Early 2009 MBP 17" Hardware Issues

Hi
Brief :
I'd like to know what i can do to get my hardware problem fixed, I've taken it to an apple service center twice and things are moving VERY slowly, Its been almost 2 months.
More details :
I've recently upgraded from my 2008 17" Macbook Pro which worked perfectly to an early 2009 17" Macbook Pro with 8gb of ram from the apple store.
With this new macbook, I have had many many OSX lockups where the screen turns grey and it tells me to hold down the power button in several languages.
It also fails to resume from suspend almost all of the time, I'm having to reboot and restart all my applications almost every day which is a pain when i have about 5 virtual machines running (using parallels).
I have all the latest software updates.
My 2008 macbook pro went for 17 days once with out a reboot and i expect equal relyability from this one.
I have taken the macbook to the service dealer in hamilton, new zealand twice, Each time they have run tests on it and passed the information to Apple Australia to figure out. The second visit was at the request of apple australia.
I can reproduce the suspend problem by running a CentOS Virtual machine running oracle and then executing a large query in it. The VM is allocated 2gb of ram. With out fail, every time i do this and then suspend the machine, It will not resume.
When can i pursue this problem further?
Is there an apple web site that will give me details on how my call is progressing?
Should i expect this kind of poor service from Apple when one of their products doesn't just work?

Actually, this is not all that hard to take care of. You probably have a bad memory chip. This often results in the type of kernel panic that you are experiencing. You can try the Apple Hardware Test. Try the extended memory test. If I recall, you need to hold down the option key to enable it.
One of the chips is likely the culprit. The hard part is finding the bad chip. Strangely enough, you may have times when the system flies along without hitting the faulty address, and then all of sudden, when you do, it causes the message you are receiving. Is the memory third-party, or did you get it from Apple when you bought the machine?
I have run into these same issues in the past. I had an old Powerbook G4 167 mhz that did not exhibit a failing memory chip until after upgrading the system software. Once the memory was replaced, no more issues.
Good luck!

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Hey Everyone,
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I am going to lay out all my problems, and perhaps you guys can help me solve one, or hopefully all of them.
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HT4904 imac 24-inch, Early 2009 can use hardware test over the net?

My imac keeps freezing on me over the more trivial things like youtubing or running apps I got for my toddler son. It's frustrating and I don't know if my hardware si to blame.
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Also I want to point that they had this problem before : https://discussions.apple.com/thread/1978213?tstart=0
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Is upgrading RAM in an early 2009 MBP worth it?

Hi all,
I'm running OS X 10.8.4 on my 2.4 ghz late 2009 MacBook Pro with 2 GB of RAM and a 250 gb HD. The machine's been running increasingly slowly lately (beachballin', freezing, even occasionally shutting down while on battery). It's also running pretty hot from boot-up, though that's been consistent for as long as I can remember. I figured I'd run Activity Monitor to see what was up. With iTunes, Microsoft Word, and a handful of browser tabs open, my machine is running ~9 GB pageouts and with less than ~50 MB RAM free at any given time.
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Matt

I am of the opinion that SSDs are still too expensive for the advantages they offer. Others do not. It certainly would improve boot and shutoff times in your MBP and when using CPU/GPU intensive tasks where data swapping is experienced, it would help there as well. For casual use (aside from boot and shutoff) you would experience little or no differences in response times.
If you MBP is running hot, first reset the SMC:
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht3964
Next open the MBP and look for dirt, dust and debris that may have accumulated and clean it out if it is present.
Download iStat pro and open Activity Monitor. Set AM to show ALL PROCESSES and %CPU to display values from high to low. When the MBP heats up, check AM for applications that are using a lot of CPU resources and shut them down if possible. If in doubt, post images of bot iStat pro And AM for evaluation.
Ciao.

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2. Follow these instructions, or these for OS X 10.8 or earlier.
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Model Identifier: MacBookPro5,2
Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo
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Message was edited by: SecurityFan

OK, I think I have figured this out. It is an odd process but it does get me to where I want to be. I ran acorss another forum post where someone had the same issue with a different SSD. They said that their problem was resolved by installing OSX on the SSD while it was connected via USB. I didn't think the setup DVD would install the OS to an externally connected drive but it did. So, I installed the SSD back inside my MBP and it booted into it just fine. At this point I'm feeling pretty good because the machine is running on the internal SSD. My next step was to boot to the setup DVD again and restore from my Time Machine backup to the SSD. This didn't work either. Amazingly enough, even when you can boot the machine and run on the SSD, the disk utility and restore utility still can't see it.
Next step was to take the disk out of the MBP again, put it back in a USB enclosure, boot to the setup DVD (no hard drive or SSD in the machine at this point) and then restore from time machine disk to USB connected SSD.
This is in process now and will take a while. My Time Mahchine image is about 330 gigs and is having to cross two USB connections. Current time remainig for the restore is showing about 13 hours. So I will check on it in tomorrow and then put the SSD back in the MBP and fire it up.
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Thank you!
early 2009 17" MBP (very good condition)
2.93 Core 2 Duo
8 GB RAM
750 GB HD
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I say go for it. About a year ago I had to replace the fan system on my old Dell i8200. To do that I had to take the complete system apart. So while I had everything out of the case, laying there in pieces/parts (including taking the heatsink system completely off the CPU/GPU) I cleaned everything and applied Arctic Silver to both CPU/GPU. System ran cooler then the first day I took it out of the box new.
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From reports from other Mac users, the one that have Baked there logic boards to fix the 2008 NVidia problem that Apple refuses to stand up for, that when they took there systems apart there was thermal paste everywhere. Clearly Apple assemblers think that if a little is good a whole bunch is better. Which isn't the case. But what do they care. The assemblers need something like Macdonald's has for dispensing Ketchup. One squirt and you always get the same amount.
Go For It.
Good Luck.

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--frustrated in dallas

(blush)
I think I misspoke as to which version of MBP I have. I think I have a late 2008 MBP instead.
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It may be that your battery should be replaced since you said it was swelling. If it will not turn on with the power adapter, then a trip to the Apple store genius bar is in order.
Ciao.

Screen issue imac early 2009

Hello,
I have recently performed the upgrade of my early 2009 20 inch imac optical drive with an SSD from OWC.
Everything worked flawlesly regarding the OS installation and boot.
However, since opening the imac I got a very annoying issue with the screen:
The screen has a washed out color as if there was a white or grey film on the screen (almost not readable) with very much electric noise and flicker, visible on the desktop pattern.
I initially had Snow Leopard installed, and with that OSX the screen was problematic after booting up, but return to normal (high contrast & resolution) after putting the mac to sleep mode and immediately waking up. I consequently upgraded to Mavericks OSX and now the screen always has the above issue making it impossible to use.
It is not the GPU as I have connected an external screen and it worked flawlesly, but the iMac screen itself. Do you have any possible hint about resolving this problem? I have plugged and unplugged the inverters a thousand times since yesterday but with no success.
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New mbp early 2009

does someone have a compare test between the mbp late '08 and early '09

Hi, yoyoskk. Anything we can find, you can find just as easily yourself. Google is your friend.
I just checked the GeekBench results chart:
http://www.primatelabs.ca/blog/2009/01/
(Scroll about 1/4 of the way down the page to the beginning of the Mac results.)
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Early 2009 MBP 17" Hardware Issues

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