My wife has a 14" iBook 1.33 - it was a refurb and we purchased direct from Apple in Feb. 2005. Date inside the computer is also Feb. 2005. We did not purchase Apple Care.
The other day it froze and crashed for no reason at all. I'm pretty handy with Macs (we own 4) so I took a look at it. It was freezing at the blue screen, a first for me. In the past few days, along with the help of a friend who actually repairs macs for a living, we tried every known sollution, fix, start up mode and test. Everything checks out fine - however won't boot from install DVD - and only boots to blue screen. I came along your forum here and read about the flexing, solder issues, etc. I decided to try booting up while squeezing the casing on both sides with my hands anywhere I could touch without touching the keyboard of course. Low and behold, it booted perfect. I ran a tech tools disk - everything checks out fine. It has booted two times fine sense and ran/operated for more than an hour now. You have to understand - this is after trying EVERYTHING to boot this thing. I treated it very gently so as not to move it or jossly anything in case I've got something loose in there. However I finally picked it up - turned it upside down, moved it around - still ran. I've put it to sleep - shut down - it boots fine now. I'll be taking it home here in a bit and we'll see what happens when I get it home.
My wife has used this on her lap in our easy chair pretty much 100% of the time. I'm wondering if that has anything to do with it. I've had a 12" G4 1.33 newer generation (scrolling mouse pad, etc.) - but 95% of the time it's on a desk - never a problem. (yet anyway.)
Anyway - does anyone know if the later 2005 G4s like my wife's have these similar problems? Will similar fixes work? Worth calling and talking to Apple about it being only 2 years old? Any thoughts would be appreciated.
- John
Hi John,
I am not a repair expert by any means but I did have 2 ibooks, a 1.0Ghz and a 1.33Ghz. Both we used in much the same way. The 1.0Ghz froze frequently after boot up, I tried the pressure thing and that worked for a while (actually used a small rubber foot on the gpu). However it soon (like 2 months) began freezing again. I got a cheap logicboard for $70 and it works beautifully now, never a problem. It's very risky to try and swap out a logicboard unless you an electronic background. Not saying that your logicboard is the problem (probably is however) but that was my experience.
Hope this helps!
-BigD