Just bought a refurbished dual 867 G4 from Apple. Bad luck?

[Impreza]

I've heard around this forum that it's a good way to get a Mac at a great price. I've never personally owned a Mac before, but I have been using them at school and at one of my jobs for the past 4-5 years since the beige PowerPC G3 machines came out. However, I think I got stuck with a bad machine, which is hard to fathom considering it's been "refurbished". I thought Apple would fix the issues with that system so it would be in "as good as new" condition. Don't get me wrong, this DP PowerMac is pretty awesome....when things aren't crashing all the time.

I've only used the system for oh...2 days. Installed AIM and Mozilla just to get my feet wet. So far, MSIE, AIM, and Mozilla has crashed on me. It sucks to be in the middle of a huge post on a message board or in the middle of doing something and the damned thing just quits. The computer froze a few times in that span. I've had the keyboard and mouse (Apple Pro equipment) go dead on me a couple times. Here's the icing on the cake, I've had not one, not two, not even three, but about four or more kernal panics. Plus I've had a few scares where the grey start up screen would be partially scrambled and/or it would be stuck on that screen. Also, one time, the computer automatically restarted by itself.....while it was starting up. This is all in the span of two days folks.

I'm really getting discouraged and it sucks that I might have to return the machine cuz I need it for art school. Has anyone had THIS many problems with a refurbished Mac straight from Apple? Any advice would be greatly appreciated. I'm going to be calling Apple Care in the morning. I swear, this machine has really ruined my weekend and I just got it yesterday.

[hesdeadjim]

Originally posted by Impreza
I've heard around this forum that it's a good way to get a Mac at a great price. I've never personally owned a Mac before, but I have been using them at school and at one of my jobs for the past 4-5 years since the beige PowerPC G3 machines came out. However, I think I got stuck with a bad machine, which is hard to fathom considering it's been "refurbished". I thought Apple would fix the issues with that system so it would be in "as good as new" condition. Don't get me wrong, this DP PowerMac is pretty awesome....when things aren't crashing all the time.

I've only used the system for oh...2 days. Installed AIM and Mozilla just to get my feet wet. So far, MSIE, AIM, and Mozilla has crashed on me. It sucks to be in the middle of a huge post on a message board or in the middle of doing something and the damned thing just quits. The computer froze a few times in that span. I've had the keyboard and mouse (Apple Pro equipment) go dead on me a couple times. Here's the icing on the cake, I've had not one, not two, not even three, but about four or more kernal panics. Plus I've had a few scares where the grey start up screen would be partially scrambled and/or it would be stuck on that screen. Also, one time, the computer automatically restarted by itself.....while it was starting up. This is all in the span of two days folks.

I'm really getting discouraged and it sucks that I might have to return the machine cuz I need it for art school. Has anyone had THIS many problems with a refurbished Mac straight from Apple? Any advice would be greatly appreciated. I'm going to be calling Apple Care in the morning. I swear, this machine has really ruined my weekend and I just got it yesterday.

That does suck, and you shouldn't be having these problems. I don't have any experience in the refurbished end of things, but definitely call Apple Care tomorrow. They can at least tell you what's wrong.

[Impreza]

Yea, I'm normally a PC user and I have a Pentium III 933 with Windows 2000 Pro and even that OS has never been this crappy. I've praised the Mac platform so much around my friends, now I feel dumb after experiencing this stuff. :p

[SoonToGetAMac]

You might want to try reinstalling Jag, a total clean install. Mabye the previous, problematic install is on there now.

[dricci]

Try running the hardware test disc that came with the machine.

[Impreza]

Yea, I ran a hardware test. Nothing came up. Everything's fine. I think the software itself has a major issue. Despite all this junk that's happened, I still think OSX could be more stable if not, just as stable as my trusty Win 2K if it's been well taken care of.

[richie]

Have you tried the Repair Permissions tool on the installer CD? It's a god-send for a great many problems...

[QCassidy352]

do try all of these suggestions, but also don't be afraid to just send it back. You should NOT be having this many problems one day out of the box; mac OS X is usually extremely stable. I think maybe you're right- you did just get bad luck.

