Take it back and get them to fix it properly. Fans shouldn't be running at 6000rpm constantly.
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So are all MBP owners with the 8600m GT cards screwed?
- Thread starter jjahshik32
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Take it back and get them to fix it properly. Fans shouldn't be running at 6000rpm constantly.
I tried warm up the MBP and it boot up successfully after 30min 
Been doing this procedure 3 or 4 times today.
Check the System Profiler, GPU still 8600GT but PCIe Lane Width is sometimes 1x sometimes 8x, not 16x. Does it the GPU problem?
Well that's a Pro LOL
Been doing this procedure 3 or 4 times today.Check the System Profiler, GPU still 8600GT but PCIe Lane Width is sometimes 1x sometimes 8x, not 16x. Does it the GPU problem?
Well that's a Pro LOL
Yes, there is a way to get your files manually. I've done it myself when I've wanted to access older TM backups on spare drives.
thats not hp replacing the notebook which is how i understood the original statement.
umm.. there are lots of other logic boards that fit in my case.. why can't they put a different logic board in? I see MBP with 2.4, 2.66, 2.8Ghz boards.. why won't one of these work?
I know! I am asking why don't they offer it from installation date. And I know the duration of my warranty unlike the genius who helped me!
Yes there are... many different boards will fit in my case.
Yeah, and I think that sucks!!!
hmmm... this is not what applecare told me either when I asked. They said I had to start TM over and just as well to erase the old versions as they are inaccessible... Do you remember how?
so i brought my mbp with malfunctioning GPU into the apple store for the second time, and luckily spoke to a genius who was nice enough to cover the out of warranty repair--although, i should note, not under the NVIDIA replacement program.
interestingly he ran the nvidia test, it gave him a negative result and he said specifically "the eligible graphics card was not detected, so its not in your machine". i thought this was kind of strange so i asked him if he could tell me what GPU is installed, and he said he couldn't find that out for sure, just that it wasn't the 8600m GT. anyway as he was taking it in and getting my signature on the repair release i copied down my serial and ran the number for specs on the apple support site this morning, and it came up with this:
NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT with 128MB of GDDR3 SDRAM and dual-link DVI
am i mistaken? this is the chip everyone's griping about, correct? the only conclusion i can draw from this is that perhaps the chip was malfunctioning to the degree that their testing software could not even detect that there was a GPU installed, and so didn't issue a repair code. either way im glad its getting fixed for free, and that someone in their shop woke up and realized there was something fishy about this situation--i'll update when i get it back later this week, but if anyone else gets turned away be the nvidia test my advice would be to keep pushing, it doesn't work 100% of the time.
interestingly he ran the nvidia test, it gave him a negative result and he said specifically "the eligible graphics card was not detected, so its not in your machine". i thought this was kind of strange so i asked him if he could tell me what GPU is installed, and he said he couldn't find that out for sure, just that it wasn't the 8600m GT. anyway as he was taking it in and getting my signature on the repair release i copied down my serial and ran the number for specs on the apple support site this morning, and it came up with this:
NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT with 128MB of GDDR3 SDRAM and dual-link DVI
am i mistaken? this is the chip everyone's griping about, correct? the only conclusion i can draw from this is that perhaps the chip was malfunctioning to the degree that their testing software could not even detect that there was a GPU installed, and so didn't issue a repair code. either way im glad its getting fixed for free, and that someone in their shop woke up and realized there was something fishy about this situation--i'll update when i get it back later this week, but if anyone else gets turned away be the nvidia test my advice would be to keep pushing, it doesn't work 100% of the time.
That is really bizarre. Unless the 'genius' made some kind of mistake, the only explanation I can think of is that perhaps you have the rev. 2 version of the GPU. That's still an 8600m GT, but maybe it wouldn't show up as *the* 8600 the program searches for. When did you buy your MBP?
I think your guy was smoking crack. Unless it was the first generation Macbook Pro with the ATI gpu, everything other machine afterwards would have had the nVidjyo GPU. In some rare instances individuals with dead cards often see the "Intel GMA X3100" graphics card in place of the 8600m GT which is an intergrated gpu that the user has no control over. If they saw this they STILL should've realized the nvidia gpu was dead because the Intel GMA isn't supposed to initialized by the system.
So my computer has the POS Intel integrated GPU, but just doesn't use it since the 8600M is my GPU?
And looking at my system profiler, it says it is using the 8600M right now. So my GPU isn't dead yet, just showing signs of death. Though so far, it hasn't done the artifacts and flickering since the forced shutdown/restart on Monday. Though I still plan to bring it in. I just need to figure out when I will be able to part with my computer.
i bought it 3 years and 1 month ago, so it comes under the late 2007 machines which don't specify rev 2 anywhere that i've seen... the thing that's most strange about it is that this is the second time i've had them run the nvidia test, and both times it came up with a negative result. from what i gathered from the other threads (obviously i don't know how reliable the info is) it sounds like the test only gives two results, negative (not eligible for replacement) or positive (bingo!), and no other details--it would explain why he couldn't tell me which card is in there since the test isn't a complete diagnostic. whatever the case is im pretty sure the 'genii' themselves aren't at fault since it was a different guy on each occasion and they both got the same result from the test.
this i think is my main beef with the apple technicians, they seem to be not terribly interested in letting customers know why things are failing, just that they are and so they need to be replaced... maybe an unfair generalization on my part, but that's been my experience thus far
I think your guy was smoking crack. Unless it was the first generation Macbook Pro with the ATI gpu, everything other machine afterwards would have had the nVidjyo GPU. In some rare instances individuals with dead cards often see the "Intel GMA X3100" graphics card in place of the 8600m GT which is an intergrated gpu that the user has no control over. If they saw this they STILL should've realized the nvidia gpu was dead because the Intel GMA isn't supposed to initialized by the system.
