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Random Macbook Shutdowns. Solved. At Last. Hopefully. � Martin Backschat%u2019s Blog

Some German dude thinks he knows why - that it is a cable that overheats. Maybe.

More on mine - Apple Store called on a Sunday (bonus points!) to say they'd tested my MacBook, that the problem was definitely the 3rd party RAM - that when they installed Apple RAM, it didn't happen, but when they installed my 3rd party RAM, it did. Hmm. OK, maybe.

Oops - I should clarify - "it" in this case is the bizarre streaky organicly fading in lines on power up - which seems related to the random shutdown thing (at least was in mine). Click here for description, picture, and video. Before I got a new motherboard and hard drive, it was doing the stripes thing as well as randomly powering down spontaneously.

So I went back to Apple Store and picked it up. Brought it home, popped out the 2 1GB sticks they said were bad, and put in a brand new different 3rd party 1GB stick, and a 256 MB stick that it had come with. Power up and....stripes. Uh oh.

I power down, reseat the RAM, zap PRAM, reset the PMU, slaughter a chicken, do something illegal in Texas to a goat, power it up and it seems to be working OK. But that does tend to make me squint and stare hard at their explanantion that it is because of third party RAM. I'm going to be typing a LOT on the laptop between now and my departure Tuesday, so if it happens again, I'm FUBAR'd and will have to borrow a different laptop or something - can't be without laptop for 2 weeks.

Drama drama drama, and not in a good way. So now I have 1.25 GB RAM and need to return the RAM I bought for this originally...

UPDATE MONDAY: GOD DAMMIT! - I rebooted and got the color striped thing again on the MacBook - does this mean spontaneous shutdowns are in my future? Insert ALL the four letter words I know here. I need to decide whether to risk taking the better machine, or just take the old PBook G4 and have to migrate everything over and get it ready for the trip...and I know what I ought to do and I don't like it. AAAAAAARGH!!!!

UPDATE Wednesday - I decided to wing it and live with stripes, hoping it wouldn't spontaneously shut down. However...sitting in the airport, waiting for my flight...it spontaneously shut down. And wouldn't restart.

So I called my friend that had dropped me off at the airport, and she met me at the airport to make the switch - I'm writing this on my two year old Powerbook G4 12". Hopefully the battery won't burst into flames....very frustrating that Apple said it was the RAM and otherwise OK...clearly and demonstrably not the case, since I had two different DIMMs in it...

-mike