[jfobart]

My new 12"/1GHz seems to have a weird habit of hanging (showing me a screen that says I need to power off or restart the machine) if I touch underneath the unit, under the left wrist rest area.

Anybody ever seen this before?

It's bugging me because I can't really pick the PB up without it hanging. And if I put it to sleep first, then pick it up, in recent days about 50% of the time when I open the unit back up it is powered off instead of asleep.

What's going on? Anybody know what hardware is underneath the left wrist rest area that maybe I'm interefering with?

Thanks for the help y'all, I'm still a newbie when it comes to my PB- I've only had it for one week!

[ibook_steve]

The hard drive is under the left wrist rest. Define touching that causes the hang. It's possible you have a dying hard drive or it was not mounted correctly. Try booting from an external firewire drive or a boot CD and see if you still get the hang. Since a kernel panic is usually OS/hardware related, if you boot from a good medium, you might not have the problem. Take it to an Apple store or pop the top case off yourself. They (or you) can just check that the hard drive is mounted correctly.

Steve

[Basilisk]

Anybody ever seen this before?

I had a similar problem with my machine (a 15" PB). In my situation the problem was that the case would flex when pressure was applied to the bottom and short out a connection on the motherboard.

If you've opened your case to install anything (RAM, hard drive, etc.) you might double check that you haven't unseated any connections, or loosened anything accidentally. If its not an obvious problem then its probably time to send it to Apple for repair. Since this is a brand new machine if you bought it from a local store you might try for an exchange. Otherwise you need to contact AppleCare for a repair.

A couple of hints for dealing with Apple support for this problem...

First make sure that its clear to the support rep that the problem occurs when you physically pick up the machine. This will save you a lot of time diagnosing with them because its obviously not a software problem.

Second, if you can consistently locate the spot on the machine that causes the problem when you send it into Apple put a Post-It note with "Press Here to Reproduce the Problem" on the machine. On my first round of service the repair tech couldn't find the problem area and sent it back without fixing it. The second time I sent it in I labeled the problem spot and they fixed it right away.

Hope this helps,

Alex

[wunderkind]

Sounds exactly like symptoms of fried logic boards in iBooks.

[Spheric Harlot]

Actually, the most likely problem is an incorrectly seated Airport card.

Shut down the machine and remove the battery.

Inside the case, you should find instructions on how to install the Airport Extreme card. Remove it and re-seat it.

Most cases, this will fix the problem.

-s*

[Tomster]

Originally posted by jfobart:
...a weird habit of hanging if I touch underneath the unit, under the left wrist rest area.

Anybody ever seen this before?

Yes, many times on Star Trek. It is called the Vulcan neck pinch.

Seriously, I would first start by removing and firmly reseating all of the user installed components.

[jfobart]

Thanks for the help all!

I didn't have time to mess with checking the RAM and Airport card before I left for a job today (see where this is going?), and sure enough, the computer freaked out on me while on location. It was great for the first few hours, then it was completely unusable.... it would barely boot in to the OS and it would kernel panic.

And I also decided not to bring my little screwdrivers with me (that I have for accessing the RAM plate- again, see where this is going?)

Thankfully about 10 minutes away from my location there was an Apple Store. I took it in, we checked the RAM (it was ok), we moved on to the Airport card- and what do you know- it's not enitrely seated (just about, but not completely).

Haven't had any more problems with kernal panics all night.

But suddenly, my Aiport isn't seeing a signal!

I'll have to open it up in the morning and check to make sure the antenna is connected porperly... but I'm just too tired right now!

But thanks for all the suggestions- you guys were right!

[ATPTourFan]

Nice to hear you figured it out with the help of your local Apple Store.

My Titanium's display will go dark from complete loss of backlight if I push near the top of the right speaker. Video is still there, but there's just no backlight. It turns out that the inverter board is just below that speaker... So off to Apple one day to use my AppleCare.

I will use the post-it note technique. That's a great idea, BTW.

[Squozen]

My Airport card needs to be pushed *further in* that it appears you'd need to push it to get it to actually work. You might want to gently push a little harder to be sure it's really seated properly. When my screen was replaced the tech didn't put the card back properly because he made the same mistake I did when I first removed the card to see what it looked like.

[The Placid Casual]

Problem fixing at local Applestores... I can but dream. Makes me which they were in the UK already!