Macbook Pro not turning on... dead?

Take your computer to an Apple Store. They will have the proper diagnostic tools to diagnose your issues.

hi,

I have the exact same issue with my MBP (06/2007). It used to work without fault till this thursday's eve, shutdown regulary, on friday morning - nothing.

no startup sound, blank screen - just the dvd drive and and harddrive "sounds" and the LED at the front is on, but not pulsating.

So after trying everything to get the book start again (nothing like reseting the parameter ram or booting in safemode or single mode worked, since the keyboard is dead, too) I brought the book to an Apple authorized service tech.

After checking the serial number and the symptoms he said that this might very well be one of the MBP with a faulty NVidia graphics chip.

Now here comes the bad part: Apple would be covering this under a prolonged warranty - but only if he'd be able to get a hardware-error code out of the machine which is (so he said) nearly impossible if the book is that dead (no startup sound), which is the case with like 10% of the MBPs he had to deal with regarding this error.

i left the book in his care and after several hours he called me to say that he wasn't able to get this code - which means the changing of the mainboard will NOT be covered by the extended warranty and the repair would cost me appr. 1000 eur, which is a serious blow for a MPB thats roundabout 2.5 yrs old.

ahm, sorry? I have a piece of hardware that has every indication that it suffers from a well-known defect (search for Nvidia graphic chip and Macboo Pro) - which is already accepted as such by apple - but since it is not able to start and thus give an indication of what is wrong with the hardware I am left out of the warranty??

Any ideas what I can do in this situation?

thx
Tom

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Call Apple Customer Relations in your country. Relay to them what you stated in your post especially what the AASP told you.
CR overrides tech support & can authorize repairs when warranted.





Good luck!





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Well, this is all rather unsatisfactory. Yesterday I had a very polite and understanding member of the support-team on the phone, and after relaying the story and the symptoms of my dead MBP, and after checking with some superiours in the backgrond, he gave me a case-number and fixed me a date with the local apple store's genius bar, saying that the symptoms match what they have in their database regarding the graphic-chip failure and that my case will be dealt with at the genius bar - leaving me with the impression that the MBPs failure will be covered by the prolonged warranty.

so guess what? the genius at the bar did exactly the same what the AASP tech did on friday (traying to get a errorcode out of the dead machine), and he, too, stated that "if the book is that dead, it cannot be the graphic chip, sorry" - a statement that, in the words of the support-member "is not acceptable" - as long as it is not muttered by an official apple genius, it seems. He went to get a second opinion by a fellow genius who said, after looking at the data filed along with the case-number: "well, you're nearly three year's out of the warranty..." (which is wrong, I'm 614 days out of the warranty, which was the first thing I got told upon my second phone call with the service today) - so how dare I to complain about a premature death of a top-of-the-line product?!

Fuming. Not only do I have the dead MBP, but I had been sent on a fruitless journey by yesterday's support member.

I have always told everybody who would listen how reliable and stress-free apple's products are, and considering that this is the first really broken peace of hardware I encountered in the course of 17 years I will continue to do so, but this story is really really bad.

This exact problem happened to me Sunday. Called Apple Care and they said to bring it in to an authorized repair center. Did that yesterday, but I have a question. When you say these people said it is not covered under warranty, did you have Apple Care on the MacBook Pro? I got the impression you meant they refused to fix it for free even WITH Apple Care. I guess I'll need to wait until they call me, but boy do I hope that isn't the case.

Message was edited by: JEZ

Hi,

sorry if that sounded confusing. the MBP in question has no prolonged apple care. since the serial-no. and the symptoms seemed to point to a failure caused by the faulty nvidia graphic-chip (or so the first tech said), the neccessary logicboard swap would have been covered by apple's prolonged warranty for cases of this specific failure.

the catch22 in this is, that apple says now that if it is caused by the graphicchip, they would be able to get an errorcode out of the machine, since the graphic failure alone would not render the MBP completly unresponsive. no error code - no graphic failure - no warranty. simple as that.

On the other hand, the first tech told me that they had indeed a number of MBPs of the same make which were completly unresponsive like mine, and by warming them or cooling them, they where able to get a few of them to respond AND extract the error-code, which then indicated indeed a faulty graphic chip.

but to answer your question, I think the logicboard swap would have been covered by the apple care plan, no matter what caused it.

"member of the support-team"

Customer Relations?


Call Customer Relations & relay to them what the "Geniuses" said. Let CR deal w/them since the +"support team"+ has already authorized the repair. Give CR the name of the store & telephone number.





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hi,
the only contact-number I was able to find for my region (Germany) is the (technical) support / apple care number. On the apple.com/de/ website there's no indication of a Customer Relation department... I had two rather long calls with the support (both of which are charged with .14c/min since I'm not covered by the apple care plan). If someone could point me to the correct contact, I'd be more than pleased...
thx
Tom

Call the Apple support in Germany & ask to be transferred over to the +Customer Relations+ department. While you're at it, ask if they have a separate phone number & report it here. It will help other German users.





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ok i think i found it by comparing the us-site with the german one. the us CR number is located in the section that deals with orders and such; on the german site the corresponding section is

"Wenden Sie sich an den Apple Store Customer Service unter 0180 3000061, um Änderungen an einer vorhandenen Bestellung vorzunehmen. (...)"

I'll try that number tomorrow.

Thank you so much! I have made note of the German CR number for my own notes.





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Baby Boomer (USofA) wrote:

Thank you so much!

you're more than welcome, I'll keep you informed if that was the right number.

Just a bit of a note. This has happened to me multiple times as I support Mac's in the enterprise and one of my clients bought 20 of the failed Macbooks. I usually get them to send me a brown box (mail). Always returned fixed with new logic board. Warranty or not. I say this because when I took the exact same machines in to be looked at they were always (OK, twice) returned unfixed, not covered. I wonder if Apple is financially punishing the individual stores for the repairs and they are trying to keep their losses at a minimum. It is not the first time the store management has been forced to do really stupid things. I wish there was more consistency. Just FYI. Good luck.

thx for the info. I just found this thread:

[http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1995151&tstart=0]

wow. this is a bit too much of a coincidence, is it?