Thats It: Officially Pissed Off At My iBook

Posted:
in Genius Bar edited January 2014
So much weird stuff has happened in the last week, now this:

Apps crashing left and right. When they crash, my screen turns blue, then its back to normal, but no apps running of course. Kind of makes it hard to do... well, anything. I bought my computer 200 miles away, so its not liek I can march right in and have it looked at. The local Mac retailer are full of total jackasses. This is not going to be fun.

Why? Why me? I am soooooooooooooo disappointed in this computer's performance lately. I can't get anything done without something crashing.

What do I do now? It only a few days past a month since I bought it?

I'm fuming right now....... this is not good.
«1

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 40
    kecksykecksy Posts: 1,002member
    Did you install third party RAM? Sometimes it breaks a ****s your machine up.



    Have you tried repairing permissions?
  • Reply 2 of 40
    OMFG... I can't believe this. Tonight I open my iBook 800 to load some songs on my ipod before i work out and *BAM* my machine locks up. Fine I say, I manually shut it down and go work out. I come back and turn it on and the F***ING sceen starts flickering at the gray apple screen. I sh!t ya'll not and yes I have read the whole Fellowship thread to dealth and didn't think it was even worth my time to post anything in there. Now this has bitten me in the ass. I AM PISSED!



    I take good care of my stuff. Never does this thing come in harms way and is always transported in my Targus laptop backpack. The damn thing is still under the one year warranty thank god.
  • Reply 3 of 40
    FellowShip, how far did your ibook get before it would lock up? I can't get the damn thing to make it past the log on screen at best before it locks up and I can't do anything or the screen goes black.
  • Reply 4 of 40
    trebuchettrebuchet Posts: 176member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Kecksy

    Did you install third party RAM? Sometimes it breaks a ****s your machine up.



    Have you tried repairing permissions?




    How/where? Sorry, new to the Mac stuff. How would I do this and where would I find it? I ran disk utility earlier today.

    Yes, I installed 3rd party ram. How can I check to make sure its working?
  • Reply 5 of 40
    Have you tried booting up into single user mode?? This fixed my sister's iBook... she was doing a system update (to 10.2.4 i'd guess) and somehow it got botched. stuff started running really slow so she rebooted, but it booted up to a black screen. I tried booting to single user mode (read how on macosxhints.com or... if anyone here knows the keyboard shortcut...) it has something to do with holding "s" down on startup... but i'm not quite sure. Then you do a fsck fix of the disk.... and reboot from that. it worked like a charm. once you get it fixed up, if this works, make sure to verify permissions et al.
  • Reply 6 of 40
    trebuchettrebuchet Posts: 176member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by sobelizzard

    Have you tried booting up into single user mode?? This fixed my sister's iBook... she was doing a system update (to 10.2.4 i'd guess) and somehow it got botched. stuff started running really slow so she rebooted, but it booted up to a black screen. I tried booting to single user mode (read how on macosxhints.com or... if anyone here knows the keyboard shortcut...) it has something to do with holding "s" down on startup... but i'm not quite sure. Then you do a fsck fix of the disk.... and reboot from that. it worked like a charm. once you get it fixed up, if this works, make sure to verify permissions et al.



    How do I verify permissions?
  • Reply 7 of 40
    mcqmcq Posts: 1,543member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by trebuchet

    How do I verify permissions?



    Being that I'm half paying attn and thought this was an April Fools joke at first, I wasn't going to reply. Assuming you are having trouble, use Disk Utility to Repair Permissions... go to Apps --> Utilities --> Disk Utilitiy, click on your HD , then click on the First Aid tab and either Verify or Repair Permissions based on what you want to do.
  • Reply 8 of 40
    trebuchettrebuchet Posts: 176member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by MCQ

    Assuming you are having trouble, use Disk Utility to Repair Permissions... go to Apps --> Utilities --> Disk Utilitiy, click on your HD , then click on the First Aid tab and either Verify or Repair Permissions based on what you want to do.



    I already did that earlier today. I just logged in under single user mode. Funny thing is, it didn't look like it was supposed to.

    According to my book I have here, the last line should read: "localhost#". Mine did not. It read "sh -2.05a# fsck -y". I still ran the "fsck -y" and got the "disk appears to be ok" message.

    This is confusing me. I've tried all these little fixes and my problems persist.



    Why would you think this thread is a joke? I'm getting reall really pissed off about my computer here and now people think I'm joking. How I wish I was...
  • Reply 9 of 40
    mcqmcq Posts: 1,543member
    My apologies... as I stated, I was half paying attn to the threads here, and I skimmed your post, saw something about a blue screen and immediately thought Windows, and considering this is April 1, well I hope you can figure out that I jumped the gun a little. Sorry about that, and I certainly hope that your iBook issues get resolved soon.



