[aryayush]

Hello!
I recently bought an Apple MacBook Pro 17" and I am facing a few problems every now and then:
1. Sometimes, clicking on the trackpad with two fingers stops invoking the right-click function and it only starts doing so on the next reboot.
2. Sometimes, the 'Shut Down...' and 'Log Out...' functions stop working and I have to take the battery out to switch the notebook off.
3. The RAM usage is mind-boggling. The Apple authorised reseller I purchased my notebook from was against the idea of installing the extra one gigabyte of RAM saying that I would not actually need it but I still had it installed. Now that I am using the laptop regularly, I think that my notebook would have practically been rendered unusable had I not stuck in the extra module. After just about thirty minutes of usage, the memory usage shoots past 1GB. Is there some problem with my notebook?
4. When the machine starts using more than 1.5GB of RAM, it slows down considerably and the animations start stuttering.
5. If someone starts fiddling with my Apple remote and presses two-three buttons simultaneously, the machine stops responding and I again have to pop my battery out.
6. Front Row seems very unstable. It is quite slow at times and stops responding quite often (though it does resume after a minute or two).
7. When my notebook is connected to the power supply and I am in contact with it and my feet aren't touching the ground, anyone who touches my elbow receives a shock. If I run my hand along someone's skin, I get a strange throbbing feeling, similar to the feeling I get when running my hand along the body of my MBP while it is connected to a power source. It's wierd.
8. Just yesterday, while I was running 'Sotware Update' and the iTunes update download had reached 100%, it stuck in the installing process, 'System Preferences' refused to open up and I could not invoke the screensaver. And I could not shut down because 'Software Update' was running and wouldn't quit. So I had to force shut down the machine by keeping the power button pressed.
There have been more problems but I can't remember them now. Since these problems are happening very occasionally and any one at a time, I am not really alarmed about it, but it sure is irritating. I called AppleCare and they asked me to tell them the firmware version. According to 'System Profiler', it is '1.5f10'. They told me to update it to the latest version and sent me the link via email. When I downloaded and ran the update, it told me that my computer did not need the update. 'MacBook Pro SMC Firmware Update' reports that:

Your computer's SMC firmware is up-to-date with version 1.1 of the MacBook Pro SMC Firmware Update.

All this leads to one major question - WHY? Why is all this crap happening to an Apple product? Apple is known for stability and my laptop is far from that. Granted, it is still more stable than my Windows XP on my PC, but even Windows Vista RC1 running on my MBP is more stable than OS X. I cannot even fathom whether this is a hardware or software issue. AppleCare executives take forever in answering the call.
Basically, the purpose of this rant is that I want to know if there is anything I can do myself apart from taking my notebook to a service center - which is in another city. Please help me out!
Thank you!

[hldan]

This forum will help you but first I am going to give you a suggestion. First, never post your posting saying that you are ranting because you will get very few responses. Second, try and make your posting short and not a long novel as most people on the forum will decide not to read it all.

That said, based on your trackpad issues and the sluggish behavior I have 2 suggestions. When you get a new computer it's best to fully erase the HDD and install a fresh copy of the OS. The factory image can be buggy and you may not need all the extra software bloat. OSX comes preinstalled to accomodate several different languages and that alone takes up nearly 2GB or hard disk space. Garageband has over 2000 preinstalled loops and so on.

Second you should install "Cocktail". This is the best maintanance app you can get. It will keep your system and local cache files cleaned and repair permissions and run cron scrips which keep the memory available for use. I will give you the link at the bottom.

You can NEVER had too much ram. Computers are shipping with 2GB now as standard and even more is necessary with todays ram hungry apps. Each time you run a program it will reserve that ram for future use after you quit the app. The next time you run that app it will use the reserved ram but this keeps other apps from using much needed ram. So when ram starts disappearing the app has to resort to the HDD for virtual memory which slows the process.
So you can see the more ram the better. Try to max it out if you can afford it. This same process is done in Windows XP.
With the all the software bloat plus a possible bad factory OS image and Windows installed using up even more HDD space your Mac has good reason to run slow.

Lastly to think that such issues shouldn't happen because it's an Apple product is nonsense. Any electronics product from any company can and will have problems.
Cocktail 3.7.3 - VersionTracker

[aryayush]

I have 2GB of RAM installed and that is the maximum my notebook will support.
I think I will call AppleCare and ask for either a replacement or repairs. Let's see what happens.
And thanks a lot for your help. I'll see to it that I adhere to your posting guidelines in the future.

[hldan]

Originally Posted by aryayush 

I have 2GB of RAM installed and that is the maximum my notebook will support.
I think I will call AppleCare and ask for either a replacement or repairs. Let's see what happens.
And thanks a lot for your help. I'll see to it that I adhere to your posting guidelines in the future.

