- Joined
- Jan 27, 2007
- Messages
- 327
- Reaction score
- 23
- Points
- 18
- Location
- In your closet, behind the winter coats.
- Your Mac's Specs
- 13.3" MacBook Intel Core Duo 2GHz, 60GB HD, 512MB DDR2, and the SuperDrive.
The fun little Macbook that I just received this past Friday has now decided that it wants me to kill it. Explanation? You got it!
I left the room for a moment to grab a snack (because piggies love to eat!) and I come back to my Macbook and the screen is blank and there's a little light flashing on the front. So I assume the display went to sleep, and went about doing all the things I normally do to wake it from it's slumber. Dragging my finger across the trackpad, clicking the mouse button, and moving the arrow keys. I was a bit disappointed to discover that after more than a minute that my screen didn't dance magically back to life. After several more keystrokes and finger pointing, I hesitantly restarted my Mac.
Now, I don't know about you, but I have certain expectations when I press the power button on any given appliance or consumer electronic device. The expectation I had for my Macbook wasn't an unreasonable one, I simply wanted it to do what it always does when I press the power button... which is turn on. Alas, this was not what happened. Granted, I did hear the spinning of the fans and drives and all the little internal gizmos, but nothing was happening on the screen. The only light emanating from the device was the little sleep indicator in front blinking on and off. In fact, after all those fans and disks stopped spinning, there was just eerie silence. This is what we call panic time, where I'm from kids. I pressed the power button to turn it off again (after several minutes of personal correspondance with the Almighty). I made a second attempt at starting up my magical box, only to encounter the same results. We are not amused.
I frantically drag out the very laptop that I am now typing this to you on and my first thought was to come here. Surely, someone had had this happen before. So I searched... and searched... and searched again, but it appears that I'm in a very lonely boat. So I went to the Apple support website and did my search. And behold, there were several people in my boat! The only problem is that instead of being handed oars to get the boat moving, they were handed all manner of things that are similar to oars, but in the long run, just will not move a boat. In desperation, I tried out all of the oar alternatives and I am still looking at a Macbook with a blank screen and a little flashing light on the front, making nary a sound.
Some of the oars I tried, you ask?
~ Holding down option and the power button at startup.
~ Holding down cmd, cntrl, and the power button at startup
~ Holding down cmd, option, and the buttons P & R at startup.
~ Holding down the power button alone for ten seconds.
~ Holding down the C button and the power button at startup
~ Holding down the D button and the power button at startup
~ Putting in the install disk and doing one of the above, but it escapes me which at present.
~ Checking the battery level, connection to the battery, and pressing buttons while holding the battery in my hand.
~ Removing and replacing the RAM.
All of those things to no avail. And let me tell you, I am an absolute plethora of sadness right now. I'll be calling the friendly folks at Apple first thing in the morning to see if they have some sort of magic cure all. I'm thinking they'll either want me to drive to an Apple Store, which if you've seen my preferred method of transportation, a 135 mile drive is somewhat out of the question, or they'll want me to ship it back to them so they can tinker with it for an undisclosed amount of time. I hope it all turns out roses, but for right now it's just completely ruined my night.
If you read through all of this, you deserve a cookie. And should we ever meet, I'll gladly give you one. As for advice, if you have any, great! If not, don't sweat it. I'm sure that it'll be worked out soon enough. At least I still have a computer to use until that one is fixed, though this one is not nearly as fun!
I left the room for a moment to grab a snack (because piggies love to eat!) and I come back to my Macbook and the screen is blank and there's a little light flashing on the front. So I assume the display went to sleep, and went about doing all the things I normally do to wake it from it's slumber. Dragging my finger across the trackpad, clicking the mouse button, and moving the arrow keys. I was a bit disappointed to discover that after more than a minute that my screen didn't dance magically back to life. After several more keystrokes and finger pointing, I hesitantly restarted my Mac.
Now, I don't know about you, but I have certain expectations when I press the power button on any given appliance or consumer electronic device. The expectation I had for my Macbook wasn't an unreasonable one, I simply wanted it to do what it always does when I press the power button... which is turn on. Alas, this was not what happened. Granted, I did hear the spinning of the fans and drives and all the little internal gizmos, but nothing was happening on the screen. The only light emanating from the device was the little sleep indicator in front blinking on and off. In fact, after all those fans and disks stopped spinning, there was just eerie silence. This is what we call panic time, where I'm from kids. I pressed the power button to turn it off again (after several minutes of personal correspondance with the Almighty). I made a second attempt at starting up my magical box, only to encounter the same results. We are not amused.
I frantically drag out the very laptop that I am now typing this to you on and my first thought was to come here. Surely, someone had had this happen before. So I searched... and searched... and searched again, but it appears that I'm in a very lonely boat. So I went to the Apple support website and did my search. And behold, there were several people in my boat! The only problem is that instead of being handed oars to get the boat moving, they were handed all manner of things that are similar to oars, but in the long run, just will not move a boat. In desperation, I tried out all of the oar alternatives and I am still looking at a Macbook with a blank screen and a little flashing light on the front, making nary a sound.
Some of the oars I tried, you ask?
~ Holding down option and the power button at startup.
~ Holding down cmd, cntrl, and the power button at startup
~ Holding down cmd, option, and the buttons P & R at startup.
~ Holding down the power button alone for ten seconds.
~ Holding down the C button and the power button at startup
~ Holding down the D button and the power button at startup
~ Putting in the install disk and doing one of the above, but it escapes me which at present.
~ Checking the battery level, connection to the battery, and pressing buttons while holding the battery in my hand.
~ Removing and replacing the RAM.
All of those things to no avail. And let me tell you, I am an absolute plethora of sadness right now. I'll be calling the friendly folks at Apple first thing in the morning to see if they have some sort of magic cure all. I'm thinking they'll either want me to drive to an Apple Store, which if you've seen my preferred method of transportation, a 135 mile drive is somewhat out of the question, or they'll want me to ship it back to them so they can tinker with it for an undisclosed amount of time. I hope it all turns out roses, but for right now it's just completely ruined my night.
If you read through all of this, you deserve a cookie. And should we ever meet, I'll gladly give you one. As for advice, if you have any, great! If not, don't sweat it. I'm sure that it'll be worked out soon enough. At least I still have a computer to use until that one is fixed, though this one is not nearly as fun!