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pmuellr is Patrick Mueller

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Sunday, September 17, 2006

MacBook Random Shutdown

You'll only 'get' the image above if you have a MacBook that suffers from Random Shutdown Symptom (aka RSS or RSD). You can read all it about it Apple's MacBook Discussion Board. I'm an early adopter of the RSD technology, first experiencing it over two months ago.

Luckily, Apple has provided elaborate information regarding this problem in Knowledge Base Article 304308. What a relief!

My machine has decided it's time to start Randomly Shutting Down again, after it's second extended repair job less than a month ago (which took 10 days). Funny story: when I picked the machine back up at my local Apple Store, the Genius brought it out and powered it up, and the display filled with colored vertical lines. He took a look at it, and said "oh no, we're going to have to send it back to get repaired again". I replied "Nope, I can fix that". And proceeded to fix it. (I'd been reading the MacBook discussion list a bit too much).

That was a mistake, of course, since having it sent back right then, for another repair, would have meant instead of going in now for a 3rd repair, I'd be going in for the 4th, and would have gotten a new machine instead (Apple won't repair a machine more than 3 times, supposedly).

So, now I have to decide what to do; here are some options:

  1. I can stay up late some night so I can get a reservation at the Genius Bar at my local Apple store to drop the machine off for repair; but I absolutely have to be able to have the machine shutdown, in the store, in front of their eyes, before they will accept it.
  2. I can wait 60 minutes or more on the phone on hold with AppleCare to get a problem report open or hopefully re-open my previous problem report. And they'll send me a box to send the machine back to them.

In any case, current wait time for MacBook "Random Shutdown" repairs is about 3 weeks, according to reports on the message board.

Yes, I've learned my lesson. Never by rev 1 of an Apple product.

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