Q: MacBook Pro Logic Board Failure

Anybody had a mid 2010 MBP 15" logic board go out? Started with video messing up. We jus put up with it, then when we upgraded to Lion, it started giving us RAM beeps. Took one RAM stick out, and been fine. Local Apple Auth Store said logic board was shot. MBP was 14 months old at the Time. We just have been running it with one stick of Ram---but now it refuses to even boot up.

My mid 2010 MBP 15" failed after 13 months, also. What did you do to get it fixed?

g

Re: how did I get it fixed FoC.

Well, I had had one crash (black screen/won't boot) issue two months after original purchase of my macbook. I contacted tech support and was assisited in running disk utility but all seemed okay. He told me if it ever happened to call back ASAP. Fourteen months later the friend who had recommended the macbook needed to use mine, after doing so, she was shocked at how badly (slow/glitchy) it performed. I told her about the first problem I'd had and how I figured the slow response and hiccups were "normal". She said this was not normal and first thing the next AM we went to the apple store and talked to the "genius". I don't think my FoC fix had anything to do with my ignorance, or that mr.genius was feeling generous, I think it had to do with that initial call two months after I got the machine home and Apple had a verifiable record of that first incident.

Hi all, I've been reading this thread with great interest. I have the early 2008 MacBook Pro and it has worked fantastically until just this week when I installed Mountain Lion. I left the computer running overnight to add some photos into iPhoto and then at some point it turned off and won't power up ever since. Now I've run into what appears to be the same symptoms everyone else here is describing - doesn't want to start up, flashes the white light in front like it's sleeping but when I hold the power down, I hear the CD drive whir for a second but nothing comes to life.

I also noticed a news article today in the International Business Times where it sounds like someone with my laptop is running into the same troubles: http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/369723/20120802/mac-os-x-mountain-lion-apple-pro blems.htm

• IBTimes submitter "Sls096" said once their early 2008 MacBook Pro was upgraded to OS X Mountain Lion, put the computer to sleep, and two hours later, "it was dead." "Power button does not work," said the user. "Sleep light comes on for a few seconds and I can hear what sounds like a disk ejecting for about three seconds. No disk is in. Charger green light is green. Now I am left with a Pro that will not work at all. MacBook Pro worked perfectly fine and I never had an issue until I upgraded to Mountain Lion. Very frustrating!!!"

I echo her frustration, especially since my computer also worked great until I installed Mountain Lion and now the new OS seems to have run my computer into the ground. And naturally, Mountain Lion just came out this past week, rather than 4 months ago when I was still within the four year replacement window. Grrrrr.

MANY are having that exact same issue. I think it's about time apple owns up to a bigger issue than just the nvidia chip. 25 pages of people with macbook pro's with almost an identical issue AFTER installing Lion or ML seems like a red flag to me.

BTW, for those with this issue, your hard drive is fine. You can get a case for $30 to insert the drive into so you don't lose your data.

this is in reference to the message posted by thebhoydave1888 I'm facing the logic board problem. The service centre guys told me that two of the sensors are not working properly and the whole logic board needs replacement The sensors failed are proximity centers as such help me out in this re I've got 2011 MaC BOOK PRO

And could this be related to NVIDIA ISSUE you GUYS ARE talking about.

any sort of guidance will be helpful

Have been trying to gather the key points from this thread.

Is it a fair summary to say:-

1. If your logic board fails, and your MBP uses the GeForce 8600M GT (2007-2008 MBPs), then there are possibilities to get the logic board replaced by Apple free of charge?
2. If your logic board fails, and it doesn't use this graphics card, then there is no official free of charge repair offered by Apple?
3. Some users are now reporting a suspected correlation between running Mountain Lion on MBPs (irrespective of which graphics card you have) and the logic board subsequently failing?

This is what I've managed to glean through my (1 hour!) skim through this extensive thread.  Grateful if someone, who has been following this thread for much longer, could confirm if this is an accurate summary.