It's actually the first 2 generations (the Core Duo and the Pre-Santa Rosa Core 2 Duo MacBook Pros) that had the ATI.
ok, got my mbp back today with a new logic board inside and everything works just fine--confirmed my suspicions about the GPU in hardware profiler, it is in fact the 8600m gt. i still cannot explain why the nvidia test failed in my case, but at any rate justice is served and i got my replacement free of charge--here's hoping i can keep this mother alive for another year
Well, 2.4, 2,5 and 2,6 GHz, but the all have the same faulty GPU.
The newer logicboards from the unibody doesn't fit....
Mine was exactly the same. Sounded like the thing was gonna take off! I took it back and after running diagnostics the Genius found that one of the temperature sensors wasn't giving a reading. It wasn't one that iStat Pro can see, one that only their diagnostic software could see.
Genius looked up the location of that sensor and then opened it up and fixed it
.
Like Jessica said, you can access the files directly in TM backups (either through the non-friendly folders of a local drive backup, or by mounting the sparse bundle of a network TM backup and looking through the folders).
After my mbp's first 8600 replacement, I was able to reconnect my mbp to the existing TM backups using something like this (I followed the similar one from the mac hints site): http://www.tuaw.com/2009/07/20/mac-301-time-machine-backups-after-your-macs-brain-surgery/ . The Genius Bar folks probably know this is possible, but try to shield people from very technical procedures? I don't know, just a guess. Maybe a lot of them really don't know about this. The process is tricky, but you end up with your Mac resuming the backups to TM as if nothing had happened.
That's Apple's problem, not ours. People need to remember that.
Apple got a faulty part from a supplier and sold us the faulty part. It's up to Apple to fix, not delay, the problem on our end.
Yes, it sucks for Apple. We are not the ones who are responsible. Apple sold us a defective product, too.
This is just idiocy, this situation Apple has created. Someone said "I'm glad I got it repaired for free." It wasn't free. You had to:
1. Having problems that interrupted your work.
2. Go to Apple and deal with their absurdly titled "geniuses".
3. Waste time/energy with "testing" a product that's defective.
4. Deal with issues related to replacement, including the worry that the replacement parts are used, are dirty, will fail, or all of the above.
And that's not the end of it, either. The use of "testing" kits indicates that Apple is trying to dodge replacement of their defective parts with their defective parts. Isn't that sad? I suppose the justification is that people are expected to go through this ritual three times before they get a replacement machine, since Apple never bothered to actually fix the problem.
This "testing" stuff is pure nonsense. Apple hasn't replaced any of these parts with the low-lead solder GPUs to my knowledge, which means every single one of them is defective.
It also means that if Apple has replaced some of them with low-lead (fixed) parts, then everyone who hasn't yet received the fixed part should go immediately to Apple and demand the replacement part!
We don't have to play Apple's games. The warranty was extended to a 4 year period (too bad for those of us who paid for full AppleCare?) due to defective design. If a customer says their defective part is causing trouble, that should be enough. But, this shouldn't even happen! Instead, the defective parts should have been replaced promptly, with non-defective parts.
Apple has shifted the responsibility for its QC onto its customers and is playing games to try to exploit goodwill and naivete. That is simply bad business.
Mine is still running as strong as the day I bought it over 3 years ago. Plus it's nice to have a MBP that looks different than all the rest of them out there now.
it's very true, while i think the mbp itself has been almost worth the money i shelled out on it, its definitely not worth the stress its caused me. for something thats supposed to simplify your life so much it sure can be complicated to get it to work properly...
also i think the 'geniuses' are not really there to offer technical support since they don't seem to look for any technical evidence to base their decisions on... they just say 'oh yeah, mine does that too sometimes, i just did this and it worked ok' or 'yknow lots of stuff can go wrong when you have a bad motherboard, maybe thats the problem'... such bloody vague answers, like saying 'instead of fixing the hole in the tire which would cost 5$ and take 5 minutes, im gonna replace the whole tire which will cost 50$ and take 2 hours... you are still under warranty, right?'.
coincidentally, every day since i got my mobo replaced (to deal with the GPU problem) i find myself using my desktop PC more and more...
Let me get this straight.
Apple are replacing the known defective 8600 with..another defective 8600, just because "there isn't anything else"?
There's a lawsuit in there somewhere, surely.
Apple are replacing the known defective 8600 with..another defective 8600, just because "there isn't anything else"?
There's a lawsuit in there somewhere, surely.
The lawsuit has been settled already, nVidia will pay for all the costs of replacing the parts. Apple has extended the warranty to 4 years for those GPUs.
You can opt out of the nvidia settlement http://www.nvidiasettlement.com/dates.html. Anyone know why any apple owner would not want to opt out? I'm not sure of what to do.