If you are going to ask for help you don't need to be sarcastic. At least I offered you help, wished I hadn't now jerk! No wonder no one else has replied to your whining and complaining. Oh boo hoo cry cry, your Mac doesn't work.

[aryayush]

What? I genuinely appreciated your help and was quite sincere when I told you that I would follow whatever you told me about posting on MacNN. Saracastic comments are supposed to be followed by exclaimation marks. I think it was the smiley which confused you. I generally use that smiley when I make a mistake. It is a very cheerful smiley, why'd you think it was sarcastic? I apologise if something offended you but you can be assured there wasn't the slightest intention to do so. (<<< This one should be fine, I think.)

[analogika]

One thing that can slow down usage immensely is the fact that Safari has an as-yet-STILL-unplugged memory leak that will gobble up virtual memory and make your machine start swapping like crazy after a few hours if you don't quit it in betweeen.

Cocktail is completely unnecessary snake-oil these days. Don't bother.

Completely wiping the hard drive and re-installing *can* help, though this is very rare. The pre-installed software is written to the hard drive at the hard-drive manufacturers', and it is possible that they have a gummed-up image. In that case, a whole series of books should be affected, though, which they're not. Try it anyway.

Erratic behavior can very often be caused by oddly defective RAM. It may not be immediately obvious, or it may check out fine, but it will start doing weird voodoo ****. Try running the Apple Hardware Test on your machine - extended test. It's on the Install DVD. Restart and hold down the "D" key to access it.

[glhart]

Note if your machine won't shut down, you can turn it off by holding down the power button for a few seconds -- you don't have to take out the battery.

[aryayush]

More than a few seconds actually. I learnt this when it hung once and I decided that I would keep the power button pressed for a minute to see if it shuts down or not. It did, but it took about ten seconds. Anyway, it solved the issue of flipping the notebook over every few days.

[aryayush]

OK, here's an update, and it's not a positive one:
09. When I am using Safari, if I right click on a word and select 'Look Up in Dictionary', it does not work. Simply doesn't. It used to when I had just bought the machine but it doesn't now.
10. (I can't believe it reached double digits!) When I shut my MBP's lid, the machine goes to sleep as it should, but after a while it abruptly shuts down, as it shouldn't. Sleep isn't reliable anymore. All my unsaved work goes down the drain. X-( I have only had this happen to me when I was running my MBP on battery, I haven't had a chance to put the notebook to sleep while it was connected to a power source.

I seriously think it is a lemon now.

[aryayush]

It has just been a month since I re-installed the operating system and it is already cropping up with problems again. Here are a few problems that I have experienced over the past week:
1. Hangs on sleeping - It is even more unreliable than Windows. When I close the lid of my notebook and return after an hour or two, there is no guarantee whether it will work or not. In most cases, it simply hangs. Pressing any buttons just produces a drumbeat sort of sound. I have had to force the notebook to shutdown using the power button a lot of times - and here I was, expecting that Macs never crash.
2. Wierd problems with the desktop - Sometimes, files do not appear on the desktop when they should. I have set 'Stuffit Expander' to expand all archives to my desktop but sometimes the expanded files are not visible even though the expansion is complete. They become visible when I restart the system. Sometimes disk images do not show up even after being successfully mounted.
3. The window disappears on pressing 'Ctrl + I' - When I select a file and press 'Ctrl + I', the window disappears and icons disappear from the desktop. When I click on the desktop where the icons were supposed to be, they appear individually. The first screenshot is was takes after the icons had disappeared and I had clicked on a few to make them appear:


And this is my desktop with all the icons:


Only restarting the machine fixes the problem.
4. Safari crashes a lot.
5. Safari has problems such as this one:


Please do not give me BS such as 'It is a computer, you cannot expect it to be perfect.' Such random problems are not even tolerated on Windows XP. Plus, Apple itself and you guys, Apple users posting on online forums, lead potential switchers to believe that Macs do not crash and are reliable before they make the purchase. I simply cannot put my machine to sleep anymore without bookmarking the websites open in Safari because I can never be sure it is going to resume where I left off the next time I open the lid. I cannot use Safari when I am doing something important because it crashes a lot. I had not expected this at all. If it was a hardware defect, I would have been tolerant because I could have easily got it fixed or replaced, but these problems indicate that something is wrong with what Apple claims in the greatest operating system in the world. What should I do? Is there any solution for this?