[scem0]

yeah, you should definitely clean install and if you still have
problems, get rid of it. :(

[Impreza]

I'll try the Repair Permissions tool on the installer CD. Is that on the OSX CD itself? If that doesn't work, I'll do a clean install. I haven't done a fresh OS install on a Mac yet, but I've done one on PC a few times. So I assume the CD would just load up and you just tell the thing to install the OS again?

[scem0]

basically. It isn't hard, you shouldn't encounter any errors, but
then again you shouldn't have encountered any in the first place.

:o :rolleyes: ;)

[RandomDeadHead]

Wow what luck. Personaly I would just send it back. Repair permissions, clean install, ***** that, I am positive that they did a clean install at the time they refurbished it.

Thats like buying a used car, and the dealer telling you that it has a new timing belt, fuel pump, and battery, and 2 days later the car doesnt start sometimes and when it does it just barely runs and idles hard as hell. What would you do then? You would take it back and demand a refund right? I know I would.

I have purchased sevral refurbished macs in the past and never had any problems. Here is a piece of advice tho, NEVER buy a refurbished LCD monitor from Apple. I can guarantee that it will have at least 1 if not more dead pixels. I know this for a fact, I bought a 23 incher back in november and it had, count them, 7 dead pixels. Two red, one black, two blue, and two white, scatered all over the screen, with five of them near the middle. Needless to say, five phone calls and about an hour worth of cusing later I had a brand new, not refurbished, lcd monitor comming my way. This time no dead pixels.

You or your parents probaly worked very hard to buy that mac, for all that bread you deserve a machine that will work as hard as you or they did.

[Impreza]

Okay, I tried the Repair Permissions option on the First Aid section. Thought it was fine, 5 minutes later, the stupid POS crashed 3 more times. One time the SOB won't even start and the grey Apple screen got scrambled up a bit. I "tried" to do a clean install. I'm pretty sure the hard drive is toast. During the install, it would either freeze, crash via kernal panic (not fun seeing the screen darken and a window pops up with 4-5 different languages), so I'm going to return it back to them and tell them what happened. This really sucks. I saved up for months for that computer.

How do I go about returning this computer? I still got the box, but how do I get it to them? Can I just bring it over to the nearest Apple Store and get it repaired?

[avus]

Originally posted by Impreza
How do I go about returning this computer? I still got the box, but how do I get it to them? Can I just bring it over to the nearest Apple Store and get it repaired?

I had a problem with my refurbished G4 Dual immediately after I bought from an Apple authorized dealer in Nov. 2001. Instead of returning the G4 to the dealer, I took it to Apple Store Glendale for a repair. They replaced the processor card, and the repair was performed for free under its 1-year warrenty. It has been trouble free since.

I think you should take your G4 to the nearest Apple Store.

[scterrell]

I had a very similar problem with my brand new dual 1.25 Ghz Power Mac a few weeks ago. In addition to most of the symptoms you described, I couldn't drag items around the desktop and the system seemed to generally deteriorate until eventually it wouldn't even boot up. When I purchased it from the local Apple store, they had talked me into buying my extra RAM from them and letting them install it when my computer was delivered. However, after I returned my computer they told me they had been having problems with RAM from one particular vendor, so they switched it out with new RAM. After that, all of my Powermac problems disappeared. I was amazed that was all it was and my Powermac has been running like a champ ever since.

[iPegboy]

I have a refurb iBook and it works great. I haven't had any problems with it. Sorry about the bad luck. Hopefully you can figure it out.

-jc

[Dont Hurt Me]

scterrell is right about memory,osx neeeds and has to have 100%functioning memory, i didnt see any post about how much of this was in the machine or if it was using 3rd party, etc. i would suspect this. But you still have a warranty even on refurbished so i would get a hold of apple.

[guitargeek]

Check your cooling fan.

Computers do strange things when they're overheated.

[mymemory]

Forget about reparing anything...

Run the system from the original CD disc

Reformat the hard drive

Re-install the OS

That is it.

Do not cut corners, go from the begaining that it should work just fine.

