IMac G5 sudden power shutdown - bulging capacitor on main board

Hi,
does anybody in Europe/Germany have had some experience with Apple dealing with this topic? Does Apple provide an extended warranty for these kinds of hardware malfunctions.
The fact that a 50 Cent capacitor in a so claimed 'high quality' product does fail is really questionable to me. I know that especially the capacitors under frequency switched conditions are under heavy stress, but either the safety margins had been calculated wrong or the item by itself had quality issues.
With best regards.

Hey huhnium,
The fact that a 50 Cent capacitor in a so claimed 'high quality' product does fail is really questionable to me
Well it isn't that the design was bad it's the capacitor plague that affected electronics made from 1999 to as late as 2007. The problem is that you can't tell a bad cap just from external appearance. Re:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague
I've also seen this in every brand of PCs I've worked on.
Richard

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Mine did the same thing a few months ago. Took it into Apple authorized repair shop and turned out to be a problem with the power supply internally. Got a new part and it went within a week or so. Got a second part (warranty on the 1st part so no charge) and so far so good. Total repair cost $150US.

Sudden power shutdown while uninstalling Photoshop elements 11

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How can I stop Firefox from recovering pages after an unexpected shutdown (for example sudden power outage)

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IMac G5 17" - Power Issue

Hi,
I have an iMac G5 17" with light sensor, recently it had turned itself off, I went to power it back on and nothing happened.
I have gone through the procedure to reset the SMU and I have also tested another PSU. Capacitors and components appear fine, nothing out of the ordinary.
When iMac is plugged in and power button is pressed, diagnostic LED #2 turns on for a split second, again I have tested this unit on another perfectly working PSU, the original PSU from the unit has also been tested in another G5 iMac left on for a whole day and no issues occurred.
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Hi luna-nz and welcome to the forums.
This will probably sound silly , given the tests you have already done, but is there any possibility that the "collar" on the power cord where it enters the machine has become a little displaced? When these computers first came out we were seeing numerous situations where a slightly displaced "collar" could result in sudden power drop outs because the power cord wasn't seating properly.Simply pulling the collar further up the cord, and then making sure the plug itself was firmly seated, would rectify the problem.
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There were also some situations where the power switch itself could fail, leading to sudden power drop outs and difficulty restarting. To test this, if you have access to another identical iMac (as it appears you do) , you could simply try swapping the backs on the two machines.
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How long does it take your mid 2010 iMac to boot after shutdown?

My imac has suddenly become alot slower upon boot up and i actually just bought this computer a few days ago. it's taking about 30+ seconds to boot up after a shutdown is that normal?

If you had a black out you may have damaged the machine if it wasn't hooked up to a battery backup. I would recommend you contact AppleCare (the number is in your owners manual) and see if they can help. One thing I would strongly advise is investing in a decent battery backup system, this will help with power surges and if you are in front of the computer when you have a black out provide enough battery power to do an orderly shutdown. If you get one that connects via USB to your computer you can also set some preferences such as what to do when the power comes back on.

Sudden power down

Hi everyone, I've got a 13" MacBook (white) and since last night, it started suddenly powering down on its on, while I was on AC power (with the battery in). Prior to that, I was having problems with the fan suddenly going into overdrive although there was no increase in activities on the MacBook. After googling the problem, I reset the SMC and all seemed well for a while, and in fact, performance seemed smoother. Then the problem of the sudden power down started again. I tried resetting the SMC again and took out the battery after noticing a bulge at the side of the battery. It's probably the third time that I've reset the SMC, but it seems like the problem still persists. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to troubleshoot the problem?
Cheers!

It could be an overheating issue (which may also be causing your battery to swell).
When you notice the fans going, open Applications/ Utilities/ Activity Monitor. Change the pull-down menu from "My Processes" to "All Processes" and sort by the CPU column. Is there a process running very high, say, over 25% of your CPU?
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20"iMac Display Suddenly Goes Black

While I am using my iMac, occasionally suddenly goes black. If I hit a key (usually the space bar), it comes back as if I had put it to sleep.
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"Answered on another forum"
What a way to be helpful! I went through your posts and searched "display" and I did not find this mysterious answer you talk about.
I'm having the same issues on my Intel Core 2 Duo 20" iMac. if ANYONE could post a solution, I'd appreciate it.
The computer is still working correctly. It is not on sleep mode. I've press the power button and it goes to sleep, but then when I wake it up it repeats the black screen a couple of times until it finally settles on letting me work.
What is the point of user support forum if there are no moderators around to help people out? :/

IMac G5 suddenly turned off!

Hi,
My iMac G5 suddenly turned off and looked like the power cable disconnected. But I am sure outside of the iMac, the power is no problem.
After this, I tried to power on my iMac G5 with the power button, iMac got a loudly beep sound with the light flashing. Although it can startup to the login window, but when I login to system, again, the iMac was dead with the same situation.
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Welcome to Discussions - which model do you have (how to identify your iMac)? It may be that your power supply unit is failing, see if you qualify for either of these Rev A and Rev B repair extension. You might also try cleaning the air vents and vacuuming the inside of your machine (don't open it if it's an iSight). Some people train a fan on the rear of their iMacs if their rooms are very hot, it helps keep the computer cool.
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Firewire 800 Port back to life after power shutdown?

I experienced a strange event and would like to share it with you for feedback and comments.
During several days the external hard disk connected to the Firewire 800 port of my IMAC caused me increasingly problems, and eventually the disk would not mount at all on the desktop. I connected the disk to the FW800 port of my portable and the disk worked quite fine. I concluded that the FW800 port of the IMAC was damaged. I was preparing myself to contact Apple to get the IMAC repaired.
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Try these basic troubleshooting steps.
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Hey there, my iMac 21,5 i7 has a random "sudden power failure", which has been diagnosed by an apple maintenance centre as a 'Logic board" problem. It was bought in Jan 2012 and it is plugged into a power surge/no break protection.
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Hello, sad case, but Macs aren't what they used to be, & yes, without AppleCare, a Logic board replacement will be terribly expensive.
Can only say that everybody needs to get the 3 year extended Applecare when getting an iMac or Laptop.
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The audio on my iMac G5 suddenly quit.

I hope you can help. The audio on my iMac G5 suddenly quit. Music in iTunes doesn't play, and there's no audio on
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Try resetting the SMU:
Resetting the SMU on a G5 iMac:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1767
and on a Power Mac G5 :
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1436
Resetting the SMC (System Management Controller) on Intel-based Macs:
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht3964
Resetting your Mac's PRAM and NVRAM:
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1379

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If it's powered off, it's using no power at all.
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Unfortunately, I don't have a magic number for the time period
As a rule of thumb, I'd say if it's unused for less than a day or so, standby makes more sense. There's a discussion at the link below which also fails to give a definitive answer but has some interetsing comments.
http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/7588/for-least-power-usage-should-i-tur n-off-or-put-my-mac-to-sleep

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Go to Solution.

The classic cause of an uncommanded shutdown is overheating. The system shuts down to prevent damage. Had your power adapter failed, the system would continue to operate until the battery was exhausted and in that case you would get low power warnings before shutdown. If the system is under warranty, the best course of action would be to take it to a Premier (emphasis on Premier) Authorized Service Provider. If it is overheating, they will open it up, clean out the accumulated dust and dirt, remove and clean the processor heat sink and reapply thermal grease. If it's not under warranty, you can do much the same yourself - or at least as much as you are comfortable with. At the least you could blow out the air vents with a can of compressed air and see if the situation improves.

IMac G5 sudden power shutdown - bulging capacitor on main board

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