[sknapp351]

By chance have you ran the Apple Hardware test as suggested above? I am curious to see the results for that. Also, have you tried removing the extra stick of ram that the reseller installed. My G5 has 8GB of ram installed, and when I had one of those go bad it nearly brought my system to a halt with stupid little glitches much like you are describing.. I also have bought a majority of my Macs from an authorized reseller and they don't always use the best ram. And your reseller doesn't seem to appreciate ram as much as they should. Give both of those a try.
In the past 7 years of owning Macs and working at a University IT with a mixed environment of Macs and PCs I will say that 98% of all problems I have encountered on the Mac have been hardware, but lemons do happen at times.
SAm

[chromos]

I'm with sknapp351 on this one. I would pull the extra stick of RAM and see if the symptoms reappear. Another "debugging" trick I use is to always have Activity Monitor running, with the CPU history showing in the Dock icon. That way, you will be alerted if some rogue process is eating up all your CPU time.

[aryayush]

I ran the Apple Hardware Test and it concluded that everything was working perfectly. My machine is fully updated including all the software and firmware updates. I have set 'Software Update' to run on a daily basis.

I cannot do the RAM experiment because I can never be sure when these problems will appear. And I simply cannot work for a few days with just one gigabyte of RAM.

[sknapp351]

I do image editing on 300mb to 600mb files in CS2 running in Rosetta all the time on a MBP with 1GB of Ram. It is a bit slow, but is it worth potentially finding the problems with the computer? Also, if the second installed dimm is bad, then the computer might run better with only the one installed.
SAm

[ubla]

I have the same problem. Files do not appear on the desktop. I am using my 17” MacBookPro purchases in October 06 by re launching the finder close to hundred times a day.

I tried all possible test Apple had advised me. Reinstalled the system 5 times, changed the memory and visited the genius The hardware they say is OK . The computer is a POS. I am an Architect running a practice with employees with G5s MAcBooks and G4s with updated Sonet processors. None has this unbearable problem.
This problem appears to be not a frequent one this is why I believe it is hardware related. Apple must knows about it but the solution is to change the computes and this Is much to ask, .
With the same configuration none of the $1000 MacBooks have such problem. How could that be.

And they had the straight face to tell me that I am the only one with such a problem
Shame on you Apple………

Adalbert Albu Architect
AA Architectural Inc.
973 808 1977

Originally Posted by aryayush 

It has just been a month since I re-installed the operating system and it is already cropping up with problems again. Here are a few problems that I have experienced over the past week:
1. Hangs on sleeping - It is even more unreliable than Windows. When I close the lid of my notebook and return after an hour or two, there is no guarantee whether it will work or not. In most cases, it simply hangs. Pressing any buttons just produces a drumbeat sort of sound. I have had to force the notebook to shutdown using the power button a lot of times - and here I was, expecting that Macs never crash.
2. Wierd problems with the desktop - Sometimes, files do not appear on the desktop when they should. I have set 'Stuffit Expander' to expand all archives to my desktop but sometimes the expanded files are not visible even though the expansion is complete. They become visible when I restart the system. Sometimes disk images do not show up even after being successfully mounted.
3. The window disappears on pressing 'Ctrl + I' - When I select a file and press 'Ctrl + I', the window disappears and icons disappear from the desktop. When I click on the desktop where the icons were supposed to be, they appear individually. The first screenshot is was takes after the icons had disappeared and I had clicked on a few to make them appear:


And this is my desktop with all the icons:


Only restarting the machine fixes the problem.
4. Safari crashes a lot.
5. Safari has problems such as this one:


Please do not give me BS such as 'It is a computer, you cannot expect it to be perfect.' Such random problems are not even tolerated on Windows XP. Plus, Apple itself and you guys, Apple users posting on online forums, lead potential switchers to believe that Macs do not crash and are reliable before they make the purchase. I simply cannot put my machine to sleep anymore without bookmarking the websites open in Safari because I can never be sure it is going to resume where I left off the next time I open the lid. I cannot use Safari when I am doing something important because it crashes a lot. I had not expected this at all. If it was a hardware defect, I would have been tolerant because I could have easily got it fixed or replaced, but these problems indicate that something is wrong with what Apple claims in the greatest operating system in the world. What should I do? Is there any solution for this?

[hldan]

Originally Posted by aryayush 

I ran the Apple Hardware Test and it concluded that everything was working perfectly. My machine is fully updated including all the software and firmware updates. I have set 'Software Update' to run on a daily basis.

I cannot do the RAM experiment because I can never be sure when these problems will appear. And I simply cannot work for a few days with just one gigabyte of RAM.

