Problem with Mac laptop

opethdisciple · 6 Feb 2015 at 14:40

Friends mac has an issue I’m going to look at over the weekend.

Haven’t visually looked at it yet as I’m at work, but will deal with it over the weekend.

From their description, the problem is the laptop boots up the little wheel spins then the computer shuts down.

Sounds like battery I say.... she says, even without the battery plugged in but plugged in to the mains instead it does the same thing.

She also said something about the fans go full pelt as well in some scenarios.

Any ideas? I’m not really a Mac person, more windows.

iraiguana · 6 Feb 2015 at 20:35

Use the built in diagnostics or pop along to an apple shop to use their slightly more helpful diagnostics.

opethdisciple · 8 Feb 2015 at 16:24

The Mac book is model A1261.

Im trying to boot in to recovery mode using cmd + r then turning mac on, but it isnt going in to reovery mode.

Any ideas?

The problem withthe mac is it turns on. starts loading the os (the circle spins) then stops spinning.

opethdisciple · 8 Feb 2015 at 16:51

Got it to boot after booting to single user mode and running fsck -fy.

However seems major hardware issue as after a few mins, the desktop freezes and flashes and you get GUI corruption.

FreeStream · 10 Feb 2015 at 09:36

GPU Failure based on what you've said and what happened to my MBP of that era.,8600s in this generation are notorious, class action lawsuit against nVidia.

Essentially nothing can be done. Sell it as spares/repair on the bay and upgrade.

17" 2.5GHz by the PN?

Harl0 · 10 Feb 2015 at 09:49

TO be fair the Macs are pretty robust, they just work!

As mentioned the built in diagnostic tool is very useful - http://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT201257

Guess its out of warranty?

iraiguana · 10 Feb 2015 at 13:02

They did have extended warranty for the 8600 series of mobile chips due to the above class action lawsuit. Nvidia were footing the bill for replacement of the logic board, but this is likely lapsed for your laptop. I think they covered it for 3years or so... Perhaps going into an apple stall to check might be worthwhile.

If the logic board was at fault the repair on my old one was ~ £400 - 500 ish, which was covered by apple/nvidia.

lumencreative · 10 Feb 2015 at 13:57

Definitely sounds like GPU issue to be. One thing you could try (if you're confident enough to take it apart), is take the heatsink off the GPU chip, clean the heatsink and the chip and re-apply some good quality thermal paste.

Of course, it may unfortunately be too late to save the GPU chip but it's worth a go if the laptop is bricked anyway.