Early 2011 Macbook Pro problems.

[jbcom]

I'm looking for some suggestions on how to troubleshoot an early 2011 MBP that has just went out of the initial warranty. Specs are 2.2 i7/4gb/SSD(bto)/and hi-res screen.

I bought the machine soon after it was released in March last year. Had no issues with it until I decided to upgrade to Lion in Nov of 2011. Immediately after the install I started to get crashes constanly. I called apple support. They told me that I should have run disc utility's verify/repair before install. I asked them why the installer didn't automatically run this if it was so essential. Anyway, after the disc was formatted I was able to install Lion correctly. For some reason I also had to start a new set of time machine backups.

Things worked great until the end of April 2012. I started to get crashes (kernel panics) again. After running disc utility it said that the disc could not be repaired and I needed to reformat. Since I was growing tired of Lion, I completely formatted the disc as outlined in instructions I found online and installed Snow Leopard from an old time machine backup. I ran all the system updates and updated my applications.

Now when trying to do a time machine backup the machine has crashed (kernel panic) a few times. Even when I start a completely new set of time machine backups, it still fails although sometimes it doesn't crash the whole computer. I installed a temp. monitor because of advice I had read online. The temp is high (like all of these models) but rarely gets above 70 C in my normal usage. GPU temp is usually a couple degrees lower. I think this should be fine. I've run Tech Tool's memory test for 90 minutes, each, on a couple of occasions. No problems reported. Also, I've run Tech Tool's disc utilities and it shows no issues with the hard disc.

Soooo. My questions are.

1) Has anyone successfully diagnosed an issue like this on a similar machine?

2) Did I do something wrong by going back to snow leopard? This should still work, right?

3) Any thoughts of why time machine won't back up?

4) Are there any other tools I should be using for diagnosis?


Thanks in advance for any help! This is really bothering me as I've owned apple laptops for over 10 years without any issues. This is why I didn't re-up the apple care

 

[heisenberg123]

have you tested the RAM?

 

[jbcom]

I've tested it with the Tech Tool Pro application. Is there another way I should be testing it?

 

[heisenberg123]

I've tested it with the Tech Tool Pro application. Is there another way I should be testing it?

try MemTest

 

[thekev]

Their support is generally not very helpful. Since you've called about a problem before, I might suggest taking it in if you're just outside of the warranty as this was obviously an ongoing issue. Repeated kernel panics typically indicate problems with hardware. Sometimes they're caused by firmware or driver issues, but this isn't likely to happen unless we're talking about third party devices. I'd run memtest as suggested in single user mode overnight to check the ram. Set it to run at least 5 times. If that comes up clean, I'd try the Apple store and mention your previous tech support call. For future reference, repeated kernel panics mean something is wrong. Do not wait for your warranty to expire.

 

[jbcom]

Now I feel stupid I was under the impression that TechTool did something similar to this memtest program.

Anyway, rebooted into single user mode, ran "memtest all" and within 45 seconds (of a program that should run indefinitely) I got this: http://imgur.com/f7FDq

Looks like I'll grab some more ram. Hopefully this will fix it. Was worried the logic board would be fried.

Thanks so much, everyone!

 

[modicharlie2003]

Now I feel stupid I was under the impression that TechTool did something similar to this memtest program.

Anyway, rebooted into single user mode, ran "memtest all" and within 45 seconds (of a program that should run indefinitely) I got this: http://imgur.com/f7FDq

Looks like I'll grab some more ram. Hopefully this will fix it. Was worried the logic board would be fried.

Thanks so much, everyone!

If i as you make appointment with busy any apple store located in prime location ( i.e i went to westfield in london uk) in weekend & explain politely same thing with genius bar person/manager . explain them you are loyal customer for last 10 years never had problem with any apple product . this is first time so apple need to help me & trust me they going to repair your mbp free -(depends how you talk to person). apple gave me twice iphone 3gs -6 month out of warranty phones.
good luck.