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EMC56

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Mar 31, 2018
8
1
Hi all. just recently purchased a 13" Macbook Pro at Best Buy a few days ago when they were having their 24 hr online sale, and already it is having issues. The computer is for my daughter and she said that she is getting a green screen as well as it is running slow. The only thing she has downloaded since purchasing it is ad blocker and Microsoft Word. It also restarts while updating but that might be normal. Any suggestions? We are thinking about taking it back and getting a replacement. Her 2015 works great, she just cracked the screen and they wanted close to $500.00 to fix it and since BB was having a sale, we bought a new one for $950.00. I think the model is a 2017 but am not sure. Thanks for any suggestions/help.
 

csurfr

macrumors 68020
Dec 7, 2016
2,310
1,748
Seattle, WA
Hi all. just recently purchased a 13" Macbook Pro at Best Buy a few days ago when they were having their 24 hr online sale, and already it is having issues. The computer is for my daughter and she said that she is getting a green screen as well as it is running slow. The only thing she has downloaded since purchasing it is ad blocker and Microsoft Word. It also restarts while updating but that might be normal. Any suggestions? We are thinking about taking it back and getting a replacement. Her 2015 works great, she just cracked the screen and they wanted close to $500.00 to fix it and since BB was having a sale, we bought a new one for $950.00. I think the model is a 2017 but am not sure. Thanks for any suggestions/help.

I know there was a bug in High Sierra until .3 or .4 that would cause a pastel green screen to appear sometimes when the machine is rebooting (as it's actually leaving the OS before the restart), but that seems to have been fixed.

You might take a look and see that it's running 10.13.4 that was just released the other day. Also, Word may need to be updated as well. Some of the older versions had issues with High Sierra, and if she downloaded it from the school server it might not be linking to the most current version.

Edit: As far as running slow, it's most likely Spotlight indexing the drive and / or Photos Agent doing the same thing. These should go away within a few hours / to a day depending on how often she's using it.
 
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EMC56

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Mar 31, 2018
8
1
I know there was a bug in High Sierra until .3 or .4 that would cause a pastel green screen to appear sometimes when the machine is rebooting (as it's actually leaving the OS before the restart), but that seems to have been fixed.

You might take a look and see that it's running 10.13.4 that was just released the other day. Also, Word may need to be updated as well. Some of the older versions had issues with High Sierra, and if she downloaded it from the school server it might not be linking to the most current version.

Edit: As far as running slow, it's most likely Spotlight indexing the drive and / or Photos Agent doing the same thing. These should go away within a few hours / to a day depending on how often she's using it.

Thanks so much. So with Word, do you know if Microsoft has a patch for the update? She did download it from her college website. I'm not very computer savvy. Her computer was working fine yesterday, it's today she's having problems with pages loading slowly or not at all where it was okay from her old mac.
 

csurfr

macrumors 68020
Dec 7, 2016
2,310
1,748
Seattle, WA
Thanks so much. So with Word, do you know if Microsoft has a patch for the update? She did download it from her college website. I'm not very computer savvy. Her computer was working fine yesterday, it's today she's having problems with pages loading slowly or not at all where it was okay from her old mac.

Give me a moment and I’ll toss in a link to the Microsoft update site.
[doublepost=1522522793][/doublepost]Here you go.

https://support.office.com/en-us/ar...-for-mac-700cab62-0d67-4f23-947b-3686cb1a8eb7

You’ll scroll down a bit and you can get the latest update individually.

Make sure you/she updates the “autoupdate” package as well. The old version for whatever reason doesn’t find the new updates.

Let me know if you have any more questions! Happy to help.
 
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EMC56

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Mar 31, 2018
8
1
Give me a moment and I’ll toss in a link to the Microsoft update site.
[doublepost=1522522793][/doublepost]Here you go.

https://support.office.com/en-us/ar...-for-mac-700cab62-0d67-4f23-947b-3686cb1a8eb7

You’ll scroll down a bit and you can get the latest update individually.

Make sure you/she updates the “autoupdate” package as well. The old version for whatever reason doesn’t find the new updates.

Let me know if you have any more questions! Happy to help.

I will try everything you suggested once she comes back today. You're awesome. Thanks again.
 

