iPad diagnostics

Hardware and technical stuff
1

A few weeks ago my iPad crashed while playing geometry wars. What was interesting was how it crashed: the graphics went kooky, straight lines appeared on what looked like every 2nd or 3rd pixel and then a few seconds later it rebooted. After it rebooted the display didn’t work. I could connect via USB and my PC thought the iPad was ok but like I said nothing would display.

I brought it to the apple store and the dude at the genius bar couldn’t get it to display so he connected it to his Mac and poof it worked perfectly. Amazing. He had no idea what happened. It felt sluggish to me, but that could be paranoia. A day later it crashed again in the same way, and the display wouldn’t work. Bummer. I left it in my car for a couple of weeks since I couldn’t get to the apple store. Yesterday I decided to see if I should try it before going to the store and it turned on just fine. It is still working, I’m on it right now, but it feels sluggish to me.

Does anyone know of any decent Diagnostic software for this thing? Does it have a diagnostic mode? I’m looking for something that exercises the graphics engine.

It could just be that it dies when it is hot … I should put it on a seat warmer.

2

Don’t think there’s much you can meaningfully do. It sounds to me like something on the logic board is going or temperature sensitive.

Recommend restoring it to clean factory settings and manually reloading stuff first to make sure it’s not something you’ve saved in your OS backups.

Beyond that it’s time to take it back under warranty for a replacement board (or maybe they’ll replace the whole unit).

Diego

3

And it died again this morning. Hooray.

I’ve tried resetting it to factory to no avail.

I bet when they connect it to a Mac it will work correctly for a day or so, again. God damn it.

4

The solution is obvious: buy a mac.

5

Well that worked out well, I brought it back to The apple store and they swapped it out for a new one.

Thanks uncle Steve!

6

That’s one thing you gotta love about Apple.

7

Plug it into a Mac with the most up-to-date Xcode installed and running. Xcode will open a panel that allows you to view the crash logs on the iPad (works for iPhone, too). The information therein might help you diagnose the problem further. I’m surprised they didn’t do that at the Apple store.

8

The USB ports on some USB hubs and plugs are sometimes insufficient to power the iPad on PC. Google for ASUS AI Charger if you have an ASUS mainboard to see if that will help (once you get the new one back and plugged in) which is why these things may work better with the Mac at the Apple Store (uniform hardware specs) etc.

9

Glad you have a new device. Hopefully this one will do all the wonderous, magical reality-distortion-field thingies it’s supposed to. Without the falling over dead occasionally part. :)

Just in case anyone else is curious about this bit:

Great suggestion for those of a technically savvy and/or curious persuation. Specifically, Ctrl-Cmd-O to open the Organizer window (or select “Organizer” from the Window menu). From there, select the device in question under “Devices” in the left hand pane, and then look at both the “Console” and “Device Logs” tabs in the main window.

edit: at least I assume that’s the window you’re referring to. If not, I’m curious which other window is available to get that info out. :)

10

Yeah I wish I had known about this before I brought it back to the Apple store if only to satisfy my curiosity as to what the heck was going on.

IDK if it was a power thing, my iPad was almost always close to full charge when the display would pop back on.

Anyway, water under the bridge, I love Apple and their products are filled with magic and joy. Thanks again uncle Steve!

11

You’re correct. I couldn’t remember the name of it off of the top of my head. :)