Many MacBook Pro Santa Rosas (original batch) Failing

[hortont424]

As per http://apad.sytes.net/blog/2008/06/macbook-pro-santa-rosa-a-fatal-flaw/

Recently, an unknown number of first-revision Santa Rosa MacBook Pros began exhibiting issues with their onboard video cards. After a reboot, or on wake from sleep, the machine refuses to acknowledge the presence of a display, either internal or external. From that point on, the computer never regains its displays - not after a reboot, etc. Subsequent debugging indicates that the machine is misidentifying its NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT card as the MacBook’s Intel X3100 card. This issue is known to affect at least 50 people - a group of affected users has formed a Google Spreadsheet in order to document and organize cases.

AppleCare is recommending replacing the logic board, which some have gone through with, only to have the machine return to an unusable state shortly afterwards. Compounding the issue is the fact that this problem has arisen only shortly after the expiration of the default warrantee on these machines (this issue seems to only affect machines shipped around June, 2007), thus causing the logic board replacement to cost upwards of 400$ for those who did not purchase extended warrantees. If you are experiencing the issues detailed below, please add yourself to the spreadsheet and visit our thread on the Apple Support forums, so we can get a reasonably accurate count of affected users.

Symptoms & Notes

Blank screen, both on the internal and external displays
The computer boots; it is accessible over the network or with Screen Sharing
Target Disk Mode works (this can be used to backup user data!)
ioreg and System Profiler both report an Intel X3100 video card, which is incorrect
Affects people even with MacBook Pro EFI Firmware Update 1.5.1 installed (which was released to fix a similar problem, introduced in Firmware 1.5)
Seems to be independent of any software updates, hardware changes, etc.
There are a great number of potential fixes floating around on the Apple Support forum thread. These include PRAM/NVRAM/PMU resets, firmware restores, changes in memory configuration, deleting Safe Sleep files, etc. However, none of these appear to be permanent fixes; apparently, even replacing the logic board is not a permanent fix, at least for some!

 

[cluthz]

Recently, an unknown number of first-revision Santa Rosa MacBook Pros began exhibiting issues with their onboard video cards. After a reboot, or on wake from sleep, the machine refuses to acknowledge the presence of a display, either internal or external.

My MBP (1st gen SR) gave me errors on gfx card when I ran Hardware test, I didn't have any problems tho.
Anyways, I called apple and they arranged a mobo swap, which they did on my local applestore. This is 3 months ago tho, and i've got no problems

 

[jjahshik32]

whoa never heard such a thing.. But I guess I'm glad that I sold my first gen sr mbp a few months back.. But then its only 50 people out of hundreds of thousands that had this issue so the % is real tiny..

But hey it could work out for you because if you have applecare and say you return it 3 times for repair then apple will have to replace your first gen mbp for a newer penryn and maybe the montevina model mbp.

 

[kabunaru]

Apple can never seem to get the MacBook Pros quite right. The people that do have "good ones" are lucky.

 

[SolRayz]

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/497803/

yep this happened to me several weeks ago. I followed some steps on the apple support forums to delete some sleep files but I had to have a another mac and boot up in target disk mode to access them. I havent had any problems since. My first notion is that something involving the gpu had been corrupted because my mbp went into safe sleep mode while attached to an Element Labs VersaDrive LED processor via DVI.

Now I see this may not be an isolated incident.

 

[bamaworks]

Though apple has been having quite a bit of trouble lately I think it's excellent that they are so willing to swap parts at the drop of a dime.

 

[hortont424]

Though apple has been having quite a bit of trouble lately I think it's excellent that they are so willing to swap parts at the drop of a dime.

That is certainly nice, however the timing of this particular rash of incidents puts it just (literally, days) outside of the standard warranty for most of the MBP owners, leading to 400$+ repair charges, all for a repair that may or may not be permanent!

Also, it seems that the Safe Sleep issue might be similar, but unrelated, as most of the people having the constantly recurring problem have tried that fix and it either doesn't work at all, or works for one reboot, and then never again.

 

[SolRayz]

Update:

My MBP is doing this again! This time it happened after turning off hibernate mode in terminal using

sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 0

After entering sleep by closing the lid and then waking, lcd would not display.

Tried reboot but no display.

Entered target disk mode and connected to secondary macbook and the display suddenly appeared.

I closed the mbp to reenter sleep and the same thing occured all over again. \

Repeated the steps to return to working state.

Entered terminal and entered

sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 3 <---default

All seems to be ok now.

Could this all be related to sleepimage file corruption?

 

[MidiMonk]

Though apple has been having quite a bit of trouble lately I think it's excellent that they are so willing to swap parts at the drop of a dime.

I wish they would fix Airport issues like that, my warranty ran out and still even with all the updates my wi-fi drops out like every few minutes.I have written support and sent logs with not even a peep.
I personally hope my graphics card does not end up going out, but with Apples new home gadget focus they have lost the quality edge IMHO.

Signed,

An EX-Apple fan(since the IIe) who has had it and will not purchase anything more from them again.

 

[powz]

My MBP (1st gen SR) gave me errors on gfx card when I ran Hardware test, I didn't have any problems tho.
Anyways, I called apple and they arranged a mobo swap, which they did on my local applestore. This is 3 months ago tho, and i've got no problems

Which hardware test did you use?

 

[lucero1148]

I also have a SR MBP and am in the process of having my logic board replaced for the 2nd time. The first replacemnt logic board lasted 28 days.

Seems to me that this is possibly related to Nvidia's faulty G8600 chips. I've experienced a blank screen, tried resetting PRAM, RAM, saved my files then did A clean install which failed and resulted in black screens on start up and no chimes either.

Is there another URL to sign up to that list as the page is no longer working.

There are a lot more SR MBP owners than the 50 who signed up who are having troubles with graphic related problems that crash their MBP's and eventually leads to their screens not waking up or not working period.

 

[phoxrenvatio]

ido if this is the same issue, but i can't encode video on my MBP (first gen) with the battery in, or it shuts down the computer. I have to have the battery out, and plugged in w/ magsafe... which make encoding take longer, and being a film student, that's not good...

 

[timnosenzo]

Uh oh, this sounds a lot like the issue I'm having with my MBP as of this morning.

Last night, like every night, I closed the lid on my MBP to put the computer to sleep. This morning I opened the lid, but instead of the computer waking up, it simply sat there with the sleep light glowing solid. After a few moments I pressed and held the power button down to force it off. Once it was off, I pressed the power button again to turn it back on, and now it won't boot.

When I press the power button now, I get one of two results. Sometimes I hear the startup noise and nothing happens, and sometimes I don't hear it, and nothing happens. Either way, the one thing that always happens is that the sleep light on the latch glows solid (no pulsing). I always hear the CD drive when I start it, but nothing beyond that. The screen is black, never goes gray.

I've reset the PRAM a few times, I reset the SMC, nothing. I've tried to boot from the CD, it spins up for a bit like its doing something, but I never see anything on the screen. I even attached it to another Mac and booted it in target disc mode--when I did that I can browse my MBP's HD fine, but the screen is always black.

I have an appointment at my local Apple Store tomorrow morning for this. I am literally 10 days away from my warranty expiring.