Why is my MBP serial number and model year no longer displayed in "about this mac" (have NOT replaced logic board)?

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Level 1

5 points

Why is my MBP serial number and model year no longer displayed in "about this mac" (have NOT replaced logic board)?

I have not replaced or manipulated the logic board (or any other hardware) on my mid-2012 13 inch MBP. Under the "about this mac" tab, the serial number is no longer displayed (it now states "unavailable") and the model year is also no longer displayed. I understand that I can find the serial number and model year several other ways, I am seeking to determine why this happened and if it could indicate further problems.

Has anyone else experienced this?

Thank you in advance for any help or insight.

JB

MacBook Pro (13-inch Mid 2012), OS X Yosemite (10.10.1)

Posted on Dec 2, 2014 6:43 PM

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Answer 1

leroydouglas

Level 10

199,494 points

Dec 2, 2014 7:05 PM in response to jb121313

Good question.

I never saw syst info give the year, but model identifier.

in terminal you can copy and paste this in it's entirity, including the last '

system_profiler SPHardwareDataType SPMemoryDataType | perl -ne '

$SerialNumber = $1 if /Serial Number \S+:\s+(\S+)/;

$Processors = $1 if /Processors:\s+(\d+)/;

$Speed = $1 if /Processor Speed:\s+(.*)/;

$Name = $1 if /Processor Name:\s+(.*)/;

$Memory = $1 if /Memory:\s+(\d+\s+\S+)/;

$Phase2 = 1 if /Memory:\s*$/;

$MemSpeed = $1 if $Phase2 && /Speed:\s+(\d+\s+\S+)/;

$Type = $1 if $Phase2 && /Type:\s+(.*)/;

END { printf("%s\n%s x %s %s\n%s %s %s\n",

$SerialNumber,

$Processors, $Speed, $Name,

$Memory, $MemSpeed, $Type);

}

'

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Answer 2

jb121313 Author

Level 1

5 points

Dec 3, 2014 3:46 PM in response to leroydouglas

Leroydouglas,

Thank you for your input. In "about this mac" the year should be provided next to the OS version (I confirmed this with several other Mac owners to be sure I wasn't going crazy).

I have not tried what you suggested yet because, ironically enough, when I was using my MBP this morning a NEW problem arose!

My display froze (with horizontal colored lines on the screen) then shut down and began beeping in groups of three. I held down the power button for 5 seconds and the MBP turned on. From a quick search it seems that this indicates an issue with my RAM. Curious as to if my original symptoms were manifestations of the RAM issue. I plan on buying some new RAM in hopes of fixing all the issues. Tomorrow I am going to check to make sure the RAM is seated correctly.

I will post an update.

I am curious to hear your thoughts.

Thank you.

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Answer 3

leroydouglas

Level 10

199,494 points

Dec 3, 2014 6:33 PM in response to jb121313

Thanks for the update. 3 beeps definitely a RAM issue. Curious to see if this resolves all your problems.

You can run the AHT and see if it turns up any errors; not definitive by any means, but may prove useful.

AHT /'Apple Service Diagnostics' http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1509

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Answer 4

jb121313 Author

Level 1

5 points

Dec 4, 2014 6:43 PM in response to leroydouglas

Man oh man. What a day. New symptoms again!

Lets start with the MBP dying in its sleep. I closed my MBP and left it for a few hours to come back to find it completely dead. Looked into this issue and with the help of the activity monitor cleaned up some things, turned off some sharing settings, got rid of some extensions, etc. Seems to have solved this issue.

Later on, I picked up my MBP while it was on with my left hand and the same display (horizontal lines), freeze, auto shutdown happened. Out of curiosity I tried to recreate the symptom. Sure enough, pressing (with little force) on the left side of the bottom case caused it to happen again. I researched this a bit and found several possible culprits (bad logic board, metallic sticker may cause shorts, bad RAM bank, google drive). The google drive one really surprised me, I removed google drive (worked for many people) and it did not fix the issue. A buddy had some good RAM for me to use today so I swapped it out and had the same issue. Decided to test the individual RAM banks and it turns out that the deepest bank must be faulty. Running with only one 4 gig stick in the outermost bank and the freeze, shutdown, beep issue is gone!

So, it seems I have fixed the dying in sleep problem and have a temporary work-around for the bad RAM bank. The SN issue remains.

I am going to try to find out what could make a RAM bank be faulty and if there is a way to repair it.

What are the chances that all this happens as soon as I try to find out why the SN is unavailable??

Below is the thread that I found interesting and useful.

2011 Macbook Pro 3 Beeps/Freeze

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Answer 5

Oct 26, 2016 5:02 AM in response to jb121313

2011 17" MBP, no SN showing in About This Mac. Noticed this AFTER sending it to an Authorized Apple Repair shop, because of the screen freeze with colored or BW bars issue. They said the problem was the 8 GB RAM chips ("failing EFI diagnostics) and they put in one 8GB chip gratis. I just bought a new 8 GB chip from OWC Computing and its showing the same intermittant problems, but not so bad as before.

Shows up in Thunderbird email, but the line I'm typing on is still visible and I can keep typing and a new line wraps. When I do something like go to the Dock, some of the screen re-appears (area below where I'm typing, but not above).

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Answer 6

Oct 26, 2016 5:04 AM in response to firstname lastname

Oh, that code typed into Terminal yields:

Not
1 x 2.4 GHz Intel Core i7
16 GB 1067 MHz DDR3

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