My sister hasn’t had the euphoric switch to a mac experience that everyone else has. In some ways, it almost seems her beautiful black MacBook might even be cursed.
Like anything, switching to a Mac has a learning curve and sometimes that learning curve can just make it seem things aren’t working right. But when screens start flickering and comptuers start shutting down randomly, the learning curve increases exponentially for big brothers.
About 3 or 4 months ago, her MacBook started to shutdown randomly. Apple released a bulletin about random shutdowns in certain MacBooks and advised a firmware upgrade to help solve the problem.
Firmware doesn’t help solve hardware problems and that was what caused her MacBook to shutdown randomly and eventually, not start at all.
I tried everything to help her poor, sick, beautiful machine to come back on including these tricks you might use if you try to start your MacBook and see an empty blue screen or the progress indicator that looks like a pinwheel (I call it the "beach ball"):
- Start OS X in Safe Mode - Shutdown, press power and immediately hold down ’shift’ after the startup sound.
- Try to restart by simultaneously pressing ‘Ctrl’, ⌘, and the power button for 3 seconds.
- Try to boot from your OS X CD - place the CD in the drive, shutdown and hold ‘C’ while restarting.
- Try to force a restart of OS X - shutdown and hold ‘X’ while restarting.
If you can’t get these to work, try them after holding down the power key for 10 seconds and then releasing the power key after you hear a loud system beep.
Lastly, if these still don’t work and you still see nothing but a blank blue screen when you turn on your MacBook, it’s probably not cursed. More than likely, the MacBook has a problem with one of the heat sinks.
The heat sink issue was the root of my sister’s MacBook shutdown problems. Turns out that MacBook’s made prior to a certain week in the production process had a serious issue with a faulty heat sink that causes these MacBook’s to short out randomly. The problem can get progressively worse and cause a complete failure of the system which gives you the empty blue screen.
The Apple store at MacArthur Center in Norfolk has a fantastic staff that assisted my sister courteously and quickly. They replaced the faulty heat sink without an appointment and did not charge her for the repair. They also polished black beauty before they gave it back to her. That alone was worth the trip.
Auntie wrote,
Her name is Mae.
Quote | Link | March 21st, 2007 at 11:46 am