EMC56

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Mar 31, 2018
8
1
CSURFR, could you please elaborate on this? Edit: "As far as running slow, it's most likely Spotlight indexing the drive and / or Photos Agent doing the same thing. These should go away within a few hours / to a day depending on how often she's using it." I just read everything to my daughter and she said what does that mean, and I really don't know. Word is working fine and she said she is still doing updates. Thanks again.
 

smallcoffee

macrumors 68000
Oct 15, 2014
1,667
2,208
North America
CSURFR, could you please elaborate on this? Edit: "As far as running slow, it's most likely Spotlight indexing the drive and / or Photos Agent doing the same thing. These should go away within a few hours / to a day depending on how often she's using it." I just read everything to my daughter and she said what does that mean, and I really don't know. Word is working fine and she said she is still doing updates. Thanks again.

So, in layman's terms there is a program called spotlight - that program knows the location of all of the files, documents, and content that is on your laptop. But it first has to spend some time finding all of that stuff when it first comes into existence (i.e. when it's run on a new laptop). Imagine if you hired a new super human super memory librarian and you have a giant library. You want him or her to know the location of every single book in the library so that if you say "Where is the Walter Isaacson biography of Steve Jobs" he/she would immediately say section A, row2, spot 34. Spotlight is basically doing this with the contents of your computer.

As a tip, press the command and spacebar at the same time, you can do a couple of neat things, the first thing you can do is type something like 2+2 and you'll get a calculation (very handy) and the other thing you could do is type iTunes and it will pull up the application itself. So if you wanted to quickly open iTunes, you could press command and the space bar, and type in iTunes. Try it!

With the Photos agent, it's basically doing the same thing but with pictures.

Does that help? It's a good thing it just kind of slows the computer down a little bit until it finds everything.
 

csurfr

macrumors 68020
Dec 7, 2016
2,310
1,748
Seattle, WA
So, in layman's terms there is a program called spotlight - that program knows the location of all of the files, documents, and content that is on your laptop. But it first has to spend some time finding all of that stuff when it first comes into existence (i.e. when it's run on a new laptop). Imagine if you hired a new super human super memory librarian and you have a giant library. You want him or her to know the location of every single book in the library so that if you say "Where is the Walter Isaacson biography of Steve Jobs" he/she would immediately say section A, row2, spot 34. Spotlight is basically doing this with the contents of your computer.

As a tip, press the command and spacebar at the same time, you can do a couple of neat things, the first thing you can do is type something like 2+2 and you'll get a calculation (very handy) and the other thing you could do is type iTunes and it will pull up the application itself. So if you wanted to quickly open iTunes, you could press command and the space bar, and type in iTunes. Try it!

With the Photos agent, it's basically doing the same thing but with pictures.

Does that help? It's a good thing it just kind of slows the computer down a little bit until it finds everything.


What they said ^^^
 

Fishrrman

macrumors Penryn
Feb 20, 2009
28,967
13,015
If it's giving you problems so soon, TAKE IT BACK for an exchange.

Really not much more to say, other than...

DO A BACKUP FIRST.
I suggest CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper.
 

EMC56

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Mar 31, 2018
8
1
Are you sure it was a new MBP or a refurb or a repackaged MBP that was returned for problems?

It wasn't advertised as such but how do you know for sure?
[doublepost=1522624194][/doublepost]
If it's giving you problems so soon, TAKE IT BACK for an exchange.

Really not much more to say, other than...

DO A BACKUP FIRST.
I suggest CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper.

Okay, thanks. I think we'll take it back. I was on chat with Apple and they said they would have to trouble shoot if it's a software problem but they shouldn't have to do that because it's brand new.
[doublepost=1522624239][/doublepost]
What they said ^^^

Thanks!
[doublepost=1522624309][/doublepost]So it doesn't seem to be running slowly anymore but when you first start it up or after it's been in sleep mode, she said that there are circles on the page that look like a lava lamp that will flash for a few seconds but it doesn't do it all the time.
 

csurfr

macrumors 68020
Dec 7, 2016
2,310
1,748
Seattle, WA
So it doesn't seem to be running slowly anymore but when you first start it up or after it's been in sleep mode, she said that there are circles on the page that look like a lava lamp that will flash for a few seconds but it doesn't do it all the time.

That could honestly be just the display waking up and taking her to the login screen. The login screen has (usually, sometimes not) the same background as the desktop, but it’s blurred. Take a look and see if these anomalies that appear on the screen correspond with patterns or images in the background. If so, change the desktop picture just to see if they follow the new one.

I’m going to guess this is what she’s seeing.

Edit: I know in High Sierra, sometimes when I open my Pro, I’ll still see the battery icon for a second, and a little bit of movement. I just chalk it up to a bug that will eventually get fixed (or not).
 

