MacBook Air attempting to shutdown after a couple of seconds of inactivity

Question

I have a a MacBook Air that works fine except popping up a shutdown dialog if left untouched for a couple of seconds (seems to be a consistent duration around 3 seconds or so). Hitting Cancel or Esc prevents the shutdown.

If I keep fidgeting around with the keyboard or trackpad, there's no shutdown attempt. I can even place something on the Fn key to keep the OS from shutting down.

It seems like some inactivity timeout etc. gone awry.

When taken to the Genius Bar for initial assessment, the guy there said it was probably the power button needing a replacement. But, I don't think this is the case, as the power button is functioning normally: I can still press it to explicitly initiate a sleep/shutdown.

There's a chance this was triggered by water damage. There was a recent water spill incident to which I acted quickly by turning off the machine + turning it upside down + not using it for a long while + keeping it in a box with rice to absorb any leftover humidity. But even if this is a water damage, I can't imagine a damage that manifests itself with this very narrow malfunction of wanting to shutdown on a short period of in activity. Absolutely nothing else seems to be wrong with the machine.

Any pointers? Any things I can try to (a) diagnose the root cause (b) fix (c) workaround the problem?

Update

I just noticed that the power button does not exactly work as it should. While a gentle tap on other buttons is enough, the power button sometimes needs to be pressed a bit firmer. Moreover, the power button seems to occasionally trigger other functions like brightness control etc. I've started to suspect that I'm really looking at a mechanical problem here...

Answer 1

I have the same issue with my Macbook Air after a very small amount of coffee hit the keyboard. Apple store wanted to gut for $800+. It was less then a year old and I was dropping another $800 into it. What has worked for me for the last 6 months, I pressed the eject button down and wedged a toothpick to hold it down, than cut off the excess. Everything works perfectly and since I don't use a external drive that key was unused. I also found it was the only key that didn't interfere with other functions. I would love to find a programmer who could write a script that when the key is pressed once it's on and pressed again it's off. That would be the perfect fix without spending hundreds of dollars. Any script writers??? :)

Answer 2

I experienced the same problem. Power-down window pops up every 10 seconds. You don't pay attention for a second, machine turns down and your work vanishes. I tried to find a way to block the power-button. Not the easiest to find. I almost gave up on it. Then I found this app. It seems to work for me.

http://www.irradiatedsoftware.com/downloads/PowerBlock.zip

I will probably try to replace the topcase & keyboard later when I get a chance.

Answer 3

I started having the same problem tonight. Would not have thought to connect it to water but I did spill a few drops on the keyboard (very small; I didn't even think anything of it), and it was immediately after that this started happening.

Also, when my iPhone went for a swim in a bathtub a few months ago, something similar happened. First, it would not turn off (bad news for drowned electronics). But then after being left for a few days in a warm place in a bag of rice and dessicants, it miraculously still worked... Except the "power off" slide-dialogue would show up frequently at random. (Eventually it stopped.) So I think this definitely has something to do with water.

Answer 4

I finally took the device to the Apple store for repairs. Once they opened it, they noticed that there was extensive water damage. The cost of the repairs would be more than half the price of a new MacBook Air, so we decided to not go ahead with it. It's still fully functional except for this shutdown issue.