Q: iMac 27" mid 2012 random shutdown OS X 10.10.5
I know there's tons of questions out there about the iMac shutting down randomly but I thought to write a fresh one since all of the solutions found via the forum did not work for me. I apologise in advanced but I am getting frustrated with the machine. Here's my summary of my iMac's problem.
I noticed a few months ago that my iMac randomly shuts down without warning. Sometimes it does while I'm working on something or just simply browsing Safari. Without fail, I always find my iMac without power when I wake up in the morning to check my email. My only solution was to unplug the power cable, wait a few minutes and then plug it again to get power back on. It shuts down again and I have to unplug/replug to turn the machine.
I read in the forum about solutions on what others might have done and helped them, i.e. change RAM / reset SPRAM and so on but still no luck. In April, I took my iMac to the store to get it checked. They did the usual hardware inspection at the store and found nothing wrong with it. They took it in for a day to re-install a fresh OS X and called me the next morning to get it picked up. The Genius guy said that they could not re-produce the problem I have been experiencing for the past few months. So maybe it needed a fresh installation of the software to make it work. So I got back home and transferred all my information via the Migration Assistant tool. Tested it for a day and I was happy the machine did not shutdown. However, the next day I found it without power again the next morning. I'm back to unplugging/ replugging the power cable. It happens even more often than the last few months.
So maybe it's something to do with the software I backed up via time machine. Maybe a software could have triggered it to shut down randomly. I erased the disk via Disk utility and installed a fresh new OS in hopes of having it work properly on factory settings. The iMac shut down while I was installing a fresh OSX. Back to unplug/replug I go and was lucky enough to get it to install successfully. Now I am running a fresh installation of OS without any of the data I have from the time machine and I still have the iMac shutting down randomly. I am convinced it might be a power supply issue or a power cable? I hope it's not the logic board or something half the price of a new iMac. But still, Apple did a check with the Diagnostics tool and found no hardware problem.
Could someone kindly please shed a light to what I can do? If someone out there has a solution, please share. Many thanks in advance.
Love,
Frustrated iMac User
iMac 27" mid 2012
32GB Ram
OS X Yosemite 10.10.4 (tried to upgrade to 10.10.5 but shuts down )
Posted on Aug 26, 2015 8:32 AM