[tpjunkie]

It seems likely that this is a hardware problem, as Apple almost certainly did a clean install of jaguar before shipping you the computer. A hard drive is one of the most used components in a computer, and with just one or two bad sectors in the wrong place, your computer can begin to do some very screwey things...My dual processor 533 G4 developed a bad sector on the original hard drive that caused all sorts of wierd behavior, inluding kernel panics when the trash was emptied, total lockdown of the OS, and applications that would start to launch, bounce about 20 times, then stop and not launch at all. But when the hard drive was reformatted, and used as a slave to a new 120 GB drive I installed Jaguar on, all the problems disappeared...sounds like your HD may be shot, call up Apple, its under warranty so they should take care of you no problem. Hope this works out for you, I've been a satisfied Apple user since 1987

[AlphaTech]

I'm wondering, besides checking the memory that's installed (make sure the chips are fully seated as well) how much memory does the system have? If you have any less then 512MB, get more HIGH QUALITY memory. DON'T get the cheapest memory you can find, spend a few dollars more (if you have to) and get name brand memory (Kingston comes to mind).

Also, have you run a fsck -y on the system at all?? Many problems can be resolved by running that.

Something else, are you 100% certain that the versions of AIM and MSN you installed are fully compatible with your version of OS X? If you don't know, then download the absolute latest versions. Personally, I wouldn't use the chat clients from either AIM or MSN, there are enough third party applications out there that do a better job. For AIM, I use iChat, for Yahoo and all others (sans ICQ) I use Fire. You can find them all by doing a search on versiontracker.com

Also, update the OS to make sure it have the very latest updates installed. It IS possible that Apple put the system together, after checking it out, and it sat around in storage for a while. You may be a version behind on the OS as well (check to see what version of OS X it's on).

Do you have OS 9 installed at all on the system? Do/will you need to run software in "classic" mode at all?? If so, install that first. DO wipe the drive first (with the OS 9 cd). I assume you know how to get the Mac to boot from a cd, yes? Once you have installed OS 9.x (update it to 9.2.2) run the software update control panel (under OS 9) to make sure EVERYTHING is up to date, especially the system's firmware. THEN install the latest version of OS X (10.2.x) and update that fully. Depending on which versions the cd's are, and your internet connection speed, this could take some time...

Contact me if you need any additional assistance... ;)

[Coca-Cola]

Ah yes, I am starting to think refurbished means, Broken. I bought a refurbished iMac from apple about three years ago.... Here is my story.......
It was a great bargain. I bought the top of the line iMac(refurbished) for the price of the middle of the line. Awesome deal? Sort of. It was my first computer and it kept on crashing. Crashing about every hour, freezing about every half hour. At first I thought it was my fault for being a newbie. Then after many calls to apple and some newly purchased diagnostic software and many many reinstalls of OS 9 apple tried to teach me the hell of extension managment. Nightmare, glad to be rid of extension conflicts with OS X. 1. It wasn't the OS. 2. It wasn't an extension conflict. 3. IT MUST BE A HARDWARE PROBLEM. So.............
Apple sends me to a repair shop and foots the bill. The repair man looks at my computer for three days. No problems. None. However........
I take the iMac home, and it still is crashing like before. More apple care service phone calls and we finally find the problem by unpluging the mouse and repluging the mouse. My mouse was causing the freezing and crashes. Weird. The repair man used his own mouse on his diagnosis. Apple sent me a new keyboard and Mouse! I sold the old one on ebay. Everything has been perfect ever since.
I saved a couple hundred dollars buying refurbished. Was it worth it? Hmmmm........
Would I buy a refurbished product again?
NO. :(

[Computer_Phreak]

dude...

call Apple immediately. 99% chance that its a hardware problem. Tell apple what happened and demand they send you a replacement for free.

Screw all the diagnostic stuff, you shouldn't have to do any of that.

[physicsnerd]

How do I go about returning this computer? I still got the box, but how do I get it to them? Can I just bring it over to the nearest Apple Store and get it repaired?

