HELP! Macbook shuts down after apple "repair"

J

jcw1314

Registered
Well I'm having a little problem...

One day my Macbook decided it wouldn't turn on. I took it to a Genius bar where they decided to send my machine to a repair center. I got the Macbook back, and they replaced the logic board (as well as fixed some cosmetic chipping) and updated all firmware. The machine seemed to be functioning normally, but shortly later, it just turns off. It does this a few times and is now to the point where I cannot even start the machine unless I hit power-control-command. I've reset the SMC and the PRAM. It's not an issue with the power or battery. The logicboard has just been replaced, so it would leave me to believe it's not that either.

Does anybody have an idea on what else could be causing this issue? The computer is essentially unusable. It's still under warranty, but I'm a little tired of the Mac people "fixing" my machine only to find that nearly nothing has been done at all.

Any help would be appreciated :)
 
That doesn't sound good...

What version of MacBook? (speed and/or year)

Did you add (now or earlier) any RAM (compared to the configuration it came with)?

Once it shuts down and you manage to get it powered on, open Console application (/Applications/Utilities) and find in the logs what happened before it shut down. You don't have to be able to decipher the log lines in it, so look for hte time it was powered on now, and get say 20 last lines (or last 30 seconds or minute) before it was shut down, and paste it here. That will tell something.
Another thing you can look for in Console is (in the search field) shutdown. If you find a line with something like previous shutdown cause, copy and paste the whole line to it.

The issue is probably hardware related, but it's worth having a few checks now before contacting AppleCare or Genius Bar again. If it's hardware, it will be worth to have them fix it again - in which point you can politely remind them about the inconveniences it causes for you (for work, study etc).

Was the symptom the same it exhibits now as when it was sent in for the logic board repair?
 
Yep, take it back. Your repair should be performed at no additional cost (since it was no cost the first time around).

If you start hacking away at the internals of the computer yourself, you risk voiding the warranty. Your best course of action is to let Apple hack away at it, because the repair is being performed to spec, by an authorized repair person, under warranty.

If they can't fix it after so many tries, that may be grounds to simply swap the machine out for a new one of equal spec. If you want to do things the right way, you must give Apple the chance to try and repair the machine, even if you know deep down that they're incapable of fixing it. They cannot, by law, leave you with a non-functioning machine, and they can only try so many times to repair it before giving you a machine that does work -- the catch being that you have to let them try so many times.
 
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