Okay my jaw is on the floor here... so you Mac experts please chime in. On Tuesday my just about a year old iMac stopped booting. Wouldnt go past the grey startup screen even in Safe Boot. I took it into to Apple and they said the motherboard was fried. How does a motherboard die suddenly after a year ? I hadnt done anything to it recently...no new software...no new peripherals...nothing except some upgraded RAM 3 mnths ago. Then today I am on one of my other iMacs (I have 3 plus a heavy duty tower and a Macbook ) crashed. No biggie I had a ton of broswer windows, email, photoshop and itunes all running and it sometimes crashes it. So I reboot and everythings fine. Then it crashes again within 5 min but this time all I have open is itunes and Safari. I reboot and it wont get past the grey screen..even with safe boot ! So now I had two Macs that I previously had no problems with die in a week. WTF ??? So my question is...is it possible to get some monster Mac virus that can cause actual hardware failure ? I just cant reconcile BOTH machines tanking in the same week. Luckily I am on the tower and I still have the laptop. However the second Mac that died is the one with all my important files.
Not a Mac expert, and I do not know who makes mainboards for various Apple products, but mainboards can fail whenever, after a day, week, month...or years. Most mainboard failures I have seen have been due to cheap capacitors failing. My Pentium 4 based movie machine blew its caps after 5 years of use. I had one new mainboard ****zitsbits after a week of operation. Apple's products do go through periods of random crappiness, so who knows.
Check your voltage supply. Everything is on surge protectors, yes? It may have just been a one-time spike and one of your computers might have taken longer to die...in which case you will never know. I liked reading how your mac needed an occasional reboot. That won't go down too well with the macheads on here. And then two of them die, one that is only a year old. Oh dear, oh dear. Lol! [Not laughing at your misfortune, just the fact that this is yet more proof that those invincible macs ain't so perfect, after all]
Yes, this is a good place to start. APC products between the wall plug and the computer. Generic surge strips continue to provide power after a surge....APC products do not. On a lot of Apple products, Thermal Joint Compound is applied like peanut butter on a PBJ...except that TJC becomes an insulator if over applied....really, really over applied in a lot of Apple's products.
Wow. What are the odds for two in one week?? Behind the s/w it's all pretty much the same hardware. Same drives, mother boards, etc. coming out of China or Taiwan. Apple just packages it much better!
One "big" spike (or "brownout" if it goes low) could have "wounded" the H/W which then took a while to die..... Not necessarily two H/W killing surges. Or, you were simply very unlucky - **** happens unfortunately. Cheers, Ian
Thanks for the responses I do have a surge protector on them but maybe it didnt work and we had a spike ? That seems to be the most likely answer. Gonna be an expensive week. I have Macs because as a kid I had an apple IIe and never looked back. Im not really technically inclined and the couple times Ive bought pcs I would get too frustrated with them. I still have an Alienware machine for gaming but its rarely used and probably full of viruses..lol
Can't help on the Apple issue (sorry though), but I have heard that once a surge protector has gotten zapped once that it's best to replace it. Don't know if that applies to only cheap ones or just a myth.
Jerry, Get an UPS power supply from Best Buy. (Less than $125) My guess is that your PC board was damaged from low voltage (Brown-out) like symptom, and not a power spike. (Thus power strip would not have prevent the issue) I use a UPS on every device in my house from my 2 Big Screen TV's (2 - 67inch TV's), X-box, Wii, PS3, Sony Blue-Ray player, TIVO, Cable BOX, Linksys wireless modem, etc, etc, etc..... I have very few problems with my electronic devices since I started using UPS on nearly every major device. small investment ...big savings. (and YES...the UPS also powers the security camera's in and around the house) .. : ) Thanks, UZY
It's no myth. Cheap surge arrestors will continue to work even if the protection is blown out...I found this out the hard way. Now I use APC (American Power Conversion) which will not function at all if they've taken a hit.
Hey guys ! Got myself an APC surge protector with battery backup today. Big heavy beast...was about $120. I also picked up my newest iMac from apple and they fixed it under warranty even though it was out by a few weeks. Nice Xmas present from Apple. My one iMac is still dead and far out of warranty so Im just going to stick it in the closet for now and try to get by with 3 computers...lol Uzy...the Apple guys said it was most likely low voltage
If you do get a new surge protector, get a monster cable one. Its the only product from Monster worth having. Don't start me on their cables. Their surge protectors clean the power and monster will provide up to $250,000 compensation for equipment broken if for some reason it doesn't do its job
If you are using MACs you should have Time Machine enabled on all of them with an external drive. Apple's Time Capsule, which is a wireless base station and wireless Automatic backup should receive some award for the most outstanding real world technology ever! Even if your Mac dies for no reason it is all backed up automatically using Time Machine. Simply wonderful stuff and absolutely not available on any version of Windows or any any other OS for that matter.
