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Honeymoon is over (1 Viewer)

Carl Miller

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Came home from work, turned on my Mac and got a flashing folder with a question mark on it. That's it.

I've tried both solutions in the documentation that came with the Mac to no avail, and so I called Apple Care....which was closed.

I have no idea what this is other than to guess that OSX is MIA since I don't see it loading...I'm hoping Apple Care will be able to help me over the phone tomorrow evening after work rather than me having to lug the damn thing to the mall.
 

Joseph S

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Try booting with the CD/DVD or Diskwarrior's CD. You should be at least able to check the HD if not repair it.
 

Michael_K_Sr

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It is true that in these instances Alsoft's DiskWarrior is your best friend. Unfortunately it's about $99, but worth every penny when you have a critical problem with the system directory. Not sure what AppleCare can have you try if you've already run Disk Utility from your startup DVD...fsck from single-user mode maybe? I know they told a former colleague of mine previously to go buy a copy of DiskWarrior! My assumption is you'll probably have to lug it to the mall. :frowning: Hopefully it's not a physical problem with the hard disk, although if there was a defect coming out of the factory, it will usually manifest itself in the first 30-60 days.
 

Carl Miller

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Thanks guys. I tried to boot from the install disc, and held the c button down per instructions I found for this issue at apple.com. I got to disk utility, where it said to select the disk from the left and click repair....I selected the disk which was there, but the option to repair was gray and not clickable. Then I couldn't get the install disk to eject, but managed that finally by restarting the computer and holding down the mouse button.

Of course I didn't back up my stuff...was planning on it, but have only had the computer a few weeks. Thankfully, most of it is still sitting on an external drive from my old PC....

I'm hoping I can reinstall OSX without losing my other data, but I'm going to call tomorrow and wait before trying that. So much for a happy Mac experience.
 

DaveF

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Sorry to hear this. This was a new machine, right? Much too early, obviously, for such a failure. But there's always one that has the severe, abnormal failure.
 

Michael_K_Sr

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Carl, in Disk Utility are you highlighting the actual hard disk or the disk volume (displayed underneath the hard disk) Is the Repair button still grayed out no matter which one you try?
 

Christian Behrens

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In order to elaborate, when you boot from a disc, you'll never be able to eject it unless you reboot, because your system disk (in this case the DVD) needs to be available to the system. It won't let you "pull the rug out from under its feet". Just FYI.

-Christian
 

Citizen87645

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I haven't wanted to rain on anyone's Mac parade, but in the past year I've had my Macbook I've had the random shutdown issue and then a complete hard drive failure. This is VERY different from the Macs (non Intel) I've used at work, which have been reliable workhorses.

So I guess all that to say I feel your pain.

And after this past year I'm definitely going for Apple Care.
 

Carlo_M

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Bummer Carl, sorry to hear about that. At this point, I believe that AppleCare (and all other "extended warranties" for laptops) is actually part of the price of doing business. Things are getting so small, so advanced, and the investment is so high, I never buy a Mac (or PC laptop) without it.

Keep in mind I don't buy extended warranties for anything else. Just laptops.

Best of luck to you! I've been fortunate enough not to have any failures on my 2 Macbook Pros (one since sold to a friend).
 

JohnRice

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Both Cameron's and Carl's problems seem to HD related. The unfortunate fact is that HDs are so freaking cheap these days, the likelihood of defects is rather high. Carl, there is a good chance you can boot from another HD and then extract everything from the faulty drive. So all should not be lost. Just don't assume everything on that drive is lost. Don't erase it if you have the opportunity to boot from something else and back it up.

The demands of booting are higher than it is to just access the info. The drive may be able to limp along enough to get everything off it.
 

Carl Miller

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Thanks guys. I got off the phone with apple care a while ago. The rep was very nice and sounded confident. I'm not very technical so I may be off a bit on the explanation but she essentially said that the drive image was gone and the disk had to be reformatted and the OS reinstalled. She offered a data recovery attempt at my local apple store at no charge (I don't know if this is standard with the apple care protection or an act of goodwill on her part) but I declined. With the computer being new, I didn't have much on it that I couldn't easily replace so I went ahead and formatted and reinstalled OSX.

