10 day Switcher and i am disappointed :-(

[thoras_herd]

Well, was loving my refurb Mac until last night...did a software update, during which i got a message saying the update had unexpectedly terminated. so i surfed a bit then switched my Mac off. Went back to it about 30 mins later, tried to turn it on and it wouldn't get past the progress bar / loading page. Tried to reboot it again and momentarily saw a black page with some white writing in the top l/h corner - then it just got stuck on a blue screen again. How disappointed was i?

Called Mac support this morning on their rather cheeky 0870 fee-charging number, who were helpful and advised me to reload the OS - popped the disc in and lo and behold the discs it shipped with were the wrong ones. Then the guy on Support tried to get me an appointment with the Mac store in Regent Street - nothing available for this weekend - and he could only book me in a day in advance, so couldn't even make an apointment for the week. He then told me I could try one of their authorised service centres, but there may be a charge. Was not happy about that at all - didn't see why i should pay to fix something 10 days old.

I eventually managed to get an appointment at Albion Computers, a reseller and service centre, they had the correct OS discs and got my Mac up and running again without losing any of the stuff i had done on the machine since getting it 10 days ago. They also advised me that technically I was not covered by the warranty because it was a software problem which caused the Mac to go wrong. Thankfully, they did not charge me!

I am now really nevous about my refurb Mac and scared of doing software updates. I guess if it goes wrong again I can demand a full refund and send it back as something fundamentally is not working, but I just feel so disappointed. No-one else I know has had this problem - maybe I have got a dud machine...fingers crossed it is a one-off though as i just really want to love my Mac again.

Anyway, London based Mac users - Albion Computers on The Strand were great and I highly recommend them, really helpful people and the shop was lovely and calm. Micro Anvika wanted to make an 'admin' charge of £80 plus VAT even though the machine is in warranty!

 

[MacHeadCase]

I would get back on the phone with Apple pronto and ask them to ship you the right disks right away. This makes no sense at all since it is their fault they shipped the computer with the wrong disks.

And technically, since you haven't used your Mac for 14 days, you could have asked them a refund or at least a better solution then what they offered you. Some have returned their Macs for less than that.

 

[cwa107]

I would get back on the phone with Apple pronto and ask them to ship you the right disks right away. This makes no sense at all since it is their fault they shipped the computer with the wrong disks.

And technically, since you haven't used your Mac for 14 days, you could have asked them a refund or at least a better solution then what they offered you. Some have returned their Macs for less than that.

I agree and would add that when you run Software Updates, it might not be a bad idea to shut down anything else you're doing at the moment and let the update finish and reboot when prompted. It could be that one of the processes you were running at the time interfered with the update process.

 

[Village Idiot]

Macs just work

There's always going to be problems some where. I'd follow MacHeadCase's suggestion and get those disk asap and wait until then to do any updating. Back up your stuff as well. I'm a new OSX user, but not new to computers. It sounds like it could have been an isolated incident. As long as you have everything backed up, don't be afraid to go to town on it. Short of causing hardware failure (which is extremely hard to do unless you're working on trying to over clock or some thing that would alter the way that the hardware itself works), nothing is permanent and as long as you have your data backed up and the OS disc, it can always be undone.

Plus causing screw ups can be a great learning experience.

 

[thoras_herd]

thanks for the feedback - the Apple support guy this morning said he would send me the correct discs - could take 10 days to receive. i comtemplated asking for a refund this morning but thought i would see if it was an isolated incident.

i was running ichat whilst the updates were updating so i will take cwa017 advice in future - the guy at Albion also said it appeared that i had been running a programme during the update and he advised against this too.

I am going to run a software update this evening - if it cocks up again they can take this machine back and refund me - my 14 days are up on the 17th so i guess i should try it again before then.

thanks again - wish me luck!

 

[baggss]

One thing to keep in mind. A clean install of OSX is NOT like a clean install on Windows. Unless you specifically tell the installer to wipe the drive, you're not going to lose any data. Both a "Clean" install and an "Archive and Install" simply put a new bootable system on your computer but do not destroy the old bootable system or any files in the process. The computer experts you took the machine to did nothing other than insert the discs and select install. All of your data was left alone by default.

