MacBook Pro whine fix in 3 hours

It’s been an odd couple of weeks for my MacBook Pro 15″.

First of all I find that my battery is one affected by a recall and so Apple send me a new battery complete with incorrect instructions on how to return.

Then I find that the whine that my machine emanated from under the left of the keyboard when on battery power gets semi-acknowledged in a knowledge base article.

Quick turnaround on service

Unable to live with my MacBook Pro for more than a day or two now that it’s my primary machine for work and home and being that this issue is more an annoyance than a show stopper I tried the following:

1. Locate my nearest Apple Authorized Service Center
2. Call Apple support, explain the problem and reference the KB article
3. Obtain the case ID from Apple and tell them I want it repaired at the aforementioned service center
4. Head to the service center, demonstrate problem to engineer and provide him with case ID, KB article and my phone number
5. Wait for engineer to call back confirming that parts have been requested against the case ID (in this case a new logic board)
6. Continue using my machine until I get a call from engineer that parts are in
7. Arrange to drop-off machine to engineer when he will be able to work on it and then drop it off
8. Get call from engineer that machine is ready and collect it!

Total time MacBook Pro out of my hands … 3 hours.

The afterglow of replacement logic board

The annoying whine is gone and the case has yet to get too hot to touch!

They also supply new 10.4.6 CD’s (v1.3) with a note that if I need to reinstall Mac OS X I will need to use these as the original ones supplied with my machine will not contain necessary support for this logic board revision.

There are a few odd issues though…

• It now reports its serial number as SystemSerialNumb. Hope that doesn’t cause a problem with any shareware applications.
• Windows XP required quite some time to boot the first time after the replacement board and the fans whirred right up whilst doing so.
• The iSight camera driver reported “unprogrammed” in device manager. A quick uninstall and detect sorted that out.

[)amien