Macbook shuts down after 2mins

[leahdewhite]

Hi,

I recently bought a 2nd hand Macbook. At first everything was fine but now it has started to shut itself down after about a minute and a half of being left unattended. If I keep using the mouse or the keypad, it's fine.

It was at version 10.6 so I updated it to version 10.6.8. Still no difference. I found a SMC update but it won't run as it says 'this software is not supported on your computer'.

I have checked all the battery save, power save and parental control settings and disabled them. It happens whether its plugged in or not so it doesn't seem to be a faulty battery. There are no other problems that I can see (eg overheating, flashing screen)

Please help!
Leah

 

[smokeyrabbit]

Which MacBook do you have?

Is it shutting down completely, as in the power light is off and you have to press the power button, you hear the startup chime, and it takes between 17 and 60 seconds to boot up, or do you mean it goes to sleep, where the power light is on and you press the trackpad button and it takes a second or two to come back?



You can find out which MacBook you have by selecting  > About This Mac > More Info. It will list your model as shown, but instead of your Model Identifier being VMWare7,1 it will say something like MacBook 6,1:

 

[leahdewhite]

Hi,

Thanks for the reply smokey.

It totally shuts down, as in the power light goes out and you have to press the power button and then hear the chime yadda yadda..

It tells me that it is a MacBook 1,1

I'm pretty close to just doing an entire reinstall of Mac OS but any other suggestions before I go do that would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks again,
Leah

 

[apunkrockmonk]

I had this exact issue with a MacBook 2,1 years ago after dripping a drop or two of water into the kb while watching videos while doing dishes.

Apple repaired it by replacing the motherboard and top case.

If you're lucky it may just need a new Keyboard or top case.

I gimped by with this issue for a month or two by leaving something heavy enough to push keys down on the keyboard when I planned on not using it for more than a minute.

Good luck.

 

[JCox]

I purchased a MacBook 1,1 for my daughter that did the same thing. I found a fix by putting some teflon tape on the wire that is taped/glued to the heatsink. You will need some thermal transfer glue (or something like that) to reglue the heatsink to the processors. It's a grey stuff that I purchased at BestBuy. She's been using the machine now for 3 years without problems. Here are a couple of links to the problem. I used an xacto knife to cut the wire from the heatsink and wrapped it with teflon tape. Look at the yellow tape in the photo on the second link. That's what I cut away.

http://gizmodo.com/198499/macbook-shutdown-problem-solved-little-dab-o-tapell-do-ya

http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl...iSUdmCNaWZiALx6ICAAw&ved=0CFAQ9QEwCg&dur=5443

 

[seveej]

Hi,

I recently bought a 2nd hand Macbook. At first everything was fine but now it has started to shut itself down after about a minute and a half of being left unattended. If I keep using the mouse or the keypad, it's fine.

Would be interested to know, if the behavior (shutdown when unattended) is based on hardware or software.

If it's based on software (the OS decides to shut down) and thus correctable by a OS reinstallation, it should be visible in the system logs (Applications->Utilities->Console->SHow Log list->system.log.

RGDS,