going to go to Bangalore which is the headquarter of Apple India and start my crusades there hopefully on 11th September.

If i have to pay for the logic board and battery, I can get a MAC mini for the same price and with a better basic congfigs. When i start earning I will purchase a new laptop. Right now I m using Win vista on a 3 yr old pc but now i m starting to love it. This old but faithful PC helped me in completing my final Diploma project.

So Best of Luck and will inform you about my fate next month.

Regards Tanmay.

Just got my MBP back from a 'Apple authorized service center'for the second time in 30 months.

In the first repair about 2 years ago, the symptom was a video problem, fuzzy screen with vertical bars. My repair center said the 'logic board' needed to be replaced.

The second repair, discovered much more recently, the video reproduction was perfect when on 110 v power supply, but fuzzy and not readable on battery, even at full charge.

Again, my repair center said the 'logic board' was at fault, and replaced it again, second time in 30 months.

I might not be able to afford to keep this MBP when the warranty expires. How sad......!

My vid card is an ATY, Radeon X1600.

Same problem here. After one day on Snow Leopard, was coming back from stanby, and nothing happend. No output from DVI or LCD, internal. Swapped memory and HD, same problem. Found the TS document from Apple's web site and brought with me, which states replacement of board (NVIDIA logic) will be done within 3 years, even if warranty has expired. Apple promised to replace board, I just need to wait 3 days for part to come in. I hope this will fix it ...

My graphics card has been bad from the start. First Apple refused to admit there was a problem when I took it to an Apple Store but then they they issued the technote admitting it was the graphics card.

As the only solution is to lose my computer which I need for work for two weeks while they replace it with another card which will also fail in time I waited in hope.

My card did weirder and weirder things and I was expecting it to fail but it was the logic board that went. Apple would have charged me to fix the logic board if I had not already complained about the graphics card. They tried to charge me to fix the Logic board because I was over a year from purchase. I now discover that the graphics card is soldered to the Logic board so they HAVE to replace the logic board to replace the graphics card. They told me it was two separate things and at first said they would fix the graphics card for free under the technote conditions but I would have to pay for the logic board!

I think it is the same fault. They are telling us it is the Logic Board and not the graphics card because that way they get to charge us for fixing the useless Nvidia chips.

We both are in the same boat. Even my Apple Service center tell me that I have to pay for the logic board. So now I am taking it to other Apple service center. I am without a laptop since 1 month now.

Also if you e-mail Apple at the feedback web page, they don't give any aknoledgement or any reply. I guess all the mails are going to their recycle bin.

Any ways this was my last Apple product... i m happy with Windows Vista now.

As time goes on, more and more people are getting the same "logic board" failure and massive repair estimate. They had mine several days testing OK before they told me this. Need to get some lawyers involved.

They don't reply to those emails. I wrote a formal letter of complaint but just got a letter back telling me to phone customer services.
They do not seem to have a formal complaints system.

Well I hope they do answer my complaint letter with something more useful than what they wrote you.

A few days after they received my letter I called to check on the status of my complaint and wasn't able to talk to them... they just told me that they were going to answer my letter by mail and that I should wait for that.

It seems that Apple doesn't care at all if a client has to wait for almost a month to get his computer fixed. I'm lucky I don't need my apple computers to make a living.

Daniel.

Same issue - installed Snow Leopard last Friday and Wednesday my MBP would not come out of sleep mode. After hours with Apple Phone Care and the "Genius" bar (they only did the same as I did on the phone with Apple Care), they told me it's likely my logic board.

This MBP was bought in Sept. of '07.

No chime at start up, blank screen, no swirly thing at start up, nothing! I'm very irritated that the logic board failure rate is so high on MacBook Pros. I'm thinking of starting an initiative with another website based around the logic board failures. Perhaps getting some legal advise/council would work as well. Between NVIDIA and the logic board failures, I think something should be done to compensate the thousands who are having these issues, all while expected to pay $600, $900, or more for replacements.

I'm still waiting for Apple's answer to my letter of complaint.

It's seems Apple's Customer Relationship Admin isn't very (former?) customer oriented.

Daniel

OK, I think I'm onto something. Twice now, when this 'scrambled screen' thing happened, I put my MBP into Target-mode to transfer files to my eMac. However, when I finish and turn the MBP of and back on, voila!; the problem is cleared.

It will likely come back in a few weeks, though. Unfortunately, I don't have a hard copy of the AHT disc. Strange, like some kind of corruption problem....

Please tell me, they agreed to replace the logic board for free. This is what the TS recall states.
I believe if you print out the TS document, find the closest Apple store and carry a confident conversation about logic board replacement according to recall, I don't see how Apple would charge for it.

I didn't meet any type of confrontational discussions. They ran one test and agreed to replace it, no questions asked. I made an appt at the genius bar for a Sunday afternoon, before I went there, so I knew, I would have a timeslot for me.

Anyone that has not received a free service call needs to try this approach.

We have now two dead macbook pro's. Within 6 months both of them have died with A: a pink'ish screen, and B: a black screen. Both could start up normally (I could see them on the network and navigate into them), and as they both had the GeForce 8600M GT graphic card they seemed a perfect match for the Repair program, but both have been returned from the store with the message that the problem was the logic board (plus a bill for each of them for around $120 - a diagnostic fee, and as they aren't covered by the Repair program, we have to pay the fee...).
When you are in the store there is not much to argue about, because they don't tell how they test it, and as they can't be started from a cd you can't do a hardware test by yourself 😟 So in my opinion sending it to repair is the same as throwing money after a dead computer...

Do anyone know what they use to do the geforce test with?