XLCR's tech blog

It’s been six days now since I put my 4Gb RAM upgrade back into my 15″ MacBook Pro (Late 2008, Unibody). So far, I have had one Kernel Panic, but no freezes or other issues. It wasn’t really being stressed when it had the Panic, but it had been on permanently since the memory went back in (I usually don’t reboot unless I do an update, the Mac seems waaay more stable than any PC so I never have to). That Panic was two days ago.

I’ve alsdo just done the firmware and SMC updates from Apple, although I don’t think there was anything in them related to the 4Gb issue.

Another issue I, and others, have come across, is that the new “unibody” MacBook Pros don’t wake up external displays after going to sleep.

I’m using a HP w19e LCD monitor attached via the mini displayport > HDMI adapter (I used it just fine on my previous MacBook) and it will usually not turn on when I wake the MBP from sleep (the laptop’s built-in display comes on just fine). Normally it’s as simple as the display staying in “no input signal = sleep” mode, but sometimes it will display brief flickering “static”, for want of a better word. Plenty of others on the Apple Support forums are seeing the same thing.

I’ve discovered a work-around which, whilst not ideal, does get the external display working again:

In “System Preferences”, go to “Desktop & Screen Saver” and set up a Hot Corner – I use the top left – to “Sleep Displays”. Then, if the external display doesn’t come on after the MacBook has been sleeping, I force the displays into Sleep again by using the Hot Corner, then wake them up after a couple of seconds by moving the mouse. This usually brings the external display back.

Other users have suggested setting the MacBook to use the 9600 graphics card (“Higher Performance” in Energy Saving preferences) or turning off the ambient light sensor. Some also suggest turning off the “Dim display before sleep” option, but turning it off hasn’t made any difference to me.

So, along with the 4Gb RAM problems, it looks like Apple have a bit of patching to do with these new laptops!

Having upgraded to a Macbook Pro, the first thing I did with it was upgrade the hard drive and memory, just like I did with my first Macbook. However, after a few days of use, it suddenly started suffering Kernel Panics and random freezes. After running diagnostics and swapping the hard drive back, all with no improvement, I checked out the Apple support site and found a number of people saying exactly the same thing was happening to them – they’d upgraded to 4Gb and now their Macbook Pro was crashing.

Some posts claimed that certain brands of RAM – Hynix & Samsung in particular – seemed to be OK, whereas others, even Crucial, would cause problems. My RAM is Transcend. On the plus side, a few posts suggest that 3Gb – an original 1Gb and an upgraded 2Gb stick – would work OK whilst we await news from Apple of a fix.

Out of curiosity, while I was buying a sleeve for my laptop in Albion, an Apple reseller on the Strand in London, I asked if they’d come across this problem, and was told they had and that it was a fault with the logic board in the late 2008 Macbook Pros. They also suggested that Apple might be recalling them, but didn’t give me any more information such as where they’d got that information from, so I have no idea if it’s true or not.

Anyway, just to check it was the memory causing my problems and nothing else, I put the original 2Gb back in, and the laptop was fine for five days. Today I decided to try the 4Gb again, just in case I hadn’t seated it correctly or something daft like that. So far, after about 12 hours of usage, it has been fine, but then it was fine for a few days after putting the RAM in the first time, so time will tell. If it does play up then I’ll drop down to 3Gb and see how that goes.