Bricked Macbook Pro

Red Alert

Turned off my MBP last night after just messing around with my holiday photos. Then this morning the machine won't boot at all. Have tried resetting the non-volatile RAM and the power manager. It won't eject the CD that's in the drive either - I have tried the mouse & power-on combination to do this.

The machine has given me absolutely no hassle until this point. It has been in relatively heavy use in the course of work but hasn't been abused or the like.

The machine was only bought last march and has no applecare protection although it is under what they call 'Limited Warranty' and on the website it's given me the address of three companies:

Dectek
Typetek Limited
Mactivate Limited

What will a limited warranty entitle me to - will I be shelling out any or much cash for this repair? Has anyone done business with these companies and could recommend one?

monkeyfudge

Don't know Dectek... but I'd certainly deal with Typetek over Mactivate anyway.

leeroybrown

It shouldn't cost you anything. The standard limited warranty gives 12 months free repairs.

Red Alert

Thanks guys I'll give them a shout on Monday and see where we go from there.

uncle_sam_ie

You have up a year from purchase to buy Applecare. It might be something to think about.

babypink

yeah 12 months from purchase. Either Typetec or Mactivate will do lovely. I have to admit that i rather deal with apple directly and get them to collect the machine by UPS and take it away, either way it is the same result.

I would second buying the Applecare after this incident......granted i didn't have it for my current machine (its over 3 years old) but for my previous machine (iBook) i had a near miss with a drive failure just within warranty - got it fixed and bought applecare while i was at it!

pow wow

How do you get Apple directly involved? When I go through trying to get mine repaired they always refer me to the same cowboys...there doesn't seem to be an option to get Apple to repair it?

babypink

admittedly its been a while since i've had to get something repaired....(3years or so)....so the process may have changed. When i did have to do it, i rang them up and they arranged for UPS to come out with an empty box that i could just stick the machine into and it was taken away and sent to Holland.

Essentially they were sending the machine to a company in Holland doing the same thing as mactivate or typetec.

Simon201

babypink wrote: »

I have to admit that i rather deal with apple directly

I dont think repairs like the above are ever dealt with by Apple, like a MBP is probably assembled in China and me thinks it aint going back there!
Then again, a mate had to do that box thing from UPS with a faulty ipod and it went to Holland as well..

uncle_sam_ie

I needed a new DVD drive replaced a fews months ago and was instructed by Apple to take into to Cork. I can't remember the name of the place but, it was near the driving test center. It took two days and it's been fine ever since. If you know anyone in the US get them to buy the Applecare over there. It's a lot cheaper.

whiterebel

AFAIK, if a repair centre can do the repair, they do it locally. Otherwise they send it to a specialist repair centre - Powerbooks used to be in the UK, before that it was a place in Germany. Ring the Apple Support number for Ireland on the website and they will organise collection for you - should do anyway.

Chardee MacDennis

Apple have stopped the collection service on laptops as of about 6 months ago. They will only do it for ipods know. For any computer repairs under warranty they refer you to their local partners who will do the service for free, Mactivate will even pick up your laptop for free. I have dealt with them before and they seem very good.

ZENER

Have you tried taking the battery out for a few minutes ? When you left it down last did you shut down or just sleep it ? Is there any light pulsing on the release button at the front ? I'm just thinking maybe the battery died during the night and the machine may just be confused. Not sure resetting the PRAM works without power on the machine either.

ZEN

iamnothim

I had this happen to my powerbook just before christmas - try booting into target disk mode (hold t during boot) - then plug into another mac and use disk utility on the other mac to run a diagnostic on your laptop drive, if it finds problems it can most likely repair them without data loss

su_dios

Oh and when you get around to buying applecare..which you should soon.. buy it on ebay! I paid 157 euro or something in comparison with the 450euro? I had a thread on here called applecare deal. Save yourself some €€ !

Red Alert

I've tried target disking, resetting the PRAM and resetting the power management about a thousand times by now - many thanks to the sticky for the shortcuts!

Will applecare basically extend my warranty or do I get additional benefits from it?

Sad Professor

Red Alert, so the machine is completely dead then? Is there any life at all when you try to turn it on?

Red Alert

No, fan will run at full speed - that's about it. I did try hooking it up to an external display as well but nothing doing there either.

Type 17

The fan running at full speed is an indication that the firmware won't load (probably due to a logic board failure).

When you upgrade the firmware on a Mac, you are warned that the fans will do this during the upgrade. This is because the usual (firmware-based) intelligence that controls the fans, based on the temp sensors, is unavailable, so they are set to run at full speed, "just in case".

Your Mac won't boot or work as a target disc because it needs the logic board and firmware for both these functions but, unless you're very unlucky, the Hard Drive with all your info on it should be fine.

Luckily, you're within the 12 months and the warranty will cover this failure (unless they determine that it was wet or dropped, which sounds unlikely from your initial post).

Red Alert

Type 17 wrote: »

Your Mac won't boot or work as a target disc because it needs the logic board and firmware for both these functions but, unless you're very unlucky, the Hard Drive with all your info on it should be fine.

Luckily, you're within the 12 months and the warranty will cover this failure (unless they determine that it was wet or dropped, which sounds unlikely from your initial post).

Bizarrely I had only sorted out some regular backups in the last couple of weeks or so! Strange...

I'll give an update tomorrow on it when I get it booked in for a service.

440Hz

Keeping all the bits crossed hehe!

ZENER

440Hz wrote: »

Keeping all the bits crossed hehe!

:eek: . . . oooer !

ZEN

440Hz

~"Look after the bits and the bytes will look after themselves." KC 2008

Red Alert

Mactivate took it within 4 hours of calling them - well done. Haven't heard anything since.

Red Alert

Update: Machine is back with me since this afternoon, turns out it was a faulty stick of RAM.