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Randomly Turns Off

My Macbook just randomly turns off sometimes without me doing anything. Then I'll try and boot it back up and it takes me pressing the button about 3 times for it to finally actually boot up. I have it connected to my power supply the whole time, so I'm positive that it's not a power issue. Any advice?

Macbook, Mac OS X (10.4.6)

Posted on Jul 1, 2006 10:21 PM

Reply
622 replies

Jul 26, 2006 6:31 AM in response to Christian Kraft

The way the 'genius' was acting I could tell he had
not seen this issue so I mentioned that this was not
unique to me and that there were 600+ messages in the
forum on this subject. At that point he took on a
very aloof air. And told me that the forums were full
of people who complain and that people just say they
have the same problem because they want to make it
look worse.


That sadly doesn't suprise me. It's sad if someone who is supposed to be in customer service truly believes people have nothing better to do than to conspire against apple. He should quit and find a new line of work.

On another note I hope things work out for you, although personally I would have got the store manager involved and let him/her know about the attitude problem one of their staff. Also, I would have demanded a working machine on the spot.

Nick

Jul 26, 2006 7:16 AM in response to checkert

wow, I was on my way to go buy a new macbook for college this fall when I decided to look into it one last time and look at what I found! I feel so bad for all the people having problems though, it really must suck to have an unreliable computer, especially if you love it otherwise....damnit apple.

Now I'm probably not going to get a macbook...or maybe I'll wait until this 'version 1' product officially becomes a 'version 2'. To reiterate a question somebody asked earlier on this forum, how long does that usually take? Should I wait a couple weeks or will it take longer than that? (In which case, I'd bring my business elsewhere)

Jul 26, 2006 7:20 AM in response to Fredrik Averpil

Fredrick,

Do you know if your repair was a replacment of the logic board? Does that seem to be the consensus of what the problem is? I guess I will have to bite the bullet then and take it in to the genius bar today so that they can get the replacement logic board ordered.

I have tried everything software related that I can think of. I have done uninstalls and clean reinstalls of a number of programs that I thought could be problems. The shut down thing happens like clock work every time I start this thing up after it has been shut down for some time. It never happens on a restart and it never happens once I am up and running for any period of time. I sit here with my fingers crossed for the first ten minutes after booting up. If I can make it ten minutes, I am home free.

This is no way to have to be working with a computer that is this expensive. I really wrestled with switching from my PowerPC to one of these now, rather than waiting till they had been out a while longer. The guy in the Apple store just raved about how he loved his MacBook so I bought one. I could just kick myself at this point.

Jul 26, 2006 7:42 AM in response to hybrid727

You know I would hate to see you buy a PC. Even though I am beyond frustrated by these problems with my MacBook, when it is up and running I absolutely love it. Maybe I should just figure out a way that I would never have to shut it down and I would just be ok. Not practical since I travel with it.....

I guess let me say this. PC's are a problem all day long, every day. I used PC's for the majority of my career (let's just say a very long time) and Mac's for only the last 2. Buying a Mac was the best technology purchase I ever made but I started with a PowerPC. If this MacBook was my first now maybe I might have a different opinion.

I have my problem with my MacBook just on start up, for now anyway. (I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it doesn't get worse). With PC's you have to worry about the spyware issue and the continual virus issues. You spend a good deal of time, energy and money dealing with that issue alone. The software doesn't integrate nearly as well on a PC and they aren't as intuitive or easy to use, in my opinion. There isn't anything that I can think of that I don't like better on a Mac than a PC.

I would suggest this. I don't know if this particular problem is limited to the 13 inch MacBook or not. If you have the ability to deal with the size and or the price difference, I'd look at the boards on the MacBook Pro and see if that model is experiencing the same problem. If it isn't, maybe go for the MacBook Pro instead of the MacBook. If it is, I'd wait as long as you can before you absolutely have to buy your computer before you go to school. I find it hard to believe that, given the number of reported issues about this, some solution isn't coming soon. Maybe a month would do it.

If at a month you check the boards and it still looks like the issue is happening, why don't you look on eBay and see if you can find yourself a newer model, used PowerPC. The driver for me buying a MacBook was that I needed a faster processor and a larger hard drive in a laptop model, that could also run a couple of Windows XP programs that my clients have (like Microsoft Visio) faster. That just wasn't feasible running in Virtual PC. However, for standard word processing and other computing tasks, my PowerPC was great. If you also didn't need any Windows XP programs or didn't need high performance from them, Virtual PC worked really well for occasional light use.

That would be my suggestion.

Randomly Turns Off

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