Just got my Macbook Pro back from AppleCare....

[Hephaestus]

So I had to send it my Macbook Pro (2009) into AppleCare due to some graphical issues and a non functional superdrive. I also had a dead pixel.

I called Apple up and they were very helpful, it was collected the next day and returned within 3 working days, very good service! They replaced the Logic Board, Display and SuperDrive. It was actually a authorised repair service called Group 8 that did the repair, they were great.

Not all was good though. Upon my first boot up the laptop froze in under 10 minutes. I had to do a force shutdown. I loaded it up again, it froze again in around 10 minutes. Then I reset the PRAM and ran a Disk Permissions Repair, once again it froze, this time mid way.

After the 3rd freeze I decided to try one more time. This time it finished the repair and several other maintenance tools. Its now been running for around 90 minutes and hasn't suffered any freezing. Its also definitely a lot more snappy.

I also suffered a glitch which said "Your computer's clock is set to a date before Jan 1, 2008. This may cause some applications to behave erratically. To set the clock manually, open Date & Time preferences. "

This was after the third freeze but I fixed it and it seems to be okay now.

Do you guys think its fine? I'm guess I'm looking for some reassurance, has anybody else had a couple of freezes with a new logic board? Any comments are welcome.

Oh and also, I'm running Snow Leopard. I have Lion on my iMac and really dislike it, hence not putting it on my Macbook.

 

[maflynn]

For me, getting even one freeze would have been enough to call applecare again. Given that you had 3 freezes would raise some serious red flags.

Did they replace the logic board? Perhaps what ever they did, is causing more problems then what they attempted to fix.

 

[Hephaestus]

For me, getting even one freeze would have been enough to call applecare again. Given that you had 3 freezes would raise some serious red flags.

Did they replace the logic board? Perhaps what ever they did, is causing more problems then what they attempted to fix.

Yeah they did, they replaced the Logic Board, Display and SuperDrive. Its been functioning no problem now. I think it was just a random issue and should be fine, since those first three I have experienced nothing. If it happens again though I definitely think I'll call them again. What do you think?

 

[maflynn]

Random is a single occurrence, a trend is something that occurs more then once.

Definitely keep an eye on it, in fact you're better served by really putting the MBP through its paces now and leave it on doing some work over night to see if its stable. Perhaps running something like seti at home or what ever you can use to keep everything running and active.

 

[Hephaestus]

Random is a single occurrence, a trend is something that occurs more then once.

Definitely keep an eye on it, in fact you're better served by really putting the MBP through its paces now and leave it on doing some work over night to see if its stable. Perhaps running something like seti at home or what ever you can use to keep everything running and active.

That's true, I just figured that since its a new logic board it might be an initial glitch or something. I ran Snow Leopard Cache Cleaner, optimized the RAM and repair permissions. It seems to be okay now, I've been stressing it a little by running a lot of programmes simultaneously and there have been no problems.

 

[Hephaestus]

It's been a couple of hours now so I thought I'd report back. I've used the laptop a couple hours and have done a variety of tasks including encoding a film and burning a dvd. No problems at all since the ones I first mentioned. I think all is good now.

 

[Hephaestus]

Just got my MacBook Pro back from AppleCare... UPDATE

So two days later and I've experienced a lot more freezing. It crashes upon start up now and it's also saying that there is no Airport card installed. I called Apple and they set up another repair with Group 8, who I have to wait for a call from. That could take up to 48 hours and it won't be collected until then.

As a Univeristy Engineering Student who needs his machine to work, I'm extremely unimpressed.

 

[GuitarG20]

It's been a couple of hours now so I thought I'd report back. I've used the laptop a couple hours and have done a variety of tasks including encoding a film and burning a dvd. No problems at all since the ones I first mentioned. I think all is good now.

So two days later and I've experienced a lot more freezing. It crashes upon start up now and it's also saying that there is no Airport card installed. I called Apple and they set up another repair with Group 8, who I have to wait for a call from. That could take up to 48 hours and it won't be collected until then.

As a Univeristy Engineering Student who needs his machine to work, I'm extremely unimpressed.

that stinks. fortunately, mine's only ever had the odd freeze here and there that just required a reboot. Did you tell apple that you're at university and that you need a working machine all the time? that could give them reason to speed things up...

 

[Hephaestus]

that stinks. fortunately, mine's only ever had the odd freeze here and there that just required a reboot. Did you tell apple that you're at university and that you need a working machine all the time? that could give them reason to speed things up...

The first person I spoke to seemed pretty reasonable and mentioned a replacent when I told them my situation, but said they were unauthorised to make that decision and transfered me to their superior.

The superior wa actually quite annoying, she didn't really seem interested in my situation and said there was no chance of a replacement after one repair. She also said that I would have to pay the delivery fee, I obviously wasn't accepting that so she agreed it would be collected for free.