EMC56

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Mar 31, 2018
8
1
That makes sense. She has a classic monsters as her desktop picture and is going to change it to see if she still sees it. Hopefully that is it. Thank you, once again. We have another week to return if there are more issues so that's good.
 

jeyf

macrumors 68020
Jan 20, 2009
2,173
1,044
take the computer back, get your money back right now

do what you want but i would get my money back. the late 2016, 2017 mac books have a lot of issues. they have a weak processor but the main bad is the keyboard. fix your old MB or buy an early 2016 mac book,

i own a 2017 MB and am so sorry i got involved in all this
 

EMC56

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Mar 31, 2018
8
1
take the computer back, get your money back right now

do what you want but i would get my money back. the late 2016, 2017 mac books have a lot of issues. they have a weak processor but the main bad is the keyboard. fix your old MB or buy an early 2016 mac book,

i own a 2017 MB and am so sorry i got involved in all this

Oh, that sucks! We thought it was a good buy as we got $300.00 off but maybe not if there are known issues. The screen on her old one is getting worse so she won't be able to use it much longer and of course with 6 weeks of school left. We had also purchased the Air for $300.00 off but I cancelled that order because she didn't like the screen as much.
 
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jeyf

macrumors 68020
Jan 20, 2009
2,173
1,044
see if there is a refurbished early 2016 mac book
or
get her busted screen repaired. do a back up first


the 2017 mac book has a low to moderate processor and she will likely not notice the difference either way.

best of luck whatever
 
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old-wiz

macrumors G3
Mar 26, 2008
8,331
228
West Suburban Boston Ma
It is unfortunately very easy to re-package a computer with the help of a shrink wrapping machine - so you can't rely on a shrink wrap. Also you need to look at the disk when it boots to see if there are other user's files or worse yet it is protected by boot password. Also look for any signs of scratches or missing equipment like the charging cord,etc.
 

EMC56

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Mar 31, 2018
8
1
That makes sense. She has a classic monsters as her desktop picture and is going to change it to see if she still sees it. Hopefully that is it. Thank you, once again. We have another week to return if there are more issues so that's good.

That seems to have worked for now but she's keeping an eye on it over the next couple of days.
[doublepost=1522631524][/doublepost]
It is unfortunately very easy to re-package a computer with the help of a shrink wrapping machine - so you can't rely on a shrink wrap. Also you need to look at the disk when it boots to see if there are other user's files or worse yet it is protected by boot password. Also look for any signs of scratches or missing equipment like the charging cord,etc.

I'll take a careful look. Thanks.
[doublepost=1522631564][/doublepost]
Amazed no call to free Apple support.

We did that today and they said they could trouble shoot but said they shouldn't have to because it's a new computer. They told me to return it.
 

csurfr

macrumors 68020
Dec 7, 2016
2,310
1,748
Seattle, WA
do what you want but i would get my money back. the late 2016, 2017 mac books have a lot of issues. they have a weak processor...

My 2017 15” posts nearly 18000 in geek bench 4, and you think that’s “weak”?

Edit: that’s on par if not higher than a 6 core Mac Pro based on the Geekbench Broswer.
 
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bruinsrme

macrumors 604
Oct 26, 2008
7,174
3,038
My 2017 15” posts nearly 18000 in geek bench 4, and you think that’s “weak”?

Edit: that’s on par if not higher than a 6 core Mac Pro based on the Geekbench Broswer.

Very content with my 2017. I use it for work and it runs windows faster than anything my job provides. photoshop, visio, powerpoint, word, snagit, acrobat and 3 monitors is the typical configuration running. Usually there is anywhere from 1 to 4 gig of files open at any given time. The MBP performance is solid.
 

smallcoffee

macrumors 68000
Oct 15, 2014
1,667
2,208
North America
Very content with my 2017. I use it for work and it runs windows faster than anything my job provides. photoshop, visio, powerpoint, word, snagit, acrobat and 3 monitors is the typical configuration running. Usually there is anywhere from 1 to 4 gig of files open at any given time. The MBP performance is solid.

No guys it’s only slightly better than a 2012 iMac and the keyboard already broke 6 times
 
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BananaX

macrumors regular
May 24, 2017
112
36
The best way to check if this MBP is brand new or refurb is to call Apple. I don't think there is a reliable way to check with only serial number. But, I am pretty sure Apple has a record in their internal system. But, I will only buy refurbished Macs from Apple directly. And refurbished Macs from Apple only come with a white box with the product name on it. No pics nothing. If it was no a refurb unit from Apple, and you suspect it is not brand new. You can ask Apple for the original purchase date or check the battery count.

If you plan to keep the MBP, I would suggest to get AppleCare+. 2016 - 2017 MBPs are not as reliable as before, and if your kids break the screen again, it will not cost you an arm as well.
 
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