My computer is dead!

Well, just like the title says, my computer is dead. It fell only about 1 foot onto tile, and I got the beach ball so I restarted it. Now it won't boot up. Not the normal way or booting from the Leopard disc. It just brings up an image of a file with a question mark that flashes at me. Is my computer dead??? Please help.

The cause of computer failure following a drop is generally attributed to a damaged hard drive. Macbooks have a sudden motion sensor that prevents that sort of damage, but since it was only a one foot fall, I'm thinking the sensor didn't have enough time to "park" the hard drive. So in all likelihood, you have a broken hard drive and a swap could very well fix it.

Is there are visible damage to the outside such as dents or scratches? If not, then take it to an Apple Store or call up Apple to try and get it fixed under warranty. Since you have a MBP, you're going to have to send it in to get the hard drive replaced.

If it's just the harddrive, you should at least be able to boot from the DVD… did you wait a while before letting go of 'C'?

I just got it to boot from dvd after holding down c for longer. When I run disk utility or startup disk, it can't find my HD. It only shows the DVD drive. There are no scratches or visible damage, so I'm going to take it to the Apple Store. Hopefully they'll fix it for me. Do they do repairs at the store or will they have to send it away. I ask, because I have papers on there that I need to finish ASAP for school.

I hope you had a backup. I would agree the drop killed the Hard Drive. Seen it happen so many times. Sorry and hope you lost no important data.

Unfortunately, no. I don't have a backup. i never learned how before, and I am in the process of saving up for an external drive for Time Machine.

I know this isn't what you want to hear, but you won't be getting those papers back, at least not until you spend ridiculous amounts of money on a data recovery service.

Since the hard drive isn't easily accessible on a MBP like it is on a regular Macbook, I'm 99% sure you'll have to send it in to get it repaired.

Well, the hard drive is trashed. However, they will be able to replace it in house. As soon as the replacement HD arrives, they will install it and give me a call. So, I'm upset that I held off buying a backup drive for time machine just because I couldn't yet afford a firewire HD. At least I don't have to pay for the repair. Possibly the worst thing is that I will, AGAIN, have to install XP on my computer! Haha. What a pain that is.

Well, the good news is that I have my computer back. It works now. They estimated that it would be 3-5 days, but it only took them about 3 hours! So, while I am going through the pain of reinstalling everything, including XP, it could be a lot worse, right?

Thundermoon1994 said:

Well, the good news is that I have my computer back. It works now. They estimated that it would be 3-5 days, but it only took them about 3 hours! So, while I am going through the pain of reinstalling everything, including XP, it could be a lot worse, right?

Click to expand...

Exactly. Now get a free 2GB mozy.com account and start backing at least some of your stuff up. Then get a external hdd for christmas.

Thundermoon1994 said:

Well, the good news is that I have my computer back. It works now. They estimated that it would be 3-5 days, but it only took them about 3 hours! So, while I am going through the pain of reinstalling everything, including XP, it could be a lot worse, right?

Click to expand...

So glad to hear it all worked out for you and so fast also!

Now as soon as you can afford it, get a nice Firewire/USB 2.0 External and back up your stuff!!

Definitely

that's a real drag thunder, but kudos' to Apple yet again.

knock on wood, my mbp has been dropped or knocked off the side table at least 4 or 5 times between 1' and 3' (onto carpeted floor though) and no problems so far. But, does point to why with only a single backup type, a bootable backup for me is much better course to take than Time Machine.

Wow! That was quite a horror story, Thunder. Sorry you had to go through this. Like bob says, look into getting yourself an external hard drive to systematically back up all your stuff. And backup right before installing any software or OS update. If you use SuperDuper!, it'll be bootable.

It's not yet compatible with Leopard but it should be real soon. David Nanian does an excellent job.