Randomly Turns Off

Thanks to everyone who has posted information here.

I bought 2 macbooks in London beginning of june. One for my mum (her first mac ever !) and one for myself which I brought back to Tokyo where I live.

A familiar story - random turn offs of ever increasing frequency, a mad scramble to barely salvage some very important data, a failed total reinstall followed by a visit to the geniuses at mac store Ginza.

They took one look at the serial no. - 4H621... and said it was the mother board (MLB) OR the DC Power supply MagSafe Board (sorry, I am not exactly sure what this is but that is how it is written on the genius bar work authorisation).

I did get the impression they had seen a quite a few very similar cases !

They politely explained that if I purchased a Mac Pro Care Membership it would move me to the front of the queue - hmm, theres a queue...)

I politely explained that I didn't think that was the right thing for me to do.

I haven't read every post on this discussion yet but it seemed interesting to me that they seemed to identify immediately 2 potential hardware issues on checking my serial no.

They were very helpfull and went out of their way to get me the equivalent of pro care without asking me to become a member when I gently explained how important my mac was to me.

Now I have my fingers crossed that the MLB replacement, which they promised me in a few days, fixes the problem.

I am a loyal and happy mac user since my first Quadra 900, this is the first major hardware issue I have had.

And till it started to die the macbook is the most exquisite mac I have ever laid my hands on, so I just hope it comes back soon...

and that I don't have to go through this all over again with my mum's machine !!

Booted up my black week 21 production macbook this morning and got a screen filled with hundreds of bright vertical pin stripes. OH - shades of logic board problems I had with my iBook two years ago. Restarted in safe mode, nothing. Called applecare (again). After taking with a agent and getting no where I told him I wanted to talk with a supervisor. I was put on hold for 25 minutes and during that time I was able to get the computer to successfully bootup by resetting the pram. Is this what I have to look forward to now to use my 5 week old computer? Shawn, a product specialist with applecare told me that he has not seen alot of problems like the ones i'm having. I asked him if he checks out the Apple discussion board. He said he did, but that my issues were not "common". I informed him that in the macbook forum since July 1, 2006 there were hundreds of posts where customers talked about the same issues I am having. He said, this is not a "massive issue". He asked me what I wanted and I said I want my macbook replaced. Short story is that I now have to go the reseller where I purchsed my macbook in my home town and have them contact Apple for a replacement. I'll keep you posted.

Well well, After apple telling me to send it in or go to the store. I need my puter, I went into the store. after 5mins of talk the genius took the puter in the back and tol me it would be a few mins. 30mins later comes out with my puter and says its good to go. I had all ready done all the resets and stuff that apple told me and all. and that never fixed it. Now remember mine was dead just like the one in the video on here. I used the puter in the store for about 40mins and tried to kill it, no luck and its running much faster than before. Ill listen for the moo to see if its gone. I cant hear it yet. I left it running in the car for an hour on way home and still has not shut off. Also when playing a game the fan responed right away and fired up then soon as i was done with game the fan stoped. just as it should. Before it would just run when ever. well im going to give it a day or some before I call it fixed and ill report back.

I'm having the same problems with my MacBook 13" randomly shutting down. I detected this before the 10.4.7 upgrade, but it has been happening more often since that upgrade, and it happens alot when running Parallels Desktop (and Windows XP). I have 2GB of RAM, which I installed myself after purchasing it mail-order from RamJet. I could actually get it to shut down without fail when I launched Parallels Desktop and then when Norton Anti-Virus would do its scan. In fact, I had to quickly cancel the scan to keep it running, and then removed Norton Anti-Virus completely, which helped somewhat, but it has now hit me several times this morning when I wasn't even running Parallels Desktop.

AppleCare support was not very helpful. The man I spoke with had never heard of Parallels Desktop, and was asking me whether it had been updated to run on Intel-Macs (uh, it ONLYruns on Intel-Macs). He then suggested the ol' RAM swap routine, which I was going to try next. Anyway, I am now running on a single memory module (1GB), so I'll see if it is stable for the next few days, and if so, swap it out for the other module. If both are stable by themselves, then it has to be something else, I would guess.

It's not the RAM, it's a logic board problem. To prove this, swap the original RAM back in and run all the things that normally make it crash.

Also, what week is your build? What are the first six numbers of the serial number?

4H621 are the first of mine, well its been about 4hours and no issues at all. If there are no problems with mine by tomorrow after noon Ill post the mac geniuses name and his number to the store. Then you guy can call him and ask what he did to mine to fix it. What ever he did is diffrent from what applecare said as its working great so far. Normally i could fire up a good game and kill it in under a min. how it plays them liek a high dolar pc. very good so far. All the things apple care had me do took like 10 mins this dude had my macbook for a good while in the back so I wonder what he did.

Also now the moo is gone. Just a very quite hum

Also now the moo is gone. Just a very quite hum

Are you sure you have the exact same computer, and that he didn't just swap your drive/RAM into a brand new unit? Did you record the serial number before or after getting the 'pooter back?

Mine is doing it also, both on AC and off 10.4.7 is installed. 1 gig of Apple installed ram. Called Applecare got to the 3rd level of support after the usual troubleshooting, and was told that they are aware of the problem and a firmware fix is in the works. they did not give a date for release to me.

Can you check the first six digits of your serial number? The more people report their production weeks, the more support we can accumulate for the theory that this is the result of a bad production batch. Right now it seems to have been mostly weeks 19-22, though some here have reported week 23 with the same problems. Also, does anyone know what week we are on now? 🙂

Fragment, you should really request a replacement. If it was just over a week since you bought it, they have to be able to replace the unit (since you could just ask for a refund and then purchase again).

New firmware? So what does everyone think, sould we wait for the update? I'm in line to give up my macbook for over a week while i get it replaced. Would love not to be without it for that amount of time. Or do you think I should follow through and get it replaced?

ok guys I have been beating the crap out of this thing all night and have yet to have it autoshutdown yet. I had a Ibook 14inch that did this same problem to the T back when I was over fighting the war in Iraq, I managed to call apple for over there and they said there had been new update to adress this. I found a network conection on an army base and got the new update. for the next 5months i owned the ibook it never shut down again. So Im guessing that there will be a firmware fix for this. Also the fact that theres no mooing means something was done by my genius. I was told the moo was the fans "debating" to turn on. He did not tell me he new of any of the problems I was having but did fix them both. And unless I have a new logic board with the same part number then he has a fix. There maybe a fix allready out that the stores have. And it has just not hit the apple site yet. When I called applecare they were very harsh with telling me to just take it into a store and the problem would be fix, and that sending it in was going to take a week vs a trip to the mall. Weird huh

oh and also the puter seems faster too. thats what really suprises me

oh and finally whats a sure way to do the autoshut off. I need a tack i can run that will kill the puter so i can try it. I used to have this quake4 liek game that would do it, but now it plays like a charm.