I will have to agree with everyone else about the ram symtom. I have ran into this issue in the past as well. Now each time I buy a new Mac I install only "good" ram from a reputable place. A reseller is bound to give you cheap ram especially if they are offering it as a free upgrade.
One note, you can run your Mac on as little as 256MB of ram if necessary. Mac OS X will run so if you decide not to pull one your ram chips out to see if it's bad then you are cheating yourself out of what may be a simple remedy and may fix your frustration.
One last note, people are very willing to help but you should be more humble and have less attitude when asking for help. Saying things like, "Don't give me BS" is rude.

[analogika]

What's nasty about RAM troubles is that

1) Apple Hardware Test will NOT NECESSARILY identify defective RAM (meaning that if it says it's bad, it's bad, but if it doesn't find any problems, that doesn't mean it's good), and

2) If you've reinstalled your System while the bad RAM was installed, the system is probably corrupt in very subtle ways and will continue to be so after you remove the RAM until you reinstall with KNOWN good RAM.

So: Remove the extra RAM. THEN reinstall the system. Use it.

And if you ABSOLUTELY CANNOT use a machine with only 1GB of RAM (how the hell did you survive in 2004?), then buy a new stick from a reputable source, replace the extra one, and then reinstall the system.

[mduell]

Originally Posted by aryayush 

It has just been a month since I re-installed the operating system and it is already cropping up with problems again. Here are a few problems that I have experienced over the past week:
1. Hangs on sleeping - It is even more unreliable than Windows. When I close the lid of my notebook and return after an hour or two, there is no guarantee whether it will work or not. In most cases, it simply hangs. Pressing any buttons just produces a drumbeat sort of sound. I have had to force the notebook to shutdown using the power button a lot of times - and here I was, expecting that Macs never crash.
2. Wierd problems with the desktop - Sometimes, files do not appear on the desktop when they should. I have set 'Stuffit Expander' to expand all archives to my desktop but sometimes the expanded files are not visible even though the expansion is complete. They become visible when I restart the system. Sometimes disk images do not show up even after being successfully mounted.
3. The window disappears on pressing 'Ctrl + I' - When I select a file and press 'Ctrl + I', the window disappears and icons disappear from the desktop. When I click on the desktop where the icons were supposed to be, they appear individually. The first screenshot is was takes after the icons had disappeared and I had clicked on a few to make them appear:

And this is my desktop with all the icons:

Only restarting the machine fixes the problem.
4. Safari crashes a lot.
5. Safari has problems such as this one:

Please do not give me BS such as 'It is a computer, you cannot expect it to be perfect.' Such random problems are not even tolerated on Windows XP. Plus, Apple itself and you guys, Apple users posting on online forums, lead potential switchers to believe that Macs do not crash and are reliable before they make the purchase. I simply cannot put my machine to sleep anymore without bookmarking the websites open in Safari because I can never be sure it is going to resume where I left off the next time I open the lid. I cannot use Safari when I am doing something important because it crashes a lot. I had not expected this at all. If it was a hardware defect, I would have been tolerant because I could have easily got it fixed or replaced, but these problems indicate that something is wrong with what Apple claims in the greatest operating system in the world. What should I do? Is there any solution for this?

Have you visited an Apple store and talked to a Genius? Or called AppleCare?

[aryayush]

There are no Apple Stores in India and my complimentary phone support is over. There are no Apple service centers in my city. Apple really ignores India.
I am going to another city soon and will get my notebook checked.

[hldan]

Originally Posted by aryayush 

There are no Apple Stores in India and my complimentary phone support is over. There are no Apple service centers in my city. Apple really ignores India.
I am going to another city soon and will get my notebook checked.

They don't ignore India if you buy the AppleCare Protection Plan. If you decide to ignore buying it and jack yourself from getting longer tech support then Apple will ignore you.

[mduell]

Originally Posted by aryayush 

There are no Apple Stores in India and my complimentary phone support is over. There are no Apple service centers in my city. Apple really ignores India.
I am going to another city soon and will get my notebook checked.

You're still within your first year of ownership, so you're eligible to buy AppleCare to cover you for 3 years.

[aryayush]

Yes, I know that. But there are no Apple Stores, and hence no Genius Bars, in India.

[ghporter]

Originally Posted by aryayush 

There are no Apple Stores in India and my complimentary phone support is over. There are no Apple service centers in my city. Apple really ignores India.
I am going to another city soon and will get my notebook checked.

Calling to get a return authorization for your computer DOES NOT COUNT AS TELEPHONE SUPPORT. Think about it.

[aryayush]

Oh, so I can call them up and ask for a replacement? Won't they object to it?

[brokenjago]

The only way you can find out is to check.

[aryayush]

Most of you are suggesting that it might be the RAM that is faulty. If indeed it turns out to be the case, I'll have to take my laptop to the store I bought it from, won't I? Because the RAM is from Transcend. Oh no!