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kwahl

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 11, 2008
3
0
No matter what application I'm using it keeps shutting down on it's own and to turn it back on I have to use the power button. What can I do to stop this from happening?


Thanks for your help!

Mac OS X
version 10.4.11
 
Sounds like you might have a hardware problem perhaps it is overheating?

You can install iStat Pro/Menu to show you the temperaturs of various items inside your computer. It would be worth checking to see if they are excessivly hot in comparsition to other computers of the same type.

You could also perform a Hardward Diagnostic test to see if there is another problem that might cause it to shutdown. Heres how
 
Possibly a power supply fault

I had a similar problem on my iMac.

If you run dmesg from Terminal after restarting the machine you may see a short message and/or an error number. A search of the apple support site with the error number showed the problem to be related to the power supply. If you're feeling brave you can also wade you way through the logs in /var/log.

I'm not guaranteeing The power supply is your problem but the system error logs are a good place to start for mysterious problems. There may be an easier way to see the system errors other than dmesg but I live in console land and skipped the GUI bit of the manual.

BTW: Apple replaced my power supply for free even though my machine was out of warranty, apparently there was a faulty batch produced around 4 to 5 years ago.
 
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