My reason for clarifying is because:-

• I have a late 2008 MBP which DOES NOT use the above graphics card.
• Yesterday I installed a brand new copy of Mountain Lion on a new hard drive in an external USB enclosure.  I spent the day setting up  my apps and copied all my files over from my old Lion hard drive.
• Turned the machine off and pulled out my old Lion drive and swapped in the new Mountain Lion drive.
• Went to to turn it back on and nothing.  Magsafe cable didn't even light up to indicate any charging activity.
• Took it to the Apple Store Genius' today who tested it and confirmed that the Logic Board needs replacing - they have not been able to determine what caused the board to fail in the first place.
• Quoted price for logic board replacement including labour and parts ~HK$4500 (US$580)

I am keen to understand what my options might be, based on the experiences of other similar users, hence, my need to clarify the key points out of this thread.  Ultimately I need to decide

• Do I get the logic board replaced and if so do I have a case to ask Apple to cover the costs
• Or do I bring forward (significantly) my planned (well, desired!) upgrade of laptop in order to cut my losses

Grateful for any clarity anyone can provide on all the above points.

• Do I get the logic board replaced and if so do I have a case to ask Apple to cover the costs

I doubt that Apple will cover the cost - or even share the cost. You could, however, ask about the "Flat Rate Repair Pricing". I don't know anyone who has tried this method, but it's worth asking.

• Or do I bring forward (significantly) my planned (well, desired!) upgrade of laptop in order to cut my losses

If you can't get the Flat Rate option, then I'd opt to replace rather than repair. I expect the life-span of a notebook to be 3-4 years (one reason that I purchase AppleCare) although I've certainly had them last much, much longer. But at almost US$600, you could add US$1200 to it and get something maxed out.

But ask about the Flast Rate option first and let me know what you find out.

Clinton

Thanks for the tips.  I called up the Apple Store (in Hong Kong) that has my laptop at the moment and spoke to one of the senior engineers.  I asked them about your suggested Flat Rate Repair Option and he said that this was only available in the US and Japan at the moment - he described it as "return to depot" but it sounded like exactly what was described in the link you posted (3rd party goes through and fixes everything for a flat charge).  He's offered to waive the labour charge (~$50) but it is still a drop in the ocean compared with the overall cost.

Hard decision I have to say considering the equivalent replacement is going to be around 3 times the cost of this - I need to MBP with discrete graphics card as I use Adobe Lightroom and iMovie a lot.

Interesting regarding your comment on the 3-4 years - why do you say this?  Maybe I was naive but when I bought my MBP, I was expecting it would last at least 5 years, not the 3.5 that its managed so far.

My last MBP (a first generation Intel) lasted me for over 6 years and there is still someone using it. However, as technology changes so often and those of us who want to keep up with the latest upgrades are out here, 3-4 years is just how often I used to buy new computers (back when I could afford that option). I could have held onto my 2006 model a bit longer and waited for the June models, but the main thing I wanted was the ability to run Lion and Mountain Lion and to have a Thunderbolt port. I have it all with my late 2011 model (the only thing that I'm 'missing' is USB 3.0 ports).

So notebooks can and do last longer than 4 years and they can still be useful. But as companies like Apple and Adobe upgrade so often, I want a computer that can take advantage of the latest and greatest. Some people don't need or even want that.

Just my 2¢...

Clinton

Glad I found this discussion. I've been having problem with my early 2011 MBP since approximate 2 weeks ago after I've upgraded to Mountain Lion from Snow Leopard. I purchased my MBP in April 2011 and it was working flawlessly until I upgraded to Mountain Lion.

I upgraded on Sunday, got my MBP working for the whole day on Monday with no issues. Tuesday my screen suddenly black out and rebooted. The apple logo and the spinning logo appeared as normal, but after they're gone, it freeze  at a complete white screen. I had to hold the power button to turn off the system. Tried a few times to reboot and this is my experience:

1. Sometimes my screen is pixelated with a slight magenta/purple tint.

2. All the time it got freeze at the white screen.

3. Tried reseting the PRAM few times but no use.

4. Tried to boot up with the restore utility but ended up at a blue screen.

eventually after 1 hour of restarting my MBP it finally booted up normally and everything appears to be normal.

Called up Apple Center (no genius bar here in Malaysia) and they said it could be caused by my copy of Snow Leopard not up to date or there were corrupted files when I upgraded to Mountain Lion. With this I proceeded to back up my whole MBP and did a clean install of Mountain Lion. It ran normally for a few days , which I thought my nightmare was over, on the 3rd day the same thing happened - I left it on throughout the night to transfer some files to my NAS HDD and the next morning the whole screen was black and I wasn't able to "wake" it up. Had to hold the power button again and repeated the whole process I mentioned earlier. Tried many times and finally booted up normally.

I'm getting worried that this might be a logic board issue but I have no experience in this as this is my first mac.

Problems I see:

1. screen would sometimes flicker during my usage and system would suddenly shut down.

