Help please: Sudden System Shutdown on Powerbook under Hoary.....

Tommy Trussell tommy.trussell at gmail.com
Mon May 9 14:47:51 UTC 2005


On 12/31/03, Rainer Gutkas <Rainer.Gutkas at kstp.at> wrote:
> I was just on my way to writing an request to the ubuntu mailing list
> when my powerbook just did power down out of nowhere. The poweradaptor
> was connected and the accu was full, so I don't know why it did this,
> probably a software issue? 

It might be a hardware issue -- you may have a broken connection
inside the powerbook and/or your power adapter might have failed.
Apparently they can fail suddenly and spectacularly.

If the adapter seems to be OK, I would start by resetting the
Parameter RAM (P-RAM) and then seeing if the P-RAM battery might be
dead. They do fail after a few years. On most Macs you can reset the
parameter RAM by shutting down, then pressing the power button and
immediately holding command-option-P-R at the same time and wait for
the machine to chime 3 or 4 times.

If your battery or batteries are having trouble, you may need to reset
the power management unit, and the exact technique depends on which
specific Powerbook model you have. You can find that on the support
area of Apple's web site. I believe they have a chart with a complete
testing sequence that will be very helpful. Booting from Apple's
diagnostic CD (the specific one for your Mac) might shed some light,
too. Just don't let it wipe your hard drive if it offers to. :-)




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