Macbook woes...

[Phelptwan]

Well I'm currently working on the 5th MacBook that it seems I will most likely have to RMA. I'm gonna check here first on this one though because the problem is slightly different. The macbook is pretty much crashing (by crashing I should clarify that the app closes and a popup occurs that states there has not been a problem with OSX and the app was just closed) every time InDesign/Word/PPT and a few other programs are opened. The odd part about it is that it will run Dreamweaver/PhotoshopCS2/Various other Office2004 apps just fine without crashing them. The machine has also run into some lockups on cold boot as well. I'm taking a wild guess that this machine will have to be RMA'd as well but I'm checking to see if anybody knows of some fixes for this. Oh yeah i work for a University as well...which is why i've dealt with so many of them.

Cliffs:
1. 5th MacBook to repair
2. Crashes InDesign/Word/PPT
3. Runs Dreamweaver/PhotoshopCS2/Other Office2004 Suite APPs fine
4. Locksup on cold boot
5. Any possible choices besides RMA

 

[hungryduck]

I'd bitch to apple that this is your 5th one and you want your money back......not sure if that would work though....

 

[Macnet]

You've been a member here a lot longer than I have, so forgive me, but FIVE faulty MacBooks? Perhaps it's something you're doing wrong?

 

[CEpeep]

Wow. You guys sure are thick. He's an IT guy for a University. He probably goes through hundreds of these machines. 5 faulty units in a few hundred is something you'd see with any manufacturer, and has nothing to do with Apple.

Anyway, try running a memtest on the RAM. It sounds like either one stick or both could be faulty.

 

[MrGuvernment]

i know the macbooks had some bad mobo's in the, apparently fixed a few months back.....

 

[Macnet]

Wow. You guys sure are thick. He's an IT guy for a University.

Well thanks for that, since I don't know everything about every poster here.

 

[Phelptwan]

So...what memtest utility do I use for Macs? Or is there an integrated one that I just don't know about.

 

[BigBadBiologist]

I just got a MacBook Pro and PowerPoint crashes fairly frequently when I have lots of other stuff open (photoshop + illustrator + excel). I just think that Rosetta doesn't like to run all of these things at once.

 

[CEpeep]

Well thanks for that, since I don't know everything about every poster here.

No one expects you to. We do expect you to actually read the post before replying though. If you had, you would have seen that the OP states he is the IT guy for a University and has gone through many of these units.

So...what memtest utility do I use for Macs? Or is there an integrated one that I just don't know about.

You can use Rember, which is a GUI for Memtest, or you can put in the OS restore DVD and use the diagnostic utility (hold D on startup) to run a much less comprehensive test.

 

[Octave]

I have photoshop / illustrator / word / ppt / excel / adium / itunes / quicktime watching a lecture / windows rdc / azureus downloading / ical / address book / google notifier / firefox open and i have no problems?
comp in sig.

 

[hungryduck]

I have photoshop / illustrator / word / ppt / excel / adium / itunes / quicktime watching a lecture / windows rdc / azureus downloading / ical / address book / google notifier / firefox open and i have no problems?
comp in sig.

were talking about a macbook....not a macbook pro.....MBP's have had a lot less logic board problems than macbooks.....

 

[Arcygenical]

Well, for reference my highschool, over the course of a 2 year lease, went through 126 out of 645 IBM T41's (not yet lenovo)... Almost a 20% RMA rate.

Back to the problem at hand, yes it DOES seem like a faulty stick of RAM... There's really nothing else that could cause this issue.

You've done a "repair and archive" re-install, right?

Try deleting the preferences folder... Home > Library > Preferences (while no programs are opened). Just zip it before you trash it, empty the trash, log in/out and see if it helps the problems.

if it doesn't just unzip the archive and restart...

There should also be a "Microsoft user data" (or something like that) folder in My Documents that often gets corrupted, making my Word/ppt/excel suite crash.