I got a Macbook in August. I’ve been very happy with it, and it’s been working fine until a few weeks ago, when it shut down randomly twice, in about 3 days. I then happened to read Kitta’s post about her Macbook having Random Shutdown Syndrome, and figured that was the problem!
So for the last couple of weeks I’ve been starting it up by holding the power button down till it beeps (I think Pascal said this means I’m deleting the p ram??) and so it turns on ok. While I’ve had it running like this, it’s only shut down in the middle of a session twice.
But I thought I better finally bring it back to the shop, which I had been avoiding, because I don’t want to lose it for a few weeks! Apple have just released a firmware update, but that hasn’t helped me.
I bought the Macbook at Digilife AppleCentre (shops in Mt Hawthorn, Carrillon and Whitfords), and they have a service centre on Oxford in Mt Hawthorn, which is open on Saturday! They diagnosed the problem within 15 minutes (while I waited, and totally knew about the problem as soon as I said ‘random shut down syndrome’, though also checked if I did the firmware update), and it was what they had seen often: something with the heatsink, and I think they mentioned the logic board too. Also, the battery had bent or swelled a bit, I think that was related. They said they’d order the parts, and I could take it home again! When they call (a week I think), I have to bring it in within 2 days, so they get the faulty parts back to Apple within the required time.
So to conclude this rambling, I don’t have to be without my Macbook and I should have gone to the service centre weeks ago when it started!
And while I was in the area, I went to the actual shop at ‘The Mezz’ in Mt Hawthorn, and nearly got tempted by a Crumpler bag, but they didn’t have the one I wanted, in purple, in stock.
Still, I think I will get it, it would be a nice way to spend MY FIRST ADSENSE PAYMENT!! Wohooo! I hardly ever treat myself! Nevermind that we need to upgrade our hosting account, because we’re about to exceed our bandwith! :D ‘It’ (?) is sending me an email every few hours saying we’ve gone over 80%, but it’s nearly the end of the month, so as far as I can tell we’ll make it (it’s at about 90% now). Upgrading can wait till next month! Though, I’ll be using up bandwith right now when I publish this post, won’t I?! Hmm, I better keep an eye on it today!
Interesting, I was wondering if the firmware helped or not, clearly it’s not just software related.
Digilife sounds like they know what they’re doing, Matt took mine to Nextbyte and they knew nothing about RSS and it’s still at the service centre. I still have no idea when it will be back, it would be nice if they’d call to say they were waiting for parts and give us an update.
I was reading the site http://www.macbookrandomshutdown.com/ a bit, and the firmware has helped for some people, but there’s others saying it’s just a sort of temporary fix, it doesn’t fix it properly (there was Apple technician saying stuff like that on DIgg apparently).
Yes, I’m glad I bought it at Digilife and not some online shop now! We used to live in Mt Hawthorn, and have bought other stuff there, that’s the only reason really.
Very annoying for you having to wait and hear nothing, very frustrating! That’s what I was expecting to, so was very pleased when they said I could take it home again!
Good luck with yours!
Oh, and to make us both scared: I also read reports about macbooks having the problem again, after they’d been fixed… argh!