Hello Folks,
As of late last week I experienced the first real problem I've ever had with my MacBook Pro, which I bought almost four years ago. I have to say, all and all I've been very pleased with Apple's products.
The one bad thing that happened to this computer is when a power surge fried my power cord and battery, both of which I had to replace. Since then every battery I have, new or the original, can barely hold a charge (e.g., it will say "77% charge, but then turn off). I also get the impression that I am getting litle electrical shocks from my computer. Basically, something in the power system is messed up, but that was three years ago and I haven't really had any other problems.
Still, I think my hard drive is done for. Thursday or Friday (2-3 days ago) the monitor started to pixelate and after changing up for a while the screen would freeze, although I could still move my mouse cursor around. I later discovered while on Skype that I could still talk as if everything were still working. So, when this started I shut the comp down, reloaded and it happened again in the start-up screen, so I shut it down again. I fiddled with this for a while then finally it started working. I did a virus scan with Clam Xav, no virus, deleted a program I had just installed (TweetDeck with Adobe Air), and everything was fine.
Just now, it happened again, but much more severe and I tried doing the same thing but then I discovered I couldn't even login. I got to the screen once, after repeated shut downs to get rid of the pixelated screen, but it wouldn't let me login (mind you it didn't give a wrong password warning, it just didnt login). Then I shut it down and since then I've only gotten the gray screen with the Apple logo and the twirling clock. After I realized it was never going to boot, I rebooted with the recovery disk and here I am. I don't really know what the recovery disk is except that its somewhere inside the laptop; I never realized this was an option before.
It says that my hard drive is not mounted and cannot be repaired, and I don't know if I can erase it and reload everything back on (I have an up to date time machine back up and another manual backup of my documents), or should I get a new hard drive. Or did that lightening storm power surge finally take its toll on the whole beast?
As of late last week I experienced the first real problem I've ever had with my MacBook Pro, which I bought almost four years ago. I have to say, all and all I've been very pleased with Apple's products.
The one bad thing that happened to this computer is when a power surge fried my power cord and battery, both of which I had to replace. Since then every battery I have, new or the original, can barely hold a charge (e.g., it will say "77% charge, but then turn off). I also get the impression that I am getting litle electrical shocks from my computer. Basically, something in the power system is messed up, but that was three years ago and I haven't really had any other problems.
Still, I think my hard drive is done for. Thursday or Friday (2-3 days ago) the monitor started to pixelate and after changing up for a while the screen would freeze, although I could still move my mouse cursor around. I later discovered while on Skype that I could still talk as if everything were still working. So, when this started I shut the comp down, reloaded and it happened again in the start-up screen, so I shut it down again. I fiddled with this for a while then finally it started working. I did a virus scan with Clam Xav, no virus, deleted a program I had just installed (TweetDeck with Adobe Air), and everything was fine.
Just now, it happened again, but much more severe and I tried doing the same thing but then I discovered I couldn't even login. I got to the screen once, after repeated shut downs to get rid of the pixelated screen, but it wouldn't let me login (mind you it didn't give a wrong password warning, it just didnt login). Then I shut it down and since then I've only gotten the gray screen with the Apple logo and the twirling clock. After I realized it was never going to boot, I rebooted with the recovery disk and here I am. I don't really know what the recovery disk is except that its somewhere inside the laptop; I never realized this was an option before.
It says that my hard drive is not mounted and cannot be repaired, and I don't know if I can erase it and reload everything back on (I have an up to date time machine back up and another manual backup of my documents), or should I get a new hard drive. Or did that lightening storm power surge finally take its toll on the whole beast?
