NVIDIA Killed My 2007 MacBook Pro
In mid 2008, amid growing evidence, NVIDIA acknowledged that a significant number of its previous-generation GPUs (graphics processing unit) and MCPs (media and communications processors) for notebooks are failing at higher-than-normal rates. For readers who are not aware of this story, TheAppleBlog covered this piece of news back in October.
Three weeks back, I was personally afflicted by this problem. One fine morning, after arriving at the office of a client, I took my mid-2007 MacBook Pro out of my bag and proceeded to fire it up. The MBP never got past the startup chime; there was only a blank, black screen. I took the usual troubleshooting steps: resetting the PRAM and the SMC, booting from the OS X installation disc and from an external hard drive, and finally, plugging in an external display…all to no avail. It was then that my suspicions turned to the NVIDIA GeForce 8600GT graphics card in the MBP, even though I had not ruled out a misbehaving hard drive.
Without a working display, there was no way to salvage my data unless I took apart the MBP and extricated the internal hard drive. Upon trying to boot the MBP’s system disk on an iMac, and diagnosing with DiskWarrior, it became clear that I was facing not one but two problems.
The system disk of the MBP was not booting up right. In addition to a dead graphics card, I was also facing an impending hard disk failure. Fortunately I was able to make a perfect clone with CarbonCopyCloner.
The next day, I took the MBP in to an Apple reseller for repairs. I told them that the most probable diagnosis was a failed graphics card, but, as a regular procedure, I had to pay a diagnostic fee of $58.
As I waited to hear from Apple, I braced myself for the possible cost of repair should the problem have turned out to not be the graphics card. No, I did not purchase AppleCare for this notebook, a decision I have come to regret after the Super Drive on the MBP began misbehaving and refusing to burn. [1]
A week later, I received a call from the reseller. Apple has confirmed that the NVIDIA graphics card has died, that they would be replacing the entire logic board, and that Apple will, true to its advisory article on this matter, honor the cost of repair on my out-of-warranty MacBook Pro. A couple of days later, I had my MBP back in my hands, back from the dead. I was even refunded the diagnostic fee I had paid.
If you own a mid-2007, late-2007, or early-2008 MacBook Pro of either the 15- or 17-inch model, you should brace yourself for the possibility that the NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT graphics card in your notebook may suddenly fail. While you can rest assured that you will not have to pay for repairs if it fails within two years after purchase, you should prepare a fallback plan if your only machine does go down. When it does, my advice is to bring along a print-out of Apple’s support article when you send your notebook in for repairs, as the reseller I went to was, incredulously, not aware of the advisory.
And the final word I have in the wake of this affair? If you own one of these MacBook Pros, expect it to fail. Oh, and also: Buy AppleCare; it will pay for itself and then some, quite possibly when you least expect it.
1. Strangely, after updating to OS X Leopard 10.5.6, the SuperDrive on my MBP could burn again, without the dreaded “The device failed to calibrate the laser power level for this media” error dialog box showing up even once.
Brad Davis Seal on December 29th, 2008 at 9:19 am
Same thing happened to my MacBook Pro 3 times in October and November! 3 times I had to send it in to Apple to be fixed for the same problem with the graphics card and logic board. I do have AppleCare.
Narongwit AREEMIT on December 29th, 2008 at 9:26 am
Same happened to me too in last November. Although I didnt purchase the apple care but due to the defection of the NVIDIA graphic card that allows me to fix it without a charge for 2 years. So i m in this blanket.
Although everything went well, i am still afraid of another failure. Do the new NVIDIA card have lesser chance of failure? Have they fixed the problems with this card?
Rami Mohsen on December 29th, 2008 at 12:33 pm
It happened to me 2 months ago , it went to sleep and didn’t wake up since then , i wasn’t sure it has the NVIDIA chip , but i printed the apple advisory page and went to apple reseller in Egypt , and a month later , they said they’ll fix it for free , i didn’t get it back yet thought , but i’m happy they’ll fix it for free , i already got the new one .
Stan on December 29th, 2008 at 2:29 pm
As far as “The device failed to calibrate the laser power level for this media”, that is the dust in the optical drive. Serach the apple forum for some solutions but most are blowing pressured air or using those cleaner CDs with fine brushes. I used the cleaner with 8 brushes and the Supoer drive was burning dvds and CDs again.
Ryan on December 29th, 2008 at 2:50 pm
I feel that the additional two years free repair is all well and good but what if I plan to use this notebook a bit longer? I’ve used my old trusty old Powerbook for over 5 years without problems and expect this MBP to last just as long. The worse part about this whole issue was never the buyer’s fault! In the end the consumer is burdened by having a notebook that is technically a ticking time bomb.
Jonas on December 29th, 2008 at 2:53 pm
Mine has died twice since I bought it in March 2007, though I’ve always been able to access the data when it was dead via other Macs on my network. File-sharing, screen-sharing, etc still work, if enabled.
At least I live a mile from an Apple store, and they have special diagnostics just for thie problem and so are quick to recognize and fix. Still, a pain to have it fail. And it’s not entirely clear whether the replacement is just waiting to fail the same way…
Yasser Khan on December 29th, 2008 at 3:08 pm
Mine experienced the same issues except for the hard drive problem. I immediately took it to the service centre in Dubai and they immediately knew about the 8600GT issue. They had replaced the logic board with a completely new one, and is now back in my hands. It took them some time cause they had to double check the issue and shipping delays for the board.
