03-14-2011, 08:53 PM

Anybody recognize the following problem with my daughter's Macbook?

"Makes the noise like it's turning on and screen goes to first grey stage with the spinning circle, then it won't go any further, eventually turning itself off again. "

As a PC person I don't know what could be wrong. Currently she's in Nigeria, but will be back in the UK later this week. If all else fails she wants me to book her an appointment her local Apple shop for Friday.

She's also had recent problems with external drives, first with a 16Gb USB stick I bought her, which she filled up with lots of large image files. She then deleted these to make room for some other stuff, but the Mac still thinks the stick is full.

Then with a new WD Passport 2.5" 250Gb external USB drive which the Mac said needed formatting and afterwards refused to recognize at all.

03-14-2011, 09:42 PM

ask her if she hears any strange noises coming from the drive. see if she can boot from the original discs and do a "repair disk" on the startup volume.

it is located in the utilities section.

03-23-2011, 08:17 AM

Genius Bar guys in London Apple Shop eventually decided that the disk drive is dead and they can't fix it other than replacement, so she thought about it for a day (MacBook is 4 years old) and went and bought a new 13 inch Pro. Well that's one way of fixing it!!
I've just received an email -

Puter all up and running, backed up, updated, tuned in, logged on and ready to go. Phew. Timemachine is very clever.

So alls well that ends well, even if it cost her the best part of £1300.

03-23-2011, 08:38 AM

Originally Posted by pjaj

Genius Bar guys in London Apple Shop eventually decided that the disk drive is dead and they can't fix it other than replacement, so she thought about it for a day (MacBook is 4 years old) and went and bought a new 13 inch Pro. Well that's one way of fixing it!!
I've just received an email -

So alls well that ends well, even if it cost her the best part of £1300.

Unfortunately...a replacement hard drive would have only cost $50US...and they are VERY easy to replace.

Hmmm...£1300 vs. $50US...I know which one I would choose.

Regardless...sounds to me someone wanted a new computer!

- Nick

03-23-2011, 08:55 AM

Originally Posted by pjaj

Genius Bar guys in London Apple Shop eventually decided that the disk drive is dead and they can't fix it other than replacement.

that is not true if only the hard disk is dead. as pigoo3 says, its easily replaceable. takes about 5 minutes.

03-23-2011, 09:03 AM

Genius bar in London says the drive is dead? And they cant fix it?

This is just BS. It is easy to replace the hard drive and, they are really cheap nowdays!

Isnt that store one of Apples "flagship" stores? I am shocked they tell customers that. Hire some people that know what they are doing please ...

03-23-2011, 09:14 AM

I'm thinking the OP's statement of what the London Apple Store said regarding the "fix-it" part...refers to the dead hard drive itself not being repairable...versus replacing the hard drive with a new one to get the MacBook operational again.

- Nick

03-23-2011, 09:50 AM

haha, yeah, that would make more sense.

03-23-2011, 10:07 AM

Well there were other considerations.
Firstly I had already replaced the original drive when it died about 2 1/2 years ago with a third party drive, upgrading from the original 80Gb to 320Gb. I agree it's not difficult or expensive and you don't need the Apple Store to do it if you are used to building PCs. Apple Store guys spotted this replacement. I haven't got the full story from my daughter yet, but she seemed to imply that somehow it would cost more because of this - BS. I know that 2 1/2 years ago an "official" drive would have cost a lot more than what I paid fof one 4 times bigger.
Secondly it's a 4 year old machine, so maybe time for a replacement anyway.
However my daughter is the opposite of a techie (barely numerate by my standards ) and neither is she a gadget freak (other than having an old iPhone) so replacing the MacBook was a hard headed business decision. She's a freelance journalist and needs a reliable machine to carry round the world with her and write her new book on as well.
BTW, she managed to solve the problem with the WD Passport drive all by herself - she took it back to the shop where she bought it and they gave her a replacement which seems to work.
What I will do is buy another cheap drive to replace the dead one and then she'll have a backup machine for emergencies. Anyone know if there's an easy way to keep the two in sync? Will Time Machine work between two Macs?
As for your quoted dollar prices, think yourselves lucky; the price is nearly the same numerically in the UK, just change the dollar sign for a pound sign at $1.6242 = £1. Apple know how to rip us off both coming and going.

03-23-2011, 10:51 AM

My MBP thinks my 4gb flash drive is full too, like the op said. Why is that?

03-23-2011, 11:32 AM

Originally Posted by john.med

My MBP thinks my 4gb flash drive is full too, like the op said. Why is that?

try emptying the trash.

03-23-2011, 11:45 AM

Originally Posted by robduckyworth

try emptying the trash.

Serious? My trash is emptied often,.. I've been reformatting it every time.

03-23-2011, 12:30 PM

Originally Posted by john.med

Serious? My trash is emptied often,.. I've been reformatting it every time.

Do you mean you've been reformatting the whole flash drive every time? If so, it should be empty. Sounds like the same problem my daughter had (still has ). I haven't asked her about this yet. I'll let you know if the flash USB drive works with the new MacBook.

03-23-2011, 12:32 PM

Originally Posted by john.med

My MBP thinks my 4gb flash drive is full too, like the op said. Why is that?

What "robduckyworth" suggested (emptying the trash) is usually the solution.

When this problem happens many times it is because folks:

- plug their flash drive into their computer
- drag the unwanted files from the flash drive to the trash
- then unplug the flash drive

When this happens the "deleted files" from the flash drive are not actually deleted, since the trash was not emptied WHILE the flash drive was still plugged into the computer.

If you haven't tried this...give it a shot.

- Nick

03-23-2011, 04:46 PM

I'll give that a whirl next time.

Thanks folks.