She said this was most likely a fluke event but that if it were to happen again it would likely be soon and mentioned that bum computers usually show themselves very early on in the ownership of it....I told her that was all well and good, but that if this were to happen again I absolutely would not accept a repair. She very quickly responded by telling me that if this happened again their course of action would be to replace the computer with a new one of equal or greater spec. I asked her to put this in writing and she provided an e-mail to this effect.

I guess we'll see what happens. Of course I'm going to be doing regular back ups and will look into diskwarrior but I'm not too thrilled about all this. No more warm and fuzzy Mac feeling for me.
 

Christ Reynolds

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That's fine, but you don't realize that Macs are machines, not magic. Nothing is free from problems, and you experienced that personally.

CJ
 

Ronald Epstein

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Carl,

I'm just catching up on this thread. Sorry to hear of your problems.

Glad APPLE CARE took care of you.
 

Carl Miller

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Of course I realize they're not magic.

I suppose I could understand this remark directed at me if I came here ranting that Macs suck or if I had said this never would have happened if I had bought a Dell, but since I didn't, I don't really understand where this remark is coming from...but whatever.

Ron, thanks...Hopefully, all will be fine with the computer and there will be no further frustrations.
 

Carlo_M

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Carl, I can sympathize. I held off of the iPod craze until the 5G iPod w/ video. I bought the 60GB one about a year and a half ago...only to have it randomly skip and freeze. I was like "WTF is the big deal w/ freakin Apple and their stupid iPod?!?!" (this was before I got the Macbook Pro, I was still firmly in the Windows world)

Then Applecare + my local University Apple Store (where I get academic discounts on all things Apple since I work there) took care of my by testing it for a day, confirming my findings and replacing it with a brand new one. Not a problem in 18 months. But I do remember my initial feeling after the failure so I can commiserate.

Apple really does make, IMO, good products, and their interfaces (both OS X and iPod) are superior to the competitors. But as Christ says, they are all devices made overseas now. No longer does Apple build their machines. It's all manufactured in China. Not that it's an indictment of products made there, just that Apple is prone to the same type of failures that other manufacturers had, no worse, but unfortunately no better.

Hope everything goes well for you and your Mac, and eventually while the honeymoon may be over, I think you will find the marriage will eventually work out for the better. I know mine did ;)
 

Carl Miller

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Thanks Carlo. I've had trouble out of the box with numerous pieces of electronics over the years as most people have and accept that this is always a possibility.

Something like this does take the fun out of things however. My PC's HD was on the brink of taking a dump and every day I woke up wondering if 'today would be the day' it finally did. It was impossible not to wonder because it was clicking relentlessly for months.

And now, I have a new Mac and because of this event, I'm sort of wondering the same thing...The fact is I don't know if this is a defective computer or if this was a fluke at this point and that's where I feel some added apprehension...The concern that I got a bum computer is greater now than when I bought it, and for good reason.

I was really enjoying the Mac and I hope to continue enjoying it for a long time to come. Like you said, the honeymoom may be over, but hopefully the marriage will be a long and happy one.
 

JohnRice

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Carl, the one suggestion I always give is to not just reformat the drive (which does virtually nothing) but to write over the entire drive with Disk Utility. It takes longer, but has been a real saviour for me. I have found at least 50% of new HDs to have problems unless this is done before installing anything, or after there have been problems.
 

Christ Reynolds

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I didn't mean to be a prick, but I read it again and I sounded like one. My apologies.

I spend a lot of my internet time on mac forums, and I see too much of "I have a mac and it's broken, I thought these things were better than PCs!" and I guess I responded like that because the warm and fuzzy feeling should still be there, but it only got taken away temporarily, I hope.

CJ
 

Carl Miller

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Not a problem Christ...I've seen some of those forums myself. :)

I honestly would still feel warm and fuzzy about my new Mac if I wasn't a bit worried that I'm going to see a repeat of this problem soon.

But, I'm through complaining. I've ordered a new 500GB external drive from OWC to use as a backup, will look into DiskWarrior and am going to get the Mac setup back to the way it was before this happened. Hopefully, this will be a one time event and I'll be back to being a happy Mac user in no time.

John, I'm not sure I understand....if the drive is reformatted, isn't everything erased anyway?
 

Eric M Jones

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Carl,

Sorry to hear about this. Just wondering how things are going?

Yep, Macs aren't perfect, although we like to pretend they are. I had to have 3 different logic boards replaced on my G5 iMac before the thing went back to working correctly. Fortunately Apple Care does a good job. Still a frustrating experience though.

-EJ
 

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