Spontaneous crashes

[akarmenia]

Yesterday my MacBook Pro (mid-2010 15") crashed 3 times. The first, the screen went black suddenly and I was unable to wake from sleep. The second time the screen froze and then turned off. The third, I closed the lid which caused an ongoing issue with the speakers making a crackle/pop noise and I lost all power (the sleep light and fans shut down).

Last week the same issue happened twice in a single day, often within 10 minutes or so. I reset the NVRAM and that fixed it perhaps, or it just didn't occur anymore.

To confuse you further, I've recently replaced the keyboard myself by removing all the components and unscrewing it from the top case. When I rebooted I couldn't change my brightness or wake from sleep the first time, but it resolved itself on restart. I suspect something is up with the motherboard. I did a memtest and the RAM appears to be fine.

I don't think they are kernel panics since I didn't receive an error report on restart - just that I had abruptly restarted.

Any ideas?

 

[nikhsub1]

Most likely RAM - run a RAM test (hardware test).

 

[illusionx]

Those screws are so small I'm not surprised one of them were not properly screwed back on and had fallen on the board causing all sort of strange issues.

 

[akarmenia]

Thanks for the replies. So far it's crashed 4-5 more times, sometimes by beeping three times during use. I tried using a single 4GB stick of RAM in just one socket and that seems to be holding up so far. The issue might be that the lower RAM socket is malfunctioning during usage and this causes the error and subsequent crash.

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Most likely RAM - run a RAM test (hardware test).

I ran the hardware tests that came with the installation DVD and after an hour it reported no issues. I tried swapping back to the Apple RAM but that crashed it as well, so I'm guessing it's either the RAM socket or something else on the motherboard.