5 minutes ago I received a call from Group 8 who said it will be picked up on Monday and that its probably a failed component. He seemed determined to blame it on the HDD, which it definitely isn't because it didn't freeze at all before they "repaired" it.

Also, I just discovered a new problem. It's now saying "there is no airport card installed".

Very disappointed that this is happening so close to the start of new Semester, I have a lot of work and can't afford this nonsense. It really winds me up when I suffer for someone else's incompetence.

 

[tbln]

Very disappointed that this is happening so close to the start of new Semester, I have a lot of work and can't afford this nonsense. It really winds me up when I suffer for someone else's incompetence.

I feel your pain! Many of us use these machines as our primary daily computer and its a massive inconvenience when it should have been fixed the first time. At least this didn't happen during your exam period.

 

[Hephaestus]

Ok so the laptop was picked up a couple of days ago and is still in repair. I've been told that the fault lies with the new display. They said that the display houses the AirPort card which explains the WiFi problem, and also that a faulty display can cause freezing.

They seem pretty sure that the display is the cause and nothing else is wrong. They've ordered a new one and I should get my laptop back mid next week. Hopefully there will be no more problems.

 

[ljonesj]

WTF I never heard of a wireless card either in a laptop pc or an apple macbook/ pro being in the display only the antenna's.

 

[Mal]

WTF I never heard of a wireless card either in a laptop pc or an apple macbook/ pro being in the display only the antenna's.

It's true, on the unibody MBP's the airport card itself is housed in the display hinge. I've replaced a few of them now. They're pretty tiny.

jW

 

[LeiQQ]

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that stinks. fortunately, mine's only ever had the odd freeze here and there that just required a reboot. Did you tell apple that you're at university and that you need a working machine all the time? that could give them reason to speed things up...

The first person I spoke to seemed pretty reasonable and mentioned a replacent when I told them my situation, but said they were unauthorised to make that decision and transfered me to their superior.

The superior wa actually quite annoying, she didn't really seem interested in my situation and said there was no chance of a replacement after one repair. She also said that I would have to pay the delivery fee, I obviously wasn't accepting that so she agreed it would be collected for free.

5 minutes ago I received a call from Group 8 who said it will be picked up on Monday and that its probably a failed component. He seemed determined to blame it on the HDD, which it definitely isn't because it didn't freeze at all before they "repaired" it.

Also, I just discovered a new problem. It's now saying "there is no airport card installed".

Very disappointed that this is happening so close to the start of new Semester, I have a lot of work and can't afford this nonsense. It really winds me up when I suffer for someone else's incompetence.

I have bad experiences with repair centers that are authorized repair centers but are not really apple. I got screwed by one in the USA. They actually broke some components. I had a similar thing happen in Taiwan too. The engineers were just plain stupid. My iMac super drive was literally shooting CDs out of the drive yet they returned it to me twice until I gave up and took it to a center that only handled apple products. I don't trust any of those centers with strange names. I think they all know enough about Mac products to be dangerous.

 

[Hephaestus]

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I have bad experiences with repair centers that are authorized repair centers but are not really apple. I got screwed by one in the USA. They actually broke some components. I had a similar thing happen in Taiwan too. The engineers were just plain stupid. My iMac super drive was literally shooting CDs out of the drive yet they returned it to me twice until I gave up and took it to a center that only handled apple products. I don't trust any of those centers with strange names. I think they all know enough about Mac products to be dangerous.

I agree that a lot of these so called "repair centres" are rubbish and have no idea what they're doing. But I don't think that applies to a repair centre like this one. I mean, they are authorised by Apple so if they aren't up to scratch it makes Apple look bad.

Apple themselves authorise them to perform repairs. I feel annoyed with the service but I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and lay blame on the faulty part they were supplied with by Apple.

You are 100% right in some cases though. Personally, if it isn't authorised by Apple, I would never send my laptop there.

 

[LeiQQ]

I agree that a lot of these so called "repair centres" are rubbish and have no idea what they're doing. But I don't think that applies to a repair centre like this one. I mean, they are authorised by Apple so if they aren't up to scratch it makes Apple look bad.

Apple themselves authorise them to perform repairs. I feel annoyed with the service but I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and lay blame on the faulty part they were supplied with by Apple.

You are 100% right in some cases though. Personally, if it isn't authorised by Apple, I would never send my laptop there.

I typed my answer before on my iphone so I wasn't too clear. What I was saying was that there seems to be two different type of authorized service centers. One type if run by apple and the other type is outsourced by apple. I've had experience with both. I sent an ibook (grey one) and a blue iMac to one of the outsourced places. The iMac had a monitor problem and got fixed fairly quickly and they were really good but when I took the ibook (there were some fragments inside the screen bezel that were scratching up the interior--not effecting the screen though), they kind of made fun of my ibook. They said a lot of off color comments about apple in general. I thought that was so low class since apple is partly paying for their pay check. But still they got the job done.

