Serious problems with my 2007 (Rev C?) MacBook

[RicWooFlair]

I'm new here, and forgive me if I'm posting in the wrong place and correct my actions. Soooo...

The Symptoms

• Screen Tilt - Won't totally start up unless I tilt the screen very close to closed. It will almost always start up normally if I have the screen tilted very close. If I move the screen after this, the screen blacks out and occasionally restarts.

• SMC Reset - Every time I do an SMC Reset and restart the thing with the screen tilted in a normal position, I will hear the CD Drive, it will boot up, I will see the apple logo, but then it will either just black out or it will give me a fairly disturbing screech and weird textures and colors on the screen. In either case, the Mac will stay on, the sleep light on, and I can hear the fan running, but will be no longer responsive. Starting it up in Verbose Mode offers no answers.

• No SMC Reset - If I try to restart the thing without doing an SMC Reset, it will just turn on, with the sleep light on, and the screen blank and black.

• Random Shut Down - On the off chance it does turn on with the screen in a normal position, I have a "time limit" before it randomly restarts.

• More Screen Problems - Tampering with the screen if I get it to turn on will cause it to black out with a sleep light and everything else on.

• Screen Jumbling - This has been a recurring problem. On the off-chance I get it on, with the screen in an upright position, occasionally the display will be jumbled. It looks as if though it was moved upwards and to the left, parts of it cut, and then pasted on the bottom and the right hand side. This happens to varying degrees and resolutions. Also accompanied by a complete black bar on the right side. Often accompanied by a constant flickering with the screen "moving." It's "useable" like this, but obviously a hassle.

• Sleep - If I can manage it to turn on and I put it to sleep, it will never wake up. In fact, much of the time when it restarts or shut downs due to the screen being tampered

• Windows - If I can boot the thing in Windows, I can move the screen all I want and not encounter a problem.

• RAM, PRAM - I've tried removing and putting the RAM back in a bunch of times. I've tried a PRAM reset and it works but when it restarts again it doesn't finish.

• Turning Off Stuff - I've tried turning off the SMS, I've tried turning off Smart Sleep, I've tried turning of Sleep entirely, nothing alleviates the problems.

• Disk Repairs - I've checked the disk and repaired it a few times, and nothing was wrong.

Useage and Service
For much of last year, I had Windows my MacBook and I played a game (League of Legends) on it. I did a stupid thing and played it ALL THE TIME and I was stupid with it's heating. I often booted back into Mac OS without giving it time to cooldown.

It started giving me the "jumbled" problem right around then. It was manageable but annoying. I started noticing that it had a much greater chance of starting up normally without the jumbling if I started it up with the screen tilted nearly closed. So I would often tilt the screen down and squeeze my finger near the hinge to hit the power button, then pull my finger out. This worked out, but I still had a warranty on it, I would take it to the Mac Store. They took it for a few days and returned it to me with the hard drive reformatted but the problem persisted, just not as often. I don't know if I was stupid to not give it back, but the jumbling came back just as soon as my warranty expired.

I did not play LoL on it at all and took careful measures to prevent it from overheating ever again.

Now prior to THAT, I had done the stupid thing of opening and playing games on it on a bus, forgetting that constant rattling of the Hard Drive during intensive operations was a bad idea, and it was under warranty at the time and I got it fixed.

A few days ago, my MacBook started acting up. It started giving me all of the symptoms that I listed above. Today, it just won't start up unless I keep the screen tilted down. The symptoms got worse and worse. Now, I can't even turn it on without it blacking out.

Now I figure that it might be the Logic Board BUT when I boot it into Windows it's fine, IF I can manage to get it on and running until I can choose to boot the other partition. I have no idea how the Logic Board works and if it's too expensive I may as well just buy a new laptop altogether.

And I don't know if it has anything to do with the nVidia thingamajigger, because I have a MacBook from 2007.

I'm just plain baffled. I've scheduled an appointment at the Genius Bar tomorrow. But if anyone has any ideas here, I'd love to have them.

Thank you, and WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

 

[iThinkergoiMac]

I don't know what it is, but I can tell you it was NOT overheating. If your MacBook was truly getting to dangerous levels it would automatically shut down. This is a hardware response and independent of whether you are running OS X, Windows, or Linux. You don't have to wait for your computer to cool down before rebooting it. That's why there is a restart command. Otherwise, that command would inflict damage on your computer every time you used it.

You could play LoL for an hour every day or 20 hours every day, it makes no difference to your computer. Well, higher usage will EVENTUALLY wear out your computer faster, but not at such a rate that you should be concerned about it in the slightest.

You also don't have an Nvidia issue as your MacBook has an Intel GMA card (either the 950 or X3100).

