New MBP keeps crashing; about ready to switch back to a PC

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I've had this thing for less than a month, and it's actually 1/10th as stable as Windows was for me.

I'm a developer (for 20+ years), so I have a lot of stuff installed. At least when Windows would start going bad, usually about every 3-4 mos, I could see it starting, and would know about when it was time to get ready for a wipe and reinstall.

For the past couple of weeks, this thing crashes when I open the lid to bring it out of Standby (or Sleep, or whatever you call it). The screen is black, there's a garbagey strip along the top of the display, but the mouse cursor is fine. I have to hold down the power button to force it off, then bring it back up.

What's interesting is if I hit the function key to activate Spaces, I can see the "display" that is now crunched into about five pixels at the top of the screen, change.

On other occasions, I'll open the lid, and the screen is fine, or mostly fine (like it takes a while to redraw completely), but the mouse cursor has turned into a block of garbage. Only when I find a program that forces the cursor to change to something else (like a text selector or hand) does it fix it.

To me, this seems more like a hardware problem than a software problem, but I'm not completely sure. I figured I would post here about it before throwing the thing through a window. I have doubts about an Apple Store being able to do anything about it unless they have a special tool to diagnose hardware problems.

This is on Snow Leopard, fully updated, with all the developer tools installed, plus CS4, Tomcat, Railo, ColdFusion 9, Thunderbird, Firefox 3.6, Chrome, Twirl, Forklift, Skype, VirtualBox, Eclipse, and lots, lots more. Various stuff from the MacPorts collection too.

I'm fairly UNIX-savvy, as I used to run Linux a lot before switching to the Mac... I've looked through the logs but haven't seen anything that stands out.

Any ideas? I'm about ready to do a wipe/reinstall of this thing and put it on eBay.

Rob
 
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Your Mac's Specs
21.5" iMac, 10.7.2, 2.5 GHz Intel Core i5, 8GB RAM, 500GB HD; iPhone 4S 16GB
Have you talked to Apple or brought it in for them to look at if it is still under warranty?

And this is just a crapshoot, but how many programs are you running when you put the Mac to sleep? Maybe try downloading Onyx and seeing how big your sleep state image is. If it's huge, you could put your sleep setting to 0 and see if anything changes.

You could try this:

Set newer portable Macs' sleep mode | Software | Mac OS X Hints | Macworld

And if nothing improves, just change it back to 3. Note, if a power failure occurs while in sleep mode, everything unsaved that you had been working on will be lost. When the sleep state is set at 3, it'll store your processes in a temporary file in case anything goes wrong.
 
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Your Mac's Specs
15-inch Early 2008; Processor 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo; Memory 4 GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM; 10.7.5
Considering that you just bought it, there's absolutely no reason not to take it into an Apple Store or call Apple support to go through the paces. If you bring it in, chances are they'll likely replace it on the spot if it's a hardware problem... which is what it sounds like to me. Sounds like an graphics card or logic board issue.

No excuse.. just bring it in and let them deal with it. Your warranty without Apple Care is one year. You might have just gotten a lemon. It happens, but is not the 'norm'.

Doug
 
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Yes but how do we know anybody there has anymore of a clue than the morons at Geek Squad (Best Buy)? I've never encountered any technical support staff that knew anything other than how to read off of cue cards.

I'll try it, but I'm not expecting any results.

Thanks.

Rob
 
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Your Mac's Specs
21.5" iMac, 10.7.2, 2.5 GHz Intel Core i5, 8GB RAM, 500GB HD; iPhone 4S 16GB
When I got my Macbook in 07, it would just randomly turned off. I was on tech support for a long time, doing all sorts of things (mostly resetting PRAM). Finally, I just said I should have to deal with this nonsense with a brand new Macbook, and they gave me a new one.

If the people at Apple can't help, complain until they give you a new one. It's only a month old, after all.
 
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Your Mac's Specs
21" iMac 2.9Ghz 16GB RAM - 10.11.3, iPhone6s & iPad Air 2 - iOS 9.2.1, ATV 4Th Gen tvOS, ATV3
Yes but how do we know anybody there has anymore of a clue than the morons at Geek Squad (Best Buy)?

The people in the genius bars @  stores are well and truly on top of there game. There out there to help you and if its under warranty which it is you are in a win win situation ..... Try them you will be surprised
 
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Your Mac's Specs
09 MBP 8GB ram 500GB HD OS 10.9 32B iPad 4 32GB iPhone 5 iOs7 2TB TC Apple TV3
The people in the genius bars @  stores are well and truly on top of there game. There out there to help you and if its under warranty which it is you are in a win win situation ..... Try them you will be surprised

Thats the way it is for me at the Apple Store by my house and why I do most
of my Apple purchases there.
 
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Back to my old 2.2GHz C2D MB after selling my MBP and wondering what my next Mac will be :)
Yes but how do we know anybody there has anymore of a clue than the morons at Geek Squad (Best Buy)? I've never encountered any technical support staff that knew anything other than how to read off of cue cards.

I'll try it, but I'm not expecting any results.

Thanks.

Rob

That's it Rob, think positive! LOL
 

bobtomay

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Your Mac's Specs
15" MBP '06 2.33 C2D 4GB 10.7; 13" MBA '14 1.8 i7 8GB 10.11; 21" iMac '13 2.9 i5 8GB 10.11; 6S
All new windows converts are skeptics, know I was.

Should see a few of my first posts.

There's always a certain percentage of electronics hardware that is going to have a problem from the get go, no matter the manufacturer. It can sure spoil the taste with a particular brand.

Think you just may be surprised when you take it in though.
 

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