[LifeGuardMike]

My sister owns a PowerBook 15 inch 1.5GhZ with 1 Gig of ram and the works.

Just tonight her powerbook didnt come back on after sleep mode. When she tried to turn it back on the POST gave 3 beeps. I looked it up on applecares site and it said that this means no banks. I am assuming the RAM chip is not seated correctly but want verification. Its to freaken late at night right now for me to open that sucker up and try to reseat the chip. Its one 1 gig chip. So this means it has no other bank to go to. Please correct me if I am wrong in my logic. I need help by tomorrow. Let me know what I should do.

I have been in the guts of macs before and not afraid to do it. I own a 12 inch REV a and a iMac 600 myself. Been using macs for years. I believe I have read on these boards that chips can come out of the factory not seated correctly. Bad banks doesnt sound bad to me if its a RAM issue we just pick up another chip. However this would probably void applecare.

This brings me to my last question. Will reseating the chip void her applecare? Afterall they put it in not me.

Excuse any of my grammatical errors or spelling errors its 2 in the morning. Time for bed.

Also all my sisters data is on that computer of course she didnt backup.

[t4r1q]

try reseating the ram like you mentioned and don't worry about voiding your warranty. you can reseat/remove/replace ram anytime you want as long as you don't damage the internals in the process.

[TailsToo]

If it's not the ram, then bring it in to a local Apple Service center, Maybe they can get it in right away. I won't open it yourself, however. (other than the RAM) There's nothing inside the case that you could fix.

[LifeGuardMike]

I had my sister take it to the apple store in Buffalo and they deteremined the ram bay was bad. However there is still one good bay so they switched the chip and told her the motherboard would need to be replaced and they would do it for free. So right now its working and she burned all her stuff to dvds and now will get a firewire enclosure for future backups. So it is working out good so far. Thanks for all your help! It will probably take a couple weeks for her to get it back once she gets it back but hell its covered.

[bighead]

Originally posted by LifeGuardMike:
I had my sister take it to the apple store in Buffalo and they deteremined the ram bay was bad. However there is still one good bay so they switched the chip and told her the motherboard would need to be replaced and they would do it for free. So right now its working and she burned all her stuff to dvds and now will get a firewire enclosure for future backups. So it is working out good so far. Thanks for all your help! It will probably take a couple weeks for her to get it back once she gets it back but hell its covered.

Even a depot repair on a new 15" AlBook shouldn't take more than a week or 10 days tops. Those parts aren't constrained last I looked.