Best Shop For Out Of Warranty Macbook Pro

[gavin310]

I live in Trat. My MacBook Pro started having issues about 6 months after I got it. Since I need my computer and don't have time to ship it out for repairs, I first took it to a local Apple repair shop on Koh Samui (I lived there for a while). A replaced hard drive fixed the problem for a while, but now the screen is full of static and goes to a white screen after 1 minute, with the fans blowing very hot air out until I shut it off. I need this to get fixed ASAP, without shipping it off to be repaired in Singapore or somewhere else. I'd like a recommendation for a shop that knows what they're doing and I'm guessing it'll probably be in Bangkok. If you could give some advice I'd appreciate it.

[wilgoster]

Apple in Discovery Center at BTS Siam comes to mind. Google knows...

[petertucker48]

Try these guys :

http://www.unlimitmac.com

[negreanu]

Won't be cheap. Looks like a logic board change. not much change from 15-20k

[gavin310]

Thanks guys. Yeah I'm expecting it to be something like the logic board. Replacing the hard drive didn't fix it. Well, it did for a few months. Every time it's a different problem, but I'm sure it's originating from the same place. This is my first Mac so it's pretty disappointing.

[gavin310]

negreanu, I'm just curious why you said you think it's the logic board. I need to decide now if I want to try and fix it or just buy a new one. If I spend 15,000 to 20,000 baht to replace the logic board, and that's not the only problem, then I'll end up in a similar situation not long after. Let me describe exactly what's been happening.

The first problem happened about 9 months after i bought it. The computer would become incredibly slow. Sometimes it would take 15 minutes to boot up and sometimes it wouldn't boot up at all. But sometimes it was fine. If it did boot up, sometimes when I'd go into a folder in Finder, nothing would show up. The spinning loader graphic would just spin at the bottom of the Finder window. I ran a disk check and it said it found multiple errors that could not be fixed. I erased the hard drive and reinstalled Lion and everything seemed fine.

About 3 months later the problem came back, but much worse. I couldn't boot up or anything. I took it to a small Mac repair shop on Koh Samui. Of course inside the shop it booted up fine and I had to explain to the guy that for 5 days I haven't even been able to turn it on. Finall after restarting 4 times it began slowing down and he could see what I was experiencing. He said he could try replacing the hard drive, but couldn't guarantee it would fix it. I needed my computer so I said let's try. I came back a couple days later and he had transferred everything to a new hard drive and installed Mountain Lion. Everything seemed to be working fine

That worked, although sometimes (rarely) something weird would happen like the computer would just shut down for no reason. But, the DVD drive stopped working. It loads a disc OK, but it can't read it and can't burn a DVD. One time it wouldn't eject my DVD for about 30 minutes. I was trying everything I could find on Google. Finally it spit it out.

Now, about 6 months later, I was watching a movie and about 10 small colored boxes popped up on the screen. They went away after a few seconds, so I closed my movie and went to shut down my computer. The entire screen then filled with horizontal rainbow colored static. It stayed for about 30 seconds, then the screen turned grey. I could hear and feel the fans blowing at full speed.

And then for about a full day it went away, until earlier today. As I was backing up all my files I played a quick part of a movie. The same squares popped up on the screen so I immediately closed the movie and they went away.

I finished backing up and then erased my disk. I started installing Mountain Lion, and it stopped at about 75%. I canceled the installer and restarted. After a few seconds the screen turned blue with white staticky lines. And now that happens every time I turn on the computer.

Sorry for the huge amount of info. I just don't have enough experience with Macs to know what's going on. My current issue resembles a video card problem, the issues before resemble a hard drive and DVD drive issue. Could a problem with the logic board cause all of these issues?

[negreanu]

What model and year is the macbook pro.

Possibly overheating problem (Graphics). There was the notorious NVidia GPU problems on older model macbook pro's

If you have replace the hard drive. Done a clean install with no third party applications. Theres not much else to try except a replacement logic board.

Install iStats or iStats Menu look at Temperatures and also CPU load.

Try a SMC and PRAM reset as per apple instructions in support for your model.

You could try replacing the DDR SODIMMS incase of faulty ram module they are cheap enough now.

But once you have done all that and still issues then out of luck. You could get your own logic board from a parts supplier or ebay. cheaper.

Edited May 14, 2013 by negreanu

[gavin310]

What model and year is the macbook pro.

Possibly overheating problem (Graphics). There was the notorious NVidia GPU problems on older model macbook pro's

If you have replace the hard drive. Done a clean install with no third party applications. Theres not much else to try except a replacement logic board.

Install iStats or iStats Menu look at Temperatures and also CPU load.

Try a SMC and PRAM reset as per apple instructions in support for your model.

You could try replacing the DDR SODIMMS incase of faulty ram module they are cheap enough now.

But once you have done all that and still issues then out of luck. You could get your own logic board from a parts supplier or ebay. cheaper.

I was monitoring the temperature for many months because I thought maybe overheating was the cause. The normal operating temp was about 130 f (about 55 c). If I was doing extremely processor intensive stuff like video encoding the most I ever saw it get up to was 160 f (~71 c). But that was rare. Those are all within acceptable temperatures according to Apple.

I did a clean install before and it worked for a few months. The only 3rd party software I really use is Adobe Creative Suite, Firefox, and Microsoft Word and Outlook.

This last time the screen started to go, I backed up, formatted the drive, and tried to do a clean install. It went to 75% and wouldn't go further. After restarting the screen went solid blue with black horizontal lines and then went black. This happened from then on after every reboot, but not for about 30 seconds.

I'm hoping at the repair shop they'll be able to run some type of diagnostics to figure out what's wrong. If they still aren't sure then maybe I'll just put up the cash (a.k.a. debt) and get a new one. The thought of going back to Windows really makes me depressed. We'll see though. I can't afford to go though this again.

Ya know one thing I didn't think of before... I lived on a smaller island for a while and would use my computer daily pretty close to the sea. Maybe the sea air caused some corrosion. Also the electricity was really bad, always in and out. Maybe that took its toll on the circuitry.

Thank you for all your tips. I'm actually on the bus to Bangkok right now and my computer doesn't boot up and doesn't have an operating system, so I think it's out of my control now. I'll let you know what the shop tells me.

[4evermaat]

iStore in fortuneTown IT mall (4th floor I think). Not an official apple store, but they do some repairs and get OEM parts from hong kong or similar

Edited June 3, 2013 by 4evermaat