[Deschodt]

I bought my wife a 21" imac last year, a few months into ownership, it just stopped booting up. No power... At some point while troubleshooting what I thougth was a dead power supply, I replaced the power cord, and boom, it worked... for 3 months.... did it again -> new power cord fixed it again... and it's now the third time that it did this in a year... My last spare power cord booted it... I've never seen a computer burn through powercords like this. Anyone else ? It's not something I can take to the genius bar, because it works... Just curious if people have observed this before, or if this is indicative of a deeper problem...

Oh, and it did the first 2 cords even though it sat behind a UPS... the third time was straight into the wall socket - UPS had died by then... Odd !!! I have my Mac Pro on the same circuit and it has worked flawlessly for 6+ years !???

[bastion]

Deschodt, on 12 June 2012 - 05:04 AM, said:

I bought my wife a 21" imac last year, a few months into ownership, it just stopped booting up. No power... At some point while troubleshooting what I thougth was a dead power supply, I replaced the power cord, and boom, it worked... for 3 months.... did it again -> new power cord fixed it again... and it's now the third time that it did this in a year... My last spare power cord booted it... I've never seen a computer burn through powercords like this. Anyone else ? It's not something I can take to the genius bar, because it works... Just curious if people have observed this before, or if this is indicative of a deeper problem...

Last part first: I've never seen or heard of something quite like this.

But I take issue with your assertion that you can't take it to the Genius Bar. If it's destroying power cords - which you should verify, if you haven't, by trying a "dead" cord with a different machine - it's not working. That's a potentially very dangerous situation. Take it in, describe what's happened including your experiments and results, and get resolution.

[Deschodt]

Thanks ! I should correct myself, it does not burn the power cords, but only trying a new one will fix this... Once it boots, you can reuse th eold power cord... WEIRD !! I went to the apple store and the Geniuses did not laugh at me actually ;-) It has been known to happen and it can be the logic board or power supply issues... Of course it was *not* reproduceable then because it happens 5 times a year...but that did not stop them from offering to keep it and stress test it, and replace all of the above anyway whether it happens again or not, I'm impressed !!! Applecare just paid for itself 5 fold !

This post has been edited by Deschodt: 12 June 2012 - 11:18 AM

[bastion]

Deschodt, on 12 June 2012 - 11:15 AM, said:

Thanks ! I should correct myself, it does not burn the power cords, but only trying a new one will fix this... Once it boots, you can reuse th eold power cord... WEIRD !! I went to the apple store and the Geniuses did not laugh at me actually ;-) It has been known to happen and it can be the logic board or power supply issues... Of course it was *not* reproduceable then because it happens 5 times a year...but that did not stop them from offering to keep it and stress test it, and replace all of the above anyway whether it happens again or not, I'm impressed !!! Applecare just paid for itself 5 fold !

Ah. Yeah *that* I've heard of. It's not the switching of power cords that's changing anything. It's the fact of disconnecting the cord completely for a noticeable period of time.