mid-2014 MacBook Pro now has freezing/abrupt shut down issues

srizvi1 wrote:

It's funny you mention the battery potentially being the problem because I just came across this other post on macrumors where the person talked about the battery still being an issue even when connected to the wall charger. In his post, he recommends downloaded Coconut battery and shares a pic which shows something at 0% which implies that's the problem. I downloaded and installed coconut battery as well but didn't see that same problem (if you scroll a bit on that post, you'll see my reply). I'll try to have it running while using my computer during heavy usage to see if I can catch a glimpse of what it says before it crashes.

Your battery does have a problem. The Design Capacity in the Coconut Battery app shows 8,440mAh while the current Full Charge Capacity is now 6,543mAh. If the information is accurate you've lost almost 2,000mAh of capacity.

As I mentioned earlier I e-mailed Temark to see if they'll give me a new battery under warranty.

Definitely worthwhile after seeing the information in the Coconut Battery screenshot.

I know you recommend an OEM battery but I'm not sure where to get that from otherwise I would.

You can have Apple replace the battery, but I don't know how they handle a laptop containing a third party replacement battery especially for this model. You can always take it to Apple or an Apple Authorized Service Provider to find out. IIRC Apple has a battery replacement price of $129 US.

Trying to replace the battery seems like a great initial first step to see if I can fix the problem. If that doesn't work, I guess step 2 is logic board replacement.

Hard to say about a Logic Board. I haven't seen any major issues with them on this model. Installing fresh heatsink thermal compound would be a better option if you suspect overheating. An SSD or file system issue is also a possibility. Really hard to say without actually seeing the laptop.

(Also check out my other post on crash reports here in case there's something on there which may explain anything).

Update: Never mind, it looks you did see that post and already replied.

I didn't review your posted logs before since they did not appear in the message when I originally read your post. After looking at the two posted logs, they both mention "Segmentation Faults" which means the software was trying to access memory it was not supposed to access. This may point to a software issue. Definitely try Safe Mode to see if you still have the problem. Before replacing the Logic Board or other parts (except for the battery which appears to have an issue) you should perform a clean install of macOS without migrating or restoring any data or user accounts to see how the laptop performs. If a clean install works fine, then you know one of your apps is causing a problem.

Check the health of your battery since power issues can affect system performance and even throttle the CPU. You can Option-click on the battery icon on the menubar to see the condition of the battery. Any condition except "Normal" or "Good" means the battery should be replaced.

Also disconnect all external devices to make sure the external devices are not interfering with the system or draining power from the system.

You can also run the Apple Diagnostics.

It would not hurt to run EtreCheck and post the report here using the "Additional Text" icon which looks like a piece of paper. You may have app installed on both partitions which could be causing the problem.

srizvi1 wrote:

Maybe while the Apple store has the computer I can ask them to install a fresh heatsink thermal compound? Or just confirm everything's ok with that? And ask them to do some fan cleaning?

Most likely the Apple Store will send the laptop to an Apple repair depot for the battery replacement so they won't be able to refresh the heatsink thermal compound unless the heatsink needs to be removed during the course of the battery replacement (I forget if it is necessary for this model).

If an independent AASP were to replace the battery in their own shop, then the battery replacement cost would be more expensive, but they would be more likely to refresh the heatsink thermal compound if you asked. Many AASPs may also send the laptop to the Apple repair depot because the battery repair would be less expensive.

I've also backed all my data so I was thinking of asking if they could do do a diagnostic to confirm everything's ok with the SSD which you mentioned could be an issue due to the segmentation fault error you found.

The Apple Store will run a basic diagnostic on the laptop before & after the repair. Unfortunately there are no good diagnostics for testing an SSD. The best that can be done is examining the SSD's SMART attributes which on an Apple SSD are very basic, although an internal self-diagnostic can be initiated although I don't believe Apple's SSD diagnostic does this. Unfortunately not all Apple SSDs support either of these features.

You mentioned File System but if I'm doing a fresh install that should resolve that right? Any steps I should take before the new OS install to make sure everything's good with the disk to help rule that out?

If you erase the drive before reinstalling or restoring macOS, then yes. If Disk Utility First Aid doesn't show any unrepairable errors then the file system should be Ok.

Apple laptops are always drawing power from the battery even with the power adapter powering the laptop so if the battery has an internal issue it can affect system performance by throttling the CPU. It is extremely difficult to get a good third party Lithium-ion battery even from a reputable vendor such as OWC. I will always choose an official Apple battery over any third party battery if I'm given a choice.

I'm not familiar with many third party apps for Macs so perhaps another contributor will chime in here. The items which I would suspect would be the JetDrive, Silicon Motion & Transcend drivers. I am not familiar with ExpressVPN, Megaupdater, or LauncherDisabler.

You can always try running in Safe Mode to see if the same issues arise since Safe Mode will disable third party drivers and any Startup & Login items which helps to determine if it is a software issue. The screen may flicker or flash due to the very basic video driver used in Safe Mode. While Safe Mode does perform a file system check you may still want to run Disk Utility First Aid to check the file system on the drive.

Most Apple logs are worthless these days. The macOS logs are filled with worthless junk so if there is anything important hidden in the log it is difficult to locate. Even if you locate something which seems important it is very hard to tell if it is actually important. I've given up looking at macOS logs.

Only the Kernel Panic logs are worth examining.

It is very difficult to troubleshoot some of these issues with macOS since Apple likes to hide important technical system details from users. I have a dedicated external test drive so I can install other utilities to help monitor the computer so these utility apps do not interfere with the main boot drive. I also use a non-Apple OS external boot drive to better test and examine the hardware and to eliminate macOS issues/bugs.

srizvi1 wrote:

So an update on this. I took the MacBook Pro to the Apple Store .... I thought everything would be all set but they called me a few days later and said that because a 3rd party battery was installed, they can't work on the unit.

I was afraid of that, but it was worth a try. Thanks for the update to confirm. You might want to check out OWC for a battery. We've had some reasonably good batteries from them, but we've also received some bad ones as well. At least they have good support if anything goes wrong within the warranty period.