Brand New MacBook Pro will not Restart - Please Help!

Can someone tell me what's going on with my brand new MBP?

I am a recent switcher from PC to Mac who is REALLY trying to love my new MBP. It's a 15" 2.4ghz, 250GB, 2GB RAM, Leopard 10.5.2. In every respect, it's an awesome machine, except for the incredibly frustrating fact that in the two days I've had it I've had to hard restart TWICE. It just will not restart without major problems. Two days ago, I received the machine, did nothing more than boot it up, set up a network connection (super easy), play with some of the installed programs (which I love!), and transfer a couple gigabytes of photos (all JPEG files) from my old PC. Everything worked perfectly; I couldn't have been happier with my new machine. Then I decided to do the "hardware test" recommended in the manual by booting up while holding down the "D" key. I closed ("quit") all my open programs, and clicked Apple > Restart. The dock, icons, and cursor disappeared, leaving only the desktop image, and it sat like that, with the little gear spinning over the desktop, for 40 MINUTES. For the first ten minutes I thought maybe it was running some sort of software update as it was the first time I restarted, but it just hung and hung. I got on the phone with Apple support, and they had me hold down power to force it off, boot up in safe mode, delete two sub-folders from the "System" folder (I can't remember where they were, but one was called "Cache"). Then I rebooted and everything was working fine. For two days I've been transferring files from my PC via an ethernet cable (probably 20GB, no problems), and I installed a bunch of programs like Word 2008 for Mac, Photoshop CS3 & Firefox, plus several little utilities like ClamXav & Adium. All installations went smoothly, and all the programs worked flawlessly (I couldn't believe how fast Photoshop ran!). After all of this, I figured I should restart, so, same deal. I quit all programs, hit Apple > Restart, and the SAME THING AS BEFORE! I get just the desktop image with gear spinning, and it WILL NOT restart. Waited 25 minutes this time before forcing the machine off. Apple Support is closed right now, and I can't remember the folders I was told to delete before and I'm not about to start sorting through the System files on my own. So I booted up normally, which seemed to work fine, but now some things are running REALLY slow, especially (for some reason) Firefox and Safari. The internet had performed flawlessly (SO much faster than my PC laptop), and I have a full airport signal, but since the last restart it takes 30 seconds or so just to open Google's page, and a full minute to open something like NYTimes.com. Firefox and Safari are equally slow. I feel like I'm on dial-up. This is a brand new issue, as my internet (on any browser) was zipping along without a hiccup for the last two days. WHAT IS GOING ON? I was so smitten with my MBP for the first day, but these problems are ridiculous. My 7 year old HP piece of junk laptop never had problems like this.

Could someone please tell me what's going on with my MBP? I would greatly appreciate any help or advice.

It could be a hardware issue in which case you would need to get it replaced but if you are still under warranty that should be no problem at all. On another note you don't need to restart the machine after you install programs and things like that, although that probably has nothing to do with your problem.

Kial

I'd start with the basics first. Use Disk Utility to Repair Permissions and Verify Disk. (applications/utilities folder)
If you find the disk needs repaired, follow the instructions on this link.
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=302672

After installing or updating, it is common to repair permissions with Disk Utility.
It can save you a lot of problems afterwards.

Still debating whether to return/exchange

I spent about 30 min with Apple Support yesterday; they had me do exactly what a couple of people have suggested: repairing permissions and repairing the disc. During the permissions process, the utility seemed to find 5 or 6 files that it isolated as somehow out of place. When I repaired the disk, it gave me the green message that the disk was okay, and the next reboot went off flawlessly. Does this mean I should be in the clear now?

My main question is still: what caused this to happen? Was it something I did when I was installing programs or transferring files from my PC? Or was it caused by some internal OSX flaw that had nothing to do with me? When I asked the tech this, she replied that it was probably the OS itself, but had no answer for what might have caused it. Her only response was, "These things sometimes happen." Well, that's obvious, since it happened to me, but I want to know why, and more importantly, how to prevent it from happening again.

Also, are there any stress tests I can use to "put it through it's paces" to make sure it's not going to crash, hang, or otherwise explode, say, the day after my 15 day return window closes? If it's restricted to those two freezes, I'll let it go, but if this type of misbehavior continues, it'll (sadly) be on a truck back to Cupertino.

