An odd one. A certain room (or its contents) breaking my laptop on entry?

[semithotamatic]

First, some facts:

• My daily driver is a early-2015 Macbook Pro Retina (Student/Developer). Certainly on its way out, but hanging in there for now. The bluetooth has not worked for a very long time, and I have it always turned off (causes crashes, don't care enough about bluetooth to fix).
• My third block class everyday is in a big lab that's usually for printing/photo production classes. Its full of, at least, a half dozen gigantic production printers. As of this weekend, the largest one is in working order (previously down),

 

Now, the problem:

• The last three times I've entered the lab, after sitting down and opening my laptop, both my laptop keyboard and track-pad are non-functioning.
• The first time it happened, I immediately spent a few minutes resetting the SMC and PRAM, and running diagnostics (no issues found) a bunch of times over, but to no avail. I got home that day, reset the SMC and PRAM again, and it worked.
• Re-entered the lab the second day, no input again. Reset SMC and PRAM, nothing. After class I went down the hall to another lab, reset the SMC and PRAM once more, and it worked.
• Still thought it was just a fluke at the time, but the third day was the same as the second.
• On all days, the laptop worked perfectly fine before third block all over the school. As well as completely without error after bringing input back with PRAM and SMC reset.

As of right now, it seems that the room itself it whats taking the laptop down, but I obviously can't be sure. Is it possible that one of the printers or other tech in the room is taking it down? I've yet to test if its the time of the day, but I will do that tomorrow. Anyone have any thoughts?

 

 

 

 

[samcool55]

I think it's a bad contact somewhere and a reset is required once the contact is sort of connected again.

Might be worth pushing and shaking it like an idiot and trying a reset after that.

[Car712]

Completely unrelated, but at my school for whatever reason (guessing its the material in the walls), you get almost no phone service anywhere inside (usually none). But go outside, and your fine.

[semithotamatic]

1 minute ago, bobbyd52 said:

Completely unrelated, but at my school for whatever reason (guessing its the material in the walls), you get almost no phone service anywhere inside (usually none). But go outside, and your fine.

My school has a few deadzones inside, the whole building is concrete.

[Car712]

1 minute ago, JGunnz said:

My school has a few deadzones inside, the whole building is concrete.

Ah, makes sense with the concrete heh. My school was recently renovated, it still has some brick on some areas of the old part, but the newer area (renovation is almost finished this year) is most likely not concrete, must be some other material hmm...

[semithotamatic]

6 minutes ago, samcool55 said:

I think it's a bad contact somewhere and a reset is required once the contact is sort of connected again.

Might be worth pushing and shaking it like an idiot and trying a reset after that.

Wouldn't be surprised if the laptop has a few funky contacts (bluetooth receiver being broken and all). I can get the laptop working just fine after without any shaking. More curious as to how/why the keyboard/track-pad break in the same time/place everyday.

[Syntaxvgm]

high heat and humidity? 
I suspect there may already be a water problem in this laptop, and certain conditions are causing it to short out or whatever. 

Either way certainly an interesting problem. 

[semithotamatic]

3 minutes ago, Syntaxvgm said:

high heat and humidity? 
I suspect there may already be a water problem in this laptop, and certain conditions are causing it to short out or whatever. 

Either way certainly an interesting problem. 

Ohhh interesting theory, hadn't thought of that. Could definitely be it, the school has a bizarre climate (temperature wise lol). Not sure how I could test that, though. Do you think I would see the effects of that outside of the school? We just went through summer with no AC but a window unit at night, so its certainly seen a lot of temp fluctuation without visible problems (beside the long broken bluetooth). 

[.Ocean]

Climate could definitely be the culprit,

Are you near any of these industrial printers in the room? If they are the cause you could try staying in the room but moving as far as possible away from them to solidify that theory.

[Syntaxvgm]

2 minutes ago, JGunnz said:

Ohhh interesting theory, hadn't thought of that. Could definitely be it, the school has a bizarre climate (temperature wise lol). Not sure how I could test that, though. Do you think I would see the effects of that outside of the school? We just went through summer with no AC but a window unit at night, so its certainly seen a lot of temp fluctuation without visible problems (beside the long broken bluetooth). 

im not really sure it's a wild guess and it's banking on the fact that there's already some water in there or something. The reason I think this is having to reset the SMC to get it to work (and that only works when you are no longer in the room) seems to indicate shorting to me. Like when you're in the room, it's still shorted. I do believe ever macbook since like 2012 has liquid indicators in several spots, and a disassembly may give you the answers your'e looking for- if they've turned and if you see any dampness corrosion. I'm not sure, and if you're not comfortable with taking apart a laptop, I certainly wouldn't start with a macbook on the off chance it may have water damage. Lot of glue even when I stopped doing them years ago. 

[semithotamatic]

1 minute ago, .Ocean said:

Climate could definitely be the culprit,

Are you near any of these industrial printers in the room? If they are the cause you could try staying in the room but moving as far as possible away from them to solidify that theory.

Theres regular office-type printer a few feet from where I sit, thought most of the others are 15-20 feet away. Yeah, I could just wander around and see where it drops to narrow it down.

[Daniel644]

you could rule out the room by having the laptop up running and functional then walk into the room and see if it stops working.

 

also how many times do you shutdown and restart in a given day?