Now when I got my iMac G5 it was a lemon. Every component was breaking left and right but I really think the service guys 'raped' my machine. I did a self repair the first time (replacing the logic board) but without improvement. Once I got applecare to send a guy out, they took it away and did a repair too. But then it was even worse. So the guy came to do a repair at my house. The whole time he kept saying 'This is the first time I have seen one of these iMac G5s. I don't really know what I'm doing.' When trying to take out the hard drive and other components, the screwdriver would slip and it was banging inside the machine like crazy. In the end after putting everything back together the machine wouldn't boot up at all. He then told me to call Applecare and tell them that he suggested a replacement. I don't know if the machine was bad from the start or if the guys at this 'authorized repair center' butchered it or what. But I did get a new machine and it was fine from that point on...except for the optical drive.

I had moved to Taiwan then and had applecare and I took the computer twice to an outsourced place that said the computer had no problems even though the drive was spitting out cds. I ended up giving up and taking it to a far away center that was a real apple repair center, not just an outsourced place. They knew exactly what the problem was could easily look up the information on my machine and got it fixed without a hitch.

I just think these outsourced places not monitored well. Apple is trying to make it better for the rural people so there is somewhere for repairs no matter where you are at but actually those people butcher computers. Well I can't speak for them all, but I can at least speak from experience of two centers--two in the USA and then one in Taiwan.

 

[RayK]

I too have had TERRIBKE experiences with non apple authorized repair centers. Took two machines I was having problems with and the center kept them for over a month and did not repair them! They also decided they wanted my MacBooks battery, so they took it. When I came to pick it up I had to wait 20 minutes for him to find the machines and then find a battery to replace my MacBooks. He gave me a totally dead battery. I was furious. He also handed me the part he was supposed to put in my MacBook. (a top cover). Apple ended up replacing both machines because they never worked the same again. It was an awful experience.

 

[Hephaestus]

I got my laptop back today after the second repair and thought I'd report back what happened. So I've been using the machine for around 4 hours today performing various tasks including web browsing, word processing, video encoding etc.

So far its ran without a single hitch, no slowdown, no wifi errors and no freezing. The problem seems to be fixed now, although I'll definitely wait a week or so until I feel more confident.

 

[sehnsucht77]

I too have had TERRIBKE experiences with non apple authorized repair centers. Took two machines I was having problems with and the center kept them for over a month and did not repair them! They also decided they wanted my MacBooks battery, so they took it. When I came to pick it up I had to wait 20 minutes for him to find the machines and then find a battery to replace my MacBooks. He gave me a totally dead battery. I was furious. He also handed me the part he was supposed to put in my MacBook. (a top cover). Apple ended up replacing both machines because they never worked the same again. It was an awful experience.

you had apple replace machines repaired by non-apple authorized repair centers? how'd you do that? the repair by an unauthorized party would have voided any Apple service warranty that I know of

 

[Mal]

you had apple replace machines repaired by non-apple authorized repair centers? how'd you do that? the repair by an unauthorized party would have voided any Apple service warranty that I know of

I suspect he means they were non-Apple, Authorized Service Centers. Not unauthorized, just not Apple-owned.

jW

 

[sehnsucht77]

I suspect he means they were non-Apple, Authorized Service Centers. Not unauthorized, just not Apple-owned.

jW

gotcha.

 

[checkmetro]

Hello Hephaestus, could you please I've me guideline on how you solved this problem: "Your computer's clock is set to a date before Jan 1, 2008. This may cause some applications to behave erratically. To set the clock manually, open Date & Time preferences. " I having the same problem after I went to fix my Mac air. Hope to hear back from you soon.

So I had to send it my Macbook Pro (2009) into AppleCare due to some graphical issues and a non functional superdrive. I also had a dead pixel.

I called Apple up and they were very helpful, it was collected the next day and returned within 3 working days, very good service! They replaced the Logic Board, Display and SuperDrive. It was actually a authorised repair service called Group 8 that did the repair, they were great.

Not all was good though. Upon my first boot up the laptop froze in under 10 minutes. I had to do a force shutdown. I loaded it up again, it froze again in around 10 minutes. Then I reset the PRAM and ran a Disk Permissions Repair, once again it froze, this time mid way.

After the 3rd freeze I decided to try one more time. This time it finished the repair and several other maintenance tools. Its now been running for around 90 minutes and hasn't suffered any freezing. Its also definitely a lot more snappy.

I also suffered a glitch which said "Your computer's clock is set to a date before Jan 1, 2008. This may cause some applications to behave erratically. To set the clock manually, open Date & Time preferences. "

This was after the third freeze but I fixed it and it seems to be okay now.

Do you guys think its fine? I'm guess I'm looking for some reassurance, has anybody else had a couple of freezes with a new logic board? Any comments are welcome.

Oh and also, I'm running Snow Leopard. I have Lion on my iMac and really dislike it, hence not putting it on my Macbook.