2. purple/magenta tint + pixelated screen during startup

3. Never got pass the white screen after apple+spinning wheel disappear during start up

Any advise?

I've downgraded my Mountain Lion to Snow Leopard to see if this problem still persist. If it's not then it's pretty convincing to say that the problems are coming from Mountain Lion. fingers crossed

Abit of history of my saga.

MBP 2.6 EARLY 2008

In feb of this year my MBP was taken to the Trafford Centre store as the 6th battery failed with the dreaded battery needs replacing message with less than 40 cycles, at the time my screen was also exhibiting artefacts laptop was taken and kept for testing as it was supposedly inprecented for an MBP to be eating batteries like it was doing, I asked for the GPU to be checked due to the artefacting but was told this was not necessary as the 2.6 model was not one of the affected models, 15 phone calls later to ascertain where they were up to after non returned calls and promises I would have the laptop back, I was finally left a messaqe to say that they could find nothing wrong after torture testing the MBP but that they would replace the PSU and give me 2 retail batteries and I should monitor going forward as maybe something undetected wrong with power circuits in the laptop or a logic board fault.

Fast forward to this weekend laptop starts and displays only a black screen, I book a Genius appointment again at the Trafford for today, my wife duly attends and they test and say they cant test properly as it is failing to boot, I had already asked to ask about teh GPU failing, she was duly informed that it wasnt covered as the cover was for 4 years and that meant my laptop was only covered until March of this year. I decided to ring technical support, went through the whole issue with Andrew who said in his opinion there should be something Apple could do he would need to speak to senior call handler, he then after being on hold for 20 minutes came back to say he was transfering the call to the senior person Kieron, he went through everything with me and said he would look at the options and come back to me with an hour, checked my phone number and that was that. The phone call never came so on my way home I rang back this time I spoke to Zak, he then said he would need to speak to Senior of staff, he then handed call off to Vincent, I then had to go through whole thing again with him, he looked through repair issue and said I would have to speak with the retail store there was nothing Apple could do for me, I quizzed him on why the battery would fail 7 times he stated that as he hadnt tested the MBP himself he could not answer that, I asked if the details of all the repair and the number of batteries replaced were logged on file, he said he could only see the most recent replacement in Feb 12 and thought it strange why the store would replace the battery and PSu when the MBP was 4 years old and obviously out of warranty, He said he would ring the store and get more details and ring me back.

Vincent did ring me back and as expected said there was nothing Apple could do for me, he had spoken with the store and they would not help, they did offer £50 off a new MBP!!!! I said I was very unhappy an when the MBP originally was taken to the shop in Feb I had asked about the artefacting, he said this had not been recorded and so it was not true, I took exception to this as not only were Apple not prepared to help now I am being cast as a liar, I pointed out that I have several Apple products including 2 iMac 27, 3 iphones, Apple TV various Ipods 2 ipads and this was seriouly making me question my loyalty to Apple, his reply to this was "Whatever!" as you can imagine I blew a fuse and questioned his whatever remark, I told him I would no longer be buying Apple products again he replied "Whatever" at this point I out the phone down, to say I seething with anger would be an understatement, I feel so let down by Apple

My 2010 15 MBP went in for warranty repair on its logic board at the tail end of the warranty.  Mac was overheating and crashing a lot, along with video artifacting.  In less than a years time with new logic board it's starting to do it again.  I've owned 3 MacBooks and overheating is endemic.  I ensure ventilation is never blocked.  I do use software which taxes the CPU.  It saddens and disappoints me that my MBP overheats on nearly every live show my band has done.  And now in order to continue using it I might have to purchase yet another logic board out of pocket?  When I could never rely in it in the first place?  For shame, Apple.

Malachi wrote:

 

My 2010 15 MBP went in for warranty repair on its logic board at the tail end of the warranty.  Mac was overheating and crashing a lot, along with video artifacting.  In less than a years time with new logic board it's starting to do it again.  I've owned 3 MacBooks and overheating is endemic.  I ensure ventilation is never blocked.  I do use software which taxes the CPU.  It saddens and disappoints me that my MBP overheats on nearly every live show my band has done.  And now in order to continue using it I might have to purchase yet another logic board out of pocket?  When I could never rely in it in the first place?  For shame, Apple.

Start using smcFanControl to choose what speed the fans run at. Also use your MBP on a laptop stand to elevate it from your desk and give it more room to breathe. Also, consider reapplying the thermal paste between the CPU/GPU and heatsink, using a higher quality thermal paste can reduce temperatures.