Macbook Pro Retina Shutting Down Constantly

Question

Level 1

31 points

Macbook Pro Retina Shutting Down Constantly

I have to admit that while I love my Macbook pro retina it crashes more than my old MBP 17" did. 10 times more. I got in back at the end of October 2012 and for the most part it has been pretty solid. However, it turns itself off every now and then and the mouse becomes totally locked up for 10-20 seconds every time you plug something into the usb ports and sometimes when you haven't plugged anything in. All of this, while not making me very happy, I've just been dealing with.

However, yesterday evening I was leaving work and I closed the lid and realized that I still had a usb drive plugged in. I opened the lid in order to eject the disk and the display never came on, after about a minute it gave me the disk encryption login due to it rebooting itself. I've gotten to use to this type of thing that I figured it was just another example of why I'm growing to dislike my mac.

I just close the lid, unplug the drive and go home. Since arriving home though, my computer is now rebooting itself any time it goes to sleep. Or at least it appears to be the case. Or if I close the lid and come back after an hour, I'm presented with the login from disk encryption due to it rebooting again. If I leave the computer lid open and let it go to sleep it will reboot over and over and over... Made me wish I had a battery I could unplug last night, ended up having to put it in the other room.

Can anyone tell me how I might go about figuring out what is causing this to happen? I haven't installed any new software in months so not thinking it has to do with that.

Thanks,

Glenn

MacBook Pro with Retina display, OS X Mountain Lion, 16gb RAM 512MB HD

Posted on Jan 5, 2013 11:10 AM

Reply

Answer 1

cybercrypt13 Author

Level 1

31 points

Jan 5, 2013 5:04 PM in response to cybercrypt13

A little more info:

I have confirmed that it is the powerdown feature that is causing the reboots. When I first got the computer it use to do this and I reset the PRAM or something and it fixed this from happening for a while. Not sure what caused this to start happening again but will try to reset again and see if it fixes it. In the mean time I've disabled the automatic shutdown feature and it hasn't died since.

Will post again after I reset things.

Reply

Answer 2

cybercrypt13 Author

Level 1

31 points

Jan 5, 2013 5:23 PM in response to cybercrypt13

Ok, reset the SMC controller by pressing left (shift + ctrl + option + powerbutton ) while plugged into the power supply. It mentioned that it should blink the power light when I do it but nothing like that happened. So I have no visible way to tell if it did anything at all. However, it did not solve my problem. I allowed the system to power off again and it rebooted when I woke it back up.

Can anyone tell me if there is any way to see whether the SMC controller really reset?

Thanks,

Glenn

Reply

Answer 3

Jan 9, 2013 1:26 AM in response to cybercrypt13

My 15" RMBP also exhibits this sort of behavior, though not the USB freezing behavior (yet). It shuts down or logs me off randomly and by itself. Recently it will not sleep and will not shutdown. The shutdown command seems to be confused with restart, since the restart behavior is actually what I experience when I choose the shutdown command. I finally got it to shut down and stay shutdown all night by forcing shutdown (holding down the power key until it powers off). Thank goodness it has an SSD otherwise all this shutdown-boot-shutdown nonsense would take forever..

It's interesting that no one else has replied to any of your posts.

Reply

Answer 4

Mar 18, 2013 3:48 AM in response to Fergus Meiklejohn1

My recent 2weeks old 15''retina macbook pro also shuttting down randomly and no use of SMC reset !!!

Reply

Answer 5

Jan 28, 2014 2:33 PM in response to cybercrypt13

I have been having the same problem.

Reply

Answer 6

almarson

Level 1

6 points

Jan 28, 2014 6:15 PM in response to cybercrypt13

I have the same problem. You are not alone,, like that makes you feel any better. I purchased my MacBook Pro in mid Dec. 2012.

Reply

Answer 7

Jan 28, 2014 6:30 PM in response to cybercrypt13

I suspect with my rMBP (2012) that the problem is connected to the sleep and energy save settings. When plugged into power it keeps itself on for longer then goes through constant reboots (restart - login screen - restart etc). When plugged in, the software shitdown command also causes a restart. When not plugged in ( ie running on battery) it will shutdown by itself faster than it will when plugged in but it won't restart. It makes me think the problem is connected to the energy save features, beacuse they differ depending on whether the mac is running on battery or not.

My rMBP did this from the moment I bought it, then randomly stopped doing it on the day I took it to the mac store to be fixed, then started doing it again right after I upgraded to 10.9

Reply

Answer 8

Jan 29, 2014 3:46 AM in response to cybercrypt13

I just ran a few tests to confirm my suspicion that this is a sleep problem for me and found that my rMBP will restart as soon as it has entered the sleep cycle. Set it to auto sleep after 10 minutes and it will restart at 10 minutes, set it to sleep at 3 minutes and it will restart at 3 minutes. Command it to sleep and it will restart.

So for me at least there is a workaround and that is to set sleep to "never". The display still sleeps but my mac keeps running. So that's not a solution but it is a workaround, and if I want it to shutdown and not restart I either hold the powerbutton or take off the power cable and choose shut down from the dropdown menu (it won't restart on battery power, it'll just shut down).

I hope that helps someone else! And I hope it helps the engineers to diagnose and actually solve the very long running problem for us all..

Reply