    Edit: Did you try doing an archive-install of Jaguar again to see if maybe just some system files got messed up?
  • Reply 10 of 40
    trebuchettrebuchet Posts: 176member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by MCQ

    My apologies... as I stated, I was half paying attn to the threads here, and I skimmed your post, saw something about a blue screen and immediately thought Windows, and considering this is April 1, well I hope you can figure out that I jumped the gun a little. Sorry about that, and I certainly hope that your iBook issues get resolved soon.



    Edit: Did you try doing an archive-install of Jaguar again to see if maybe just some system files got messed up?




    My bad as well. I'm in a crappy mood because of this. Thanks for your help and hints.

    As for an archive-install, I looked in my Mac book once again and didn't see anything pertaining to this except in the "clean install" section. The confusing part of the instructions: It always refers to an OSX disc. I have 2. Do they always refer to it as a single disc to save time and space? I have Mac OSX Install Disc 1 and 2.

    After all I've done today, would it help/hurt to run the Hardware Test disc?
  • Reply 11 of 40
    mcqmcq Posts: 1,543member
    You could run the Hardware test disc, I don't know if it'd help any but it's worth a shot.



    As far as the OS discs, I think they're referring to the first, as the second disc I think is language packs and printer drivers. To do an archive and install (which should keep/transfer things from your Application directory, and your home directory, as opposed to the clean install which does a reformat first I believe), put in your OS X disc 1, reboot and hold down the 'C' key to have it boot off the CD, and go through the install process, choosing the Archive and Install option.
  • Reply 12 of 40
    fellowshipfellowship Posts: 5,038member
    I hope you get yours back soon and not scratched



    Fellowship
  • Reply 13 of 40
    alcimedesalcimedes Posts: 5,486member
    well crap, if you installed some other RAM, pull it out.



    then see if it boots.



    high, high probability this is the problem.



    also, sending to the GB.
  • Reply 14 of 40
    My friend had pretty much the same problems. It gets worse every day and finally the machine wont start at all. It was the logic board. I hope you are still under warranty.



    - Snowster
  • Reply 15 of 40
    alcimedesalcimedes Posts: 5,486member
    oh, see my link in the other thread about the huge amount of bad capacitors on the market right now. interesting story.



    basically a whole pile of companies thought they were buying legit capacitors, but they were using a stolen formula that leaks and screws up MB's.



    it's hosing all storts of manufacturers.
  • Reply 16 of 40
    trebuchettrebuchet Posts: 176member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Snowster

    My friend had pretty much the same problems. It gets worse every day and finally the machine wont start at all. It was the logic board. I hope you are still under warranty.



    - Snowster




    Yeah, I'm still way under warranty. My machine was a month old on the 1st. I just tried to wake up my iBook from sleep... it didn't and I had to restart. Then the ? folder appeared during start up and it took a long time to boot up. I'm searching my Missing Manual book to try to find the fix to keep the folder icon from showing up at start up.

    I also emailed the retailer I bought my iBook from, explaining in detail the problems I have had. Thursday, I only have one class at college. I am taking that time to back up all of my files. I have a feeling this isn't going to fix itself.
  • Reply 17 of 40
    ast3r3xast3r3x Posts: 5,012member
    sounds like it was a problem with the ram...but maybe not



    not sure if ram can mess up diff parts of the MB if its not compatible, but at least its underwarrenty
  • Reply 18 of 40
    trebuchettrebuchet Posts: 176member
    I guess I could take out my ram tonight and see what happens. I'm just curious as to why you guys think it might be the ram. I want to understand as much as I can before I do anything more really.
  • Reply 19 of 40
    alcimedesalcimedes Posts: 5,486member
    well, it would be bad ram for a few reasons.



    1. ram is the only new thing added to the system



    2. ram is the only thing you can really add yourself anyway



    3. ram that goes bad breaks shit big time. all sorts of things get FUBAR if you have bad ram in there, and it's tough to nail down.



    so



    best thing to do is take the ram out and see if it works. it might be the problem, but i'm starting to wonder if Apple isn't using those leaky capacitors in their laptops that i've been reading about. that would explain why it's one or two batches that seem to have all the problems, while the others are just peachy.
  • Reply 20 of 40
    amorphamorph Posts: 7,112member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by trebuchet

    I guess I could take out my ram tonight and see what happens. I'm just curious as to why you guys think it might be the ram.



    RAM, and also consumer HDDs, are not always made under the most rigorous tolerances. Cheap RAM is something of a crapshoot because it's that much more likely to be defective. A lot of what the "premium" brands are charging you for is lower production efficiency because they're rejecting more of the stuff that comes off their lines.



    Just to make things more interesting, OS X has an extremely low tolerance for bad RAM. In order to get the best possible performance, it expects RAM to work perfectly. That being the case, a single flaky module can send it into convulsions easily. Since a lot of people buy cheap RAM, bad RAM is an early suspect in any random crashing and flakiness. (Premium RAM is not immune, of course: I've read maybe three stories total of bad RAM from Crucial and even Apple itself over the last couple of years. But the odds that premium RAM will be defective are a lot lower.)



    Try it. See if it helps. If so, see if you can exchange the defective part for a replacement.
Sign In or Register to comment.