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Wie Gehts

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Mar 22, 2007
495
15
I just wanted to tell folks that in the my nearly three years I've owned a macbook (my god, it seems like yesterday I bought it. the universe is speeding up...please make it stop), I've experienced a couple of things that I thought was because of failed hardware.

The first was external dvd burners and hd's disconnecting at random and while transfers/burning. The other started just happening....the cursor pointer started acting crazy.....not letting go of items clicked on...always dragging around a marquee....not being able to click on things...contextual menus coming up for no reason....plus whenever I wanted to highlight and name an item, it wouldn't let me...plus some other not so obvious weird overall behaviour.

Both times, thankfully, doing a hradware reset cured the problems. When I'm thinking my macbooks broken, this fixed it. YMMV, but if you have some bad problems, this'd definitely be worth a try....its fast and simple.

The only thing is, is my macbook has a removable battery, so I don't know how this would work with these newfangled built in batteries...you'd have to find out how to do this on those machines..

Anyways, disconnect all out board gear, remove the battery, then simply hold down the power button for at least ten seconds. This drains all residual power and resets the hardware. Put the battery back in and hopefully your issues will be resolved
 

R94N

macrumors 68020
May 30, 2010
2,095
1
UK
Thanks for posting the tip, but I think new or inexperienced users need to be careful if they're going to open up their computers. It invalidates the warranty.

I thought even the newest MacBooks had a removable battery - I don't know why they'd go for a built-in one. Maybe it's just to discourage people messing around in there and damaging something. I don't think it would be any lighter and it probably wouldn't make repairs any easier.
 

Wie Gehts

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Mar 22, 2007
495
15
You're right there, although I'm not up on the newer macbook designs with regards to battery access. Since I own an older model, the battery pretty much is made to pop out at a quick turn of the latch.

I'm assuming though, that no matter what model you own, or even desktop, that there must be some provisions for doing a hardware reset that is dependent on the model which would not require anything abnormal on the part of the user. iow...easily done.
Maybe you can't...I don't know. :)

I was told what to do by tech support in the first instance.
 
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