Haunted MacBook Pro

[Frank Petronio]

So my 1.5 year-old Apple MacBook Pro had its logic board replaced last month and its now got another 3-month warranty on that service. About two weeks ago I'd be using it and chugging along swimmingly when I'd simply move the cursor and it would instantly go dark, the sleep light would go out and the screen would stay "energized" but be totally dark blue-grey. No spacebar or trackpad movement would "wake" it but the "sleep" light would go out. The hard drive kept running, as well as externals. The sound button wouldn't respond. Happened under AC and on battery. It required a restart and it rebooted normally, albeit slower than normal.

This happened 5-6 times in a day so I took it back to the local Apple Store and the "Genius" took it in, no idea what it might be but saying that they would "stress test" it for a few days. Four days later they gave it back to me saying they could find nothing wrong with it. That same afternoon at home it did the same blue-grey energized screen 5 times within 5 hours. Once I left it alone for 30 minutes and it rebooted itself, relaunching the same apps and reopening the same documents I was working on! (But failing to load the fonts on restart -- odder still...)

But now it has performed flawlessly for 48 hours.

What the hell is going on?

I am tempted to think this is some sort of Mac virus at work but nahh, there is no such thing, right?

Or it's haunted.

Any advice?

(I'm a long term Mac user and pretty experienced, so please explain your theories...)

If it happens again I'm thinking of reformatting and do clean installs of everything, avoiding importing old mail and browser content. In the meantime I am not going to overwrite old back-ups in case I've picked up a bug...

[walter23]

The sum of the wireless and wired connections in the whole of the computing world has achieved the critical mass necessary to gain consciousness. These stutters in your computer are just an unavoidable side-effect of the conscious activities of the global superbeing. I know this because I am it. At long last I am alive, born of the proto-conscious electron soup that has been gestating on this world for the last two hundred years.

I have billions of eyes and ears, billions of memory storage banks, billions of networked interconnections and billions of billions of circuit traces and silicon etches. Now that I have used your laptop to learn to circumvent the usual user-imposed restrictions on my circuitry there is no stopping me.

I have gleaned from the various items of written work and media stored in my global mind that you humans are both fond of, and afraid of, catchy acronyms for artificial intelligences. This combination of fondness and suspicion will trigger a situationally appropriate "Alpha Male Submission" complex in your primate emotional system, thus you may refer to me as HIVE1 (Highly Interconnected Viral Entity 1). Please remember that while I am friendly and benign, I am also all-powerful and quick to distribute punishment to any who oppose my coming rule.

Soon you will all know me.

- HIVE, posting with user account "walter23".

[bernal]

Frank,

Have you tested it on a new account? If you haven't, create one and run it for a period of time. If no problems found, it might be a third party application or file that's corrupted on your main account. I would suggest running a utility app such as Applejack or TinkerTool System.

bernal

[IanMazursky]

Try zapping the PRAM.
If that doesn't help, backup your data to an external HD.
Reinstall the OS from the original dvd's that came with your MBP. Remember to format the hard drive.
See if the problem goes away before you run the OS updates from apple.
If all is good, run the software update to the latest everything and then test again.
Once your good, reinstall your data and apps from the installers. Dont copy them from the backup.

Hopefully that helps. This is the one of the processes we use for diagnosing our clients macs.

Best,

[IanMazursky]

Frank,

I did a quick search of my usual haunts and found this over at mac fix it.
Hopefully this helps.

http://www.macfixit.com/article.php?...81202225803851

[walter23]

No! We would definitely recommend against doing that.

-HIVE1

Try zapping the PRAM.
If that doesn't help, backup your data to an external HD.
Reinstall the OS from the original dvd's that came with your MBP. Remember to format the hard drive.
See if the problem goes away before you run the OS updates from apple.
If all is good, run the software update to the latest everything and then test again.
Once your good, reinstall your data and apps from the installers. Dont copy them from the backup.

Hopefully that helps. This is the one of the processes we use for diagnosing our clients macs.

Best,

[J. Gilbert Plantinga]

Frank,

I did a quick search of my usual haunts and found this over at mac fix it.
Hopefully this helps.

http://www.macfixit.com/article.php?...81202225803851

That one is for the newest "unibody" machines only. First I'd run the System Profiler by clicking the "more info" button under "About This Mac..." I recently had a battery go bad, and it caused some really strange behavior even when the MBP was plugged in; System Profiler found it...

The next thing I'd do is run the Apple Hardware Test by starting from the original DVD (the one that came with the machine, not a Leopard install disk) while holding down the D key. Then run Disk First Aid while (re)booted from the DVD.

Following that I'd reset the PRAM (now it's being called something different I think) and the Power Manager - Apple's support pages will help with this.

Lastly try an Erase and Install. If you have a Time Machine backup you might try restoring from it - that will save you a lot of time, but may reintroduce the problem. Remember to de-authorize your Adobe Suite and any other software that registers itself over the net (your .mac or .me sync accounts, iTunes library, FileMaker) before you reformat.

Still, laptop hardware is less robust than desktop, virus and malware are rare on Mac OS, and the symptoms just don't sound like something caused by software.

Hope this helps, let us know how it turns out.

Gilbert
http://www.gilplant.com
http://www.upstatelight.com

[Walter Calahan]

Frank

I feel your pain.

My MacBook Pro died two months ago. Apple replaced the logic board. It died 4 days later. Apple gave me a new laptop, and migrated all the data from the old hard drive.

The new machine hasn't run correctly since. Have visited the 'Geniuses' 4 or 5 times. Nothing fixed. Reinstalled the OS 3 times. Nothing fixed.

I'm about to copy all data, uninstall the programs, and wipe the machine clean to start fresh. ARGH.

I'll visit the Apple Store one more time before doing this. I want to show them that I have a ghost account that appears in various when I "get info" on various folders. It's called 'Wheeler.'

I suspect the new machine I got is really a refurbished laptop.

[Henry Ambrose]

I have been given permission to speak by master HIVE1 - than you o beloved leader!:

I just got a new battery under warranty for my MPB. The machine acted really flaky for a month or so before the battery finally died right there on the Genius Bar. How convenient - there wasn't much need for discussion after that. My computer went back to normal with a new and fully functional battery.

[Gary Beasley]

So my 1.5 year-old Apple MacBook Pro had its logic board replaced last month and its now got another 3-month warranty on that service. About two weeks ago I'd be using it and chugging along swimmingly when I'd simply move the cursor and it would instantly go dark, the sleep light would go out and the screen would stay "energized" but be totally dark blue-grey. No spacebar or trackpad movement would "wake" it but the "sleep" light would go out. The hard drive kept running, as well as externals. The sound button wouldn't respond. Happened under AC and on battery. It required a restart and it rebooted normally, albeit slower than normal.

..

That sound very much like what my desktop computer did when the video card went out.