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My 15 inch MacBook Pro has been randomly shutting down for about 2 weeks now. Even when I’m only using one application it’ll randomly shut down. I have my laptop partitioned (via bootcamp) and when I run windows my laptop runs perfectly fine and never shuts down. I’ve tried resetting the pram and smc multiple times. I’ve also been to the Apple Store twice. The first time the Genius Bar employee ran a lot of diagnostic tests and saw that nothing was wrong with the hardware (according to those tests), he then downloaded a malware app and deleted any trace of malware. Even after that it would still crash. He then told me to wipe the Mac side of my hard drive. The first time I wiped it, I immediately restored all my data via time machine. It still crashed. The second time I wiped it, I manually dragged and dropped all the files I wanted from my external hard drive and it still crashed. The third time I wiped it, I didn’t restore any old data and it would still crash. The second time I went to the Mac store, the employee told me to wipe my entire hard drive, including the windows partition. I did it in store and my Mac seemed to be working fine. I downloaded google chrome and Spotify and ran a bunch of applications for about ten minutes and my laptop was fine. The Genius Bar employee told me if it still crashes, worst case scenario was to pay a flat fee of $575 (minus tax) and replace the logic board. However when I got home, it crashed again. I’ve noticed when I use it right after wiping my hard drive and downloading another copy of Sierra it runs for about 30 minutes. After the initial shut down, it can only run for about 5 minutes. The entire time I’ve been using the latest macOS Sierra. I really don’t want to pay the $575 to replace the logic board. If you guys have any advice, it’ll be much appreciated. Thank you guys so much!

I would suggest trying to go back to El Capitan and try this program. https://gfx.io/ It disables the more powerful GPU, which is known to fail on many MacBooks and cause shutdown issues. When you get it, only run in on the I for the integrated GPU. If it still crashes there are other issues, but this is the easiest and cheapest thing to try first. Report back with your results!

Hello Berco Could You please tell me is Your MacBook working with “dongle” MiniDisplay cable/dongle in? I thinking to cut that DisplayPort cable and create dongle and live with it Does it work for You like this? Thank You :)

I have exactly the same problem. The weird thing is that when I keep an external display connected it NEVER crashes, whatever I do. In that case it only crashes when the display goes to sleep. It seems things go wrong when using the integrated graphics. I’ve tried gfx.io but that doesn’t seem to work on this macbook pro. I’ve posted the message below to other fora. No useful responses except that it’s likely some issue with the logic board. But since it keeps running fine with an external display this strikes me as odd.

MBP retina, 15", late ‘13, High Sierra My MBP constantly crashes within 10 minutes. First the screen goes black, then the fans start blowing and finally the MBP turns off completely. When I restart there is normally no mentioning of the crash or an option to send a crash report, only once it said it crashed and mentioned a kernel panic. Strangely enough the MBP does NEVER crashes when I have an external display connected (4K via mini-display port or HDMI port). This made me suspect that the internal graphics card (Intel Iris Pro) is broken, since an external 4K display would likely be using the external (or ‘discrete’) GPU (NVIDIA GeForce GT 750 M). I’m not even sure if the internal graphics card can be broken, but I tried to force the MBP to use the external card by turning ‘Automatic graphics switching’ off (preferences>energy saver>automatic graphics switcher). That doesn’t fix the problem. I also tried a tool called gfxCardStatus but seems to be buggy and incompatible with MBP’s > 2011. Another weird situation is that after reinstalling High Sierra, the MBP worked OK for about half a day. After that the problems started again. The question is how I can figure out what the real problem is, and how to solve/avoid it. Any help would be highly appreciated.

I’ve got exactly the same issue too on a mid 2014 mac book pro. seems fine in safe mode. What was interesting with mine though was that if i run a energy zapping game such as football manager, it’s fine. the harder it’s working and the fan is buzzing, it seems to stay awake and not crash. Very odd.

Could it be that it is not crashing but going into sleep mode when your computer is close to a magnetic field? I saw this video and it helped me see a correlation between when my Android cell phone was close to the computer & when it went into sleep mode. Just move the magnetic stuff away and see if that wakes it back up again. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P05TvpFQ… Hope this helps you.

regarding faulty GPU GeForce 750 - what about 2013 15 inch model 2.0GHz which does not have such a GPU?

Have you even tried the simple PRAM (Parameter Random Access Memory) and SMC (System Management Controller) reset? Even though this is a complicated issue, it works most of the time for random software glitches. Shut down your Macbook first. Then plug in the cable and wait for 10 minutes to ensure there is some power running through your Macbook. SMC reset: Hold down the keys Shift, Control, Option and Power at the same time. Wait until you see that the cable LED colour changes, or just wait 10 seconds. PRAM reset: Press and hold the power button and then press and hold keys Command, Option, P, R. Hold those keys down until your Macbook reboots again. Then just let it boot normally.

This sounds like what’s happening to me. I’ve finally found a pattern I can use as a workaround, which might also be a clue if it’s the same thing. If I run a security virus program scan, at first I thought I’d fixed it because it got rid of some viruses, but the pattern kept happening that it would not crash while the virus scan was running, but start happening when it was done. So it seems like something is going to sleep and triggering a shutdown, at least for me. And until my new laptop arrives, I’m going to be using running the virus scan as a workaround… it runs for two hours, I get two hours without a shutdown. But it’d be nice to figure out something more stable.