Chosen Solution

I’ve had this system for about 6 months. When I got it the previous owner said it would work for a while and then shuts down. If she let it sit, it would re-start and work for a while until it might do it again. I reinstalled the original OS, then upgraded to El CapitanI’ve added memory for a total of 8 GB nowThe hardware diagnostic says all is OKUsed Disk Utility to fix, I did Command S and typed fsck -fy, results were OKFan temps were normal, don’t remember the numbers right nowI have a laptop cooling fan behind the unit for better air circulationI’ve reset the SMCI did Command, Option, P and R, and turned on the Mac. Keeping holding the keys down until you hear the Mac restart again. Then reset NVRAM Things work pretty well, except if I leave the unit for 15 minutes or so. When I come back it won’t come out of sleep. Sometimes I have to unplug the power cord and re-plug it, or leave it plugged in and turn the multi plug breaker off and back on.

  • Then the unit will power on when the ON button is pushed. I can do repairs but want to know best suggestions for this symptom. This type of problem is part of my “therapy”. :) Update (05/24/2016) Hello again, and thanks again! I saved information from the Activity Monitor 5-24 at 6:49 AM, let the system shut itself down after 1 hour, then tried to start it up again and the On/Off switch would not turn it on. I had to shut the power strip off and then back on, then the On/Off switch worked. Then I made another Activity Monitor reading at 11:35 AM. At 1pm, I let the system shut itself down after an hour again and restarted it at 5:50pm. It would not start with On/Off, nor by turning the power strip off and on. I had to unplug the unit and plug it into another plugin in the same power strip! Then turn On unit. Activity-Monitor-11-35AM.pdf Activity-Monitor-5-24-6-49am.pdf

To start with you shouldn’t need the added fan here. I would recommend installing this App: TG Pro (full version) It will show you whats happening internally as far as the fans and the thermal sensors. If you see something post a screenshot of the main screen for us to review. It sounds like the original problem still persists ;-{ Lets start things off by clearing out the Caches & Logs as I’m sure you have a pile of entries loading them up. Here’s a good app to do that: Disk Doctor. Once there cleared lets restart the system and then copy off what is in the Activity Monitor log into a text file. Now lets let the system run but you need to keep the display running (don’t let it go to sleep) are you able to keep it running for a good hour or more? If so stop poking it and let it go to sleep as soon as it does wake it up are you able to do that? If you can wake it up let it go back to sleep and give it a bit more time (15 min more) and try again. Repeat again giving it 15 mins more (1/2 hr) and try again once you achieve an hour let it stay a sleep for the night does it wake now? As soon as you can’t wake the system copy off the log again also did you get a message telling you the system did not properly shut down. I know this is a bit of work here. The problem is you could have a bad app or your power supply is bad.