I'm sorry I don't know what the problem is, but I hope I've alleviated some of your concerns about what caused it. If I had to guess you may have an issue with the sleep/lid sensor, monitor cable, or the GPU, or some combination of those. It's possible that you have a short in the monitor cable, which is sending back corrupted data to the GPU causing the weird on-screen issues.

The only thing that doesn't fit with that idea is that Windows is fine, and if the problem is at the hardware level, then Windows would be similarly affected.

Good luck!

 

[AppleFanatic10]

I'm new here, and forgive me if I'm posting in the wrong place and correct my actions. Soooo...

The Symptoms

• Screen Tilt - Won't totally start up unless I tilt the screen very close to closed. It will almost always start up normally if I have the screen tilted very close. If I move the screen after this, the screen blacks out and occasionally restarts.

• SMC Reset - Every time I do an SMC Reset and restart the thing with the screen tilted in a normal position, I will hear the CD Drive, it will boot up, I will see the apple logo, but then it will either just black out or it will give me a fairly disturbing screech and weird textures and colors on the screen. In either case, the Mac will stay on, the sleep light on, and I can hear the fan running, but will be no longer responsive. Starting it up in Verbose Mode offers no answers.

• No SMC Reset - If I try to restart the thing without doing an SMC Reset, it will just turn on, with the sleep light on, and the screen blank and black.

• Random Shut Down - On the off chance it does turn on with the screen in a normal position, I have a "time limit" before it randomly restarts.

• More Screen Problems - Tampering with the screen if I get it to turn on will cause it to black out with a sleep light and everything else on.

• Screen Jumbling - This has been a recurring problem. On the off-chance I get it on, with the screen in an upright position, occasionally the display will be jumbled. It looks as if though it was moved upwards and to the left, parts of it cut, and then pasted on the bottom and the right hand side. This happens to varying degrees and resolutions. Also accompanied by a complete black bar on the right side. Often accompanied by a constant flickering with the screen "moving." It's "useable" like this, but obviously a hassle.

• Sleep - If I can manage it to turn on and I put it to sleep, it will never wake up. In fact, much of the time when it restarts or shut downs due to the screen being tampered

• Windows - If I can boot the thing in Windows, I can move the screen all I want and not encounter a problem.

• RAM, PRAM - I've tried removing and putting the RAM back in a bunch of times. I've tried a PRAM reset and it works but when it restarts again it doesn't finish.

• Turning Off Stuff - I've tried turning off the SMS, I've tried turning off Smart Sleep, I've tried turning of Sleep entirely, nothing alleviates the problems.

• Disk Repairs - I've checked the disk and repaired it a few times, and nothing was wrong.

Useage and Service
For much of last year, I had Windows my MacBook and I played a game (League of Legends) on it. I did a stupid thing and played it ALL THE TIME and I was stupid with it's heating. I often booted back into Mac OS without giving it time to cooldown.

It started giving me the "jumbled" problem right around then. It was manageable but annoying. I started noticing that it had a much greater chance of starting up normally without the jumbling if I started it up with the screen tilted nearly closed. So I would often tilt the screen down and squeeze my finger near the hinge to hit the power button, then pull my finger out. This worked out, but I still had a warranty on it, I would take it to the Mac Store. They took it for a few days and returned it to me with the hard drive reformatted but the problem persisted, just not as often. I don't know if I was stupid to not give it back, but the jumbling came back just as soon as my warranty expired.

I did not play LoL on it at all and took careful measures to prevent it from overheating ever again.

Now prior to THAT, I had done the stupid thing of opening and playing games on it on a bus, forgetting that constant rattling of the Hard Drive during intensive operations was a bad idea, and it was under warranty at the time and I got it fixed.

A few days ago, my MacBook started acting up. It started giving me all of the symptoms that I listed above. Today, it just won't start up unless I keep the screen tilted down. The symptoms got worse and worse. Now, I can't even turn it on without it blacking out.

Now I figure that it might be the Logic Board BUT when I boot it into Windows it's fine, IF I can manage to get it on and running until I can choose to boot the other partition. I have no idea how the Logic Board works and if it's too expensive I may as well just buy a new laptop altogether.

And I don't know if it has anything to do with the nVidia thingamajigger, because I have a MacBook from 2007.

I'm just plain baffled. I've scheduled an appointment at the Genius Bar tomorrow. But if anyone has any ideas here, I'd love to have them.

Thank you, and WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

It may have something to do with your logic board. If that's the case then I doubt you're going to be able to get it fixed for free. Apple usually charges a grip when there are problems with a logic board and you have no warranty, (I assume you don't have anymore because your MacBook is from 2007, your warranty would be expired by now, correct?). You can buy a logic board off of eBay or iFixit.com; keep in mind that logic boards are kind of on the expensive side so make sure you get the correct one for your MacBook. I'm not sure but I think that iFixit.com shows you how to install the logic board. Hope this helps you a little bit