Mac has committed suicide...

box

box

Associate
Joined
20 Nov 2005
Posts
1,228
Location
Bristol
2 weeks out of a 3-year warranty ... it's no wonder some people think these things are timed!

Late 2009 MBP 13". Trouble started yesterday morning. Opened the lid to wake it up and check emails etc ... I was greeted by a dialogue asking me to re-enter my Time Machine encryption password. I thought it was a bit odd, but nothing major. Everything seemed relatively normal until I realised nothing was actually responding. When I clicked on dock icons, they didn't bounce or even try to open. I couldn't drag windows around the screen. Nothing would do anything. Even the password I had just entered for Time Machine was still greyed out, not accepted nor refused. In fact, the only thing that would work was the Apple menu in the top left. I opened it and hit restart. It began to reboot, but ultimately froze. I did a hard shut down.

To cut a long story short, it started up ok. However, my TM drive was corrupted (would not unlock) and so I erased that and restored from an TM image I had off-site. That was that sorted. But there were strings and strings of errors being generated in Console. Runtime corruption on my TM drive. Runtime corruption on Macintosh HD. Various other odd errors and problems. I ran a Disk Utility check on my boot drive, which highlighted 'file system errors'. Tried a repair, but this failed. Not looking good, but I've got a fresh backup at least. Thought it might be worth running Disk Utility from the ML recovery image to see if the repair had any more luck. It didn't. However, now the Mac won't boot at all. It gets to the grey apple screen, then a progress bar appears for about 30 seconds before it just powers itself off.

What on earth has happened? Has my hard drive just died and taken down my backup drive with it? SMART readings for the boot drive are all ok. Really not a great time for this to happen. I just want to get things up and running again ASAP, but I do not want to simply erase and reinstall on a faulty HDD. Thoughts?

To add, I've just done a memory upgrade to 8GB (about a week ago). Can't see why this would be causing these issues, but worth a mention!
 
Soldato
Joined
26 May 2009
Posts
22,100
2 weeks out of a 3-year warranty ... it's no wonder some people think these things are timed!

Do apple do that thing where you can still buy the extended warranty for up to 30 days after the warranty ends? or is that with 1yr warranty's? or another company? lol. Anyway my point was see if they will let you buy an extended warranty, then wait a few days and claim off it.
 
Soldato
Joined
9 Apr 2008
Posts
19,696
Location
Bedford
Yeah as above really, go into the apple store and ask for some help especially if it is so soon after the warranty period, they are usually very nice about about.
 
Associate
Joined
31 Dec 2010
Posts
2,427
Location
Sussex
So either way your data is good and backed up?

Then download Parted Magic, burn it and run the included GSmartControl program (labeled 'Disk Health' on Parted Magic) and run its extended test.

Alternatively you can go to HDD manufacturer's site and download their utility and burn that but gsmartcontrol is usually better. If that passes the drive is most likely good. There is a possibility that the SATA connection has worked lose or of course that the motherboard's going. But first try the easy stuff...

Maybe an excuse to buy a SSD?
 

box

box

Associate
OP
Joined
20 Nov 2005
Posts
1,228
Location
Bristol
It would seem we have a culprit!

imag0087je.jpg


Thankfully still well within RMA period :)

Now for the long process of doing a clean install. Shame there's no excuse for an SSD purchase just yet!
 
Back
Top Bottom