UPDATE:
So, to add to my previous post, I've been trying out some different programs, I captured some video from my non-HD video camera and was editing it in iMovie. Actually, I hadn't "edited" anything yet, just dragged a clip to the project window and was playing it, when the whole program crashed. It just up and vanished with an "iMovie quit unexpectedly" error message. I'm posting the first part of the error log that was generated below. I was not doing anything that would "stress" the processor, just playing a 1min clip in the player window. Also, looking at the "Activity Monitor," I see that I have 20MB of "swap" memory used. Isn't swap only used when there isn't enough RAM to run your applications? How would running a simple task in iMovie use more than 2GB of RAM? Please guys, I am dangerously close to returning this laptop, which I really want to keep. But 2 perpetual freezes and 1 program crash during routine use in the first 3 days is not what I was expecting from Apple. I'm also noticing now strange little random stalls -- like huge programs like Photoshop will start in amazing times, like 4 or 5 seconds, but TextEdit, the little RTF utility, might take 10-20 seconds. Along with iMovie problems, it seems like it's internal OSX issues that I'm seeing.

Can anyone tell me what's going on? Should I return/exchange?


______________________
Here's the initial info from the iMovie error log:

Process: iMovie [168]
Path: /Applications/iMovie.app/Contents/MacOS/iMovie
Identifier: com.apple.iMovie7
Version: 7.1.1 (529)
Build Info: iMovieApp-5290000~2
Code Type: X86 (Native)
Parent Process: launchd [74]

Date/Time: 2008-03-11 20:39:14.774 -0400
OS Version: Mac OS X 10.5.2 (9C2028)
Report Version: 6

Exception Type: EXC_BAD_ACCESS (SIGBUS)
Exception Codes: KERN_PROTECTION_FAILURE at 0x0000000000000000
Crashed Thread: 0

New MB Pro 15" 2.53mhz can't restart

I just replaced my new macbookpro on saturday to mac retailer since the hard drive failure...total disaster for me, this is a brand new computer and lost all my working files and got the replacement on saturday, today my replacement couldn't be restarted after all the time to reinstall my softwares for 2 nights and one proposal file that i work on since last night...are gone....

What the heck is going on with these new mb pro? this is the worst experiences ever have with apple.... 2 bad experiences in one same product line: 15" 2.53....

I've posted to other blog on my first experience...with this one will be the second one...that's how frustated I am.

APPLE PLEASE RESPOND TO THIS, Im very frustated now and indeed this news spread across asia...your sales will be drop significantly...

Harsono Kwan.

bedrock said:

I just replaced my new macbookpro on saturday to mac retailer since the hard drive failure...total disaster for me, this is a brand new computer and lost all my working files and got the replacement on saturday, today my replacement couldn't be restarted after all the time to reinstall my softwares for 2 nights and one proposal file that i work on since last night...are gone....

What the heck is going on with these new mb pro? this is the worst experiences ever have with apple.... 2 bad experiences in one same product line: 15" 2.53....

I've posted to other blog on my first experience...with this one will be the second one...that's how frustated I am.

APPLE PLEASE RESPOND TO THIS, Im very frustated now and indeed this news spread across asia...your sales will be drop significantly...

Harsono Kwan.

Click to expand...

Do you think people care about what you say?

Go to the Apple store and speak to Apple. They can help you, I have had 5 MBPs in 3 weeks. It is because its a new product.

Smarty pants, In this case, it proves that you reply mine...

Well, too bad...I know some professionals like me out there who has the heart and share. Don't abuse this thread with garbage.

LOL, who cares you own 5 or 100 mbpro. Glad that Apple company doesn't employ you to take care the customers...It will go bankrupt in less than a day.

Such a waste to reply your message...

B&O said:

Do you think people care about what you say?

Go to the Apple store and speak to Apple. They can help you, I have had 5 MBPs in 3 weeks. It is because its a new product.

Click to expand...

bedrock said:

Smarty pants, In this case, it proves that you reply mine...

Well, too bad...I know some professionals like me out there who has the heart and share. Don't abuse this thread with garbage.

LOL, who cares you own 5 or 100 mbpro. Glad that Apple company doesn't employ you to take care the customers...It will go bankrupt in less than a day.

Such a waste to reply your message...

Click to expand...

I am not paid to give you good service, as I said your statement stating that if Apple don't help you people won't buy their computer don't you think that is a little self centered? I have shared my problem with each of my MBP and the service that I received from Apple and not random posts on a thread on the internet. If you want Apple to something about your problem call them or go to an Apple store like everyone else on the planet.

I have no time for you as you have two posts and will be gone within a week and will complain and complain and when Apple finally fixes your problem you won't ever come back again. Contact Apple if you have a problem with your computer (when it is new).

Bedrock, I agree with you that apple seems like some state of the art thing that can never go wrong, especially after using Pcs and windows...
But its honest to say that its an electronic item at the end of it all. And sometimes luck also plays its part! I'm also a windows user who just switched over to a Mac..but touchwood,things have been going fine so far.
All the best with your replacement!!