Yes, you can just take it to the nearest apple store. I would suggest that's what you do too. I've found that the staff of apple stores to be a little better at trouble shooting then the phone support (of course it doesn't hurt that the system is sitting in front of them). The problems that you are having are NOT normal, and apple needs to fix the computer. I have never ever, not once had my mac crash under OS X. It's under warranty, let them deal with it.

physicsnerd

[Impreza]

Well, I called up AppleCare, the tech assumes it's a hardware issue because if the thing freezes on the OSX CD install, that's a major problem that requires a tech to look at in person. So he referred me to a couple local authorized Apple repair techs. There's one that's about 10 minutes from me, so I'll give them a call tomorrow.

I'm not that discouraged from using almost every kind of Mac under the sun since I've used them for 4-5 years with barely any problems. Although I'm not too keen on the more advanced usages of OSX and OS installs. I always use the G3's and G4's at school with OS9 to do everything from Photoshop to Director most of the time. I just want MY machine to run. Hehe. Thanks for all the help guys, I hope I get this sorted out next week. I still have a computer at home that I normally use (a PC), so there's no real big hurry. I just want the damned thing fixed under warranty. A few of my friends bought new machines recently and they've had absolutely no problems. One of them switched from PC to Mac and she absolutely loved it.

[Impreza]

....and a week and a brand new processor later, the problem hasn't been fixed yet.

Switched mice, still crashed. Even tried booting without the keyboard and only the mouse, it still crashed.

The sad thing is that I attempted to restore OS 9 off my software install CD's. Things worked fine for the first two CD's. When I got to disc 3, it just crashed. So the hard drive needed to be repaired. So I threw in the OSX install disc, tried to do a clean install again, it crashed on the 2nd CD. Started it up again, I had to enter my info, from there on, I couldn't get any further without crashing.

The tech said it worked fine on his bench. However, my stuff kept crashing while I'm hooked up to my ethernet. So I unhooked that, still crashed. I tried hooking my friend's USB mouse and the Apple keyboard. Crashed that. Then after the OSX install it just crashed some more. *sigh*

[AlphaTech]

Out of curiosity, what display do you have connected to the system? How about additional hardware/peripherals (inside and outside the case)?? Go to a bare system, without anything else connected. Remove the ethernet cable as well...

If you can get the system to install successfully, then start connecting one item at a time (internal and/or external devices).

[Impreza]

I'm on a ViewSonic E790. I did disconnect the ethernet, it still crashed. Anyway, I'm returning the system and I'll wait later on purchasing one.

[MacAztec]

I bet its either your Hardrive or your RAM.

I am 80% sure its your RAM. My dad had a crashing problem with his PowerBook G3 500MHz.

We sent it to apple, and they replaced the screen, and the chip. Got it back and it still crashed.

We sent it back and they replaced the motherboard, the hardrive, and the cd drive.

Got it back and it STILL crashed.

So, my dad took out the 512MB chip he had added a long time ago (he forgot about it) and viola, the machine ran fine. He then bought a new 512MB chip from some company (A GOOD BRAND) and the machine is great.

It runs fine.

I think its your RAM. Borrow a stick from someone, or get a new stick of your own.

[Impreza]

I dunno, it encountered no problems whatsoever when the tech had it. He installed OSX and the necessary software just fine and let the machine operate for 4 hours. He ran a hardware check and disk warrior and it never crashed.

[AlphaTech]

Make sure there are no external devices attached when you use the computer (other then the monitor and keyboard/mouse). Test it for a while (hours) and then add one device at a time.

Besides the memory issue, it could [easily] be one of your external devices. Even an ethernet device could be the cause, as could ANY external devices.

If you have a second display, attach that and see what happens. Also, try a different port on the display card, it might be that.

[Jimong5]

Im going to jump in here, Im in the market for some RAM for a Dual 867.. does anyone reccomend anything, I would like some quality while keeping the price as low as possible. Any suggestions on say Crucial RAM or should I go somewhere else? I've had good luck with Memory to go (http://www.memorytogo.com/content/default.asp) , but id like some feedback on this.... sorry if his is too off topic...