 

[drewschlosser]

Well if they loaded

Well, was loving my refurb Mac until last night...did a software update, during which i got a message saying the update had unexpectedly terminated. so i surfed a bit then switched my Mac off. Went back to it about 30 mins later, tried to turn it on and it wouldn't get past the progress bar / loading page. Tried to reboot it again and momentarily saw a black page with some white writing in the top l/h corner - then it just got stuck on a blue screen again. How disappointed was i?

Called Mac support this morning on their rather cheeky 0870 fee-charging number, who were helpful and advised me to reload the OS - popped the disc in and lo and behold the discs it shipped with were the wrong ones. Then the guy on Support tried to get me an appointment with the Mac store in Regent Street - nothing available for this weekend - and he could only book me in a day in advance, so couldn't even make an apointment for the week. He then told me I could try one of their authorised service centres, but there may be a charge. Was not happy about that at all - didn't see why i should pay to fix something 10 days old.

I eventually managed to get an appointment at Albion Computers, a reseller and service centre, they had the correct OS discs and got my Mac up and running again without losing any of the stuff i had done on the machine since getting it 10 days ago. They also advised me that technically I was not covered by the warranty because it was a software problem which caused the Mac to go wrong. Thankfully, they did not charge me!

I am now really nevous about my refurb Mac and scared of doing software updates. I guess if it goes wrong again I can demand a full refund and send it back as something fundamentally is not working, but I just feel so disappointed. No-one else I know has had this problem - maybe I have got a dud machine...fingers crossed it is a one-off though as i just really want to love my Mac again.

Anyway, London based Mac users - Albion Computers on The Strand were great and I highly recommend them, really helpful people and the shop was lovely and calm. Micro Anvika wanted to make an 'admin' charge of £80 plus VAT even though the machine is in warranty!

The wrong OSX version for your machine then yes you will get compatibility issues. Updates shouldn't have an effect on your system. Wherever you got the machine from is responsible for loading the proper software. Sounds like one of their techs may have been smoking a bit of the crack when they recertified your refurb.

 

[thoras_herd]

the discs that shipped with my refurb should have been 10.4.6 - they sent 10.4.8 - so when the support guy tried to help me reinstall the OS my mac just kept showing an error saying that it could not install the software on to the machine. thankfully the lovely chaps at Albion helped me out.

i got the machine from Apple UK online store.

...and i just did a software update, a restart and...fingers crossed really hard....all seems well at the moment...i'll risk a smile

 

[baggss]

I can not imagine that the discs being 10.4.6 or 10.4.8 would make any difference, they are both versions of 10.4 either way. It almost sounds like the discs they sent with the machine were not the discs for your model as Apple only gives you discs for the computer you bought and they can only be used in that model (i.e you can't use a MacBook disc in an iMac and so on).

 

[MacHeadCase]

I'm with baggss on this, it shouldn't make any difference at all. If you bought an iMac and you got the install disks for a MacBook Pro for instance, then, yes, that would be a problem.

 

[thoras_herd]

yes, very strange - am i being fobbed off do you think? both the Apple support guy and the Albion guy said I had the wrong discs - Apple are even sending me the correct ones. all very strange!

 

[Village Idiot]

One thing to keep in mind. A clean install of OSX is NOT like a clean install on Windows. Unless you specifically tell the installer to wipe the drive, you're not going to lose any data. Both a "Clean" install and an "Archive and Install" simply put a new bootable system on your computer but do not destroy the old bootable system or any files in the process. The computer experts you took the machine to did nothing other than insert the discs and select install. All of your data was left alone by default.

Actually, you have to format the drive for a clean install of windows or else it will just reinstall the os and leave everything on there.

 

[baggss]

That may be true. Every install of Windows I have done has either required a reformat (i.e it couldn't fix something) or for a brand new drive. Mind you this was for WinME, NT 4 SP6, 2000 and XP SP1.