Bob on December 29th, 2008 at 6:08 pm
Just go mine back too. Died end of November but is all good now, fixed the CD drive too :)
Chien on December 29th, 2008 at 9:45 pm
happened to me too back in July 2008
Costanza on December 29th, 2008 at 11:43 pm
This is one of those occasions where the value of the Target Disk Mode feature becomes apparent. On a Mac with FW you can definitely get to your files by holding down “T” at power up and attaching it to another Mac by firewire cable – it mounts as an external drive.
Will Brocklebank on December 30th, 2008 at 3:23 am
I had the same thing and had to buy a new MacBook Pro a week after they came out to replace my dead 17″ – and although Apple replaced the 17″ logic board, just as they did with yours, it was the (NVIDIA?) derived problems with random freezes on the new MacBook Pro that really compounded the problem.
These were eventually addressed in the firmware updates but that was literally a month plus after they had started to ship these units. What worries me is that a lot of people are new to Apple these days and are buying in on the promise of reliability etc and they are not getting the experience that we had all been crowing about.
I wrote it up on my my blog and there were long discussions about it on the Apple forums
Jeff on December 30th, 2008 at 2:05 pm
I am not sure why you would need to take it apart to get the data off the hard drive. Just boot up holding down the T key and plug it into another computer with a Firewire cable. That’s what we did when we encountered a similar problem and it worked fine.
I do agree with one thing, though. I always buy AppleCare for laptops and anything else I can’t easily take apart (like an iMac).
octavian on January 3rd, 2009 at 11:49 am
Happened to me too. They honored the costs of repair. But it is very stressful. VERY stressful…
Staff Comment Clayton Lai, TheAppleBlog on January 4th, 2009 at 9:42 am
Jeff – I took the hard disk out of the MBP because TDM didn’t work for me; something about the hard disk was causing it not to be seen on the iMac. Yes, the situation was that unfortunate.
Since I could not afford to be without my data for the duration of the repair job, plus I was quite sure it was the graphics card that was the cause of the problem, I was dead set on sending the MBP in without the hard disk. It was after I was able to clone the hard disk that I slapped it back into the MBP and sent it in.
tom darby on January 4th, 2009 at 11:51 am
Add me to this list. Mine died January 2nd and I was about to print invoices and reports for work. I knew the laptop as booting up but the screen was blank. I tried hooking it up to an external monitor but even that stayed blank so I was sure it was a graphics card problem and not hard drive related. I removed the hard drive and placed it in a usb external hard drive case and then connecting it to another macbook pro. I was able to see all of my files and access them for copying them over.
I ordered a new macbook pro that same night and I’m hoping I can just install the old hard drive in the new macbook pro and boot it and be back to business as usual. If that deosn’t work then I have a ton of programs to install for my photo editing work.
Randy on January 29th, 2009 at 1:24 am
You said:
“Without a working display, there was no way to salvage my data unless I took apart the MBP and extricated the internal hard drive.”
I actually had the same problem and used a tried and true method that has worked for years. Using a firewire cable and connecting my problem MBP to another Mac. With the host Mac powered on and the problem Mac powered down, I connect the two via the firewire ports. Then, held down (as I’ve done before with success) the ‘T’ key as I start up the problem MBP. The host sees the internal drive of my sick Mac and I’m able to get my data just fine. I am doing this as I type copying to another external, over 100gb of files.
kaushal on February 2nd, 2009 at 10:05 pm
What is the error message u were getting after Hardware test, as i scared that it might be any other problem … my hardware test generate this code.. Failure code: 4VDC/1/40000003: VideoController
and also pcie lane width is x4 instead of x1
Miguel on February 19th, 2009 at 9:31 am
I have the same problem and left my MBP 17″ in the Apple repair center on February 10. Today February 19 still waiting for the NVIDIA Logic board to be shipped from California Apple center. The problem was diagnosed the same day I left the computer but the part has not being yet shipped!! I love my computer but start hating Apple response time on this knoun issue. Should’n they have in stock these parts to rapidly replace their customers? I paid almost 3K for the machine but waithing the same time an PC owner for a part! Not good.
VladNazarykovskii on February 20th, 2009 at 3:52 am
Отлично,когда знаешь точно чего хочешь. Тут нужна объективность.
Ken on May 6th, 2009 at 12:07 pm
The graphics card on my 2007 MacBook Pro died coincidentally after my cat sat on my machine to warms is bum. Luckily for Felix I found this thread and so he was spared a one way trip to the vet.
I have to say that my local Apple Store were fantastic – I took it into them at 4pm on a bank holiday and received a call at 8:05 the next day telling me it was fixed. I was lead to believe that it would take up to 10 days so I bought a new 17 unibody MBP as I couldn’t face being with out it for 2 weeks! Please god don’t let me wife find out how much I’ve spent on this!!!
Maria on June 25th, 2009 at 11:51 pm
Hi
Same problem here and got my MBP fixed. They replaced the logic board and now the fans run constantly at 6000 rpm and even if I took the MBP back they don’t know how to fix it. Any input?
Here is a thread with the same problem
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=9641395