Taking MacBook to Apple Store. What to expect?

I have a 13 inch unibody MacBook. I believe it's late 2008. I bought it last Christmas refurbished from Apple.com. I noticed a couple nights ago that it locked up and froze and the only way to get it out of that state is to force restart. That process takes up to 10 minutes. It usually started up in about 60 seconds. I reset the PRAM and did that repair disk permissions thing and nothing is helping. I was going to do a clean install of Mac OS X, but it started happening suddenly, so that's why I'm thinking it's hardware related. I made a Genius appointment for today at 7:15 pm. What can I expect them to do? It's still under basic warranty (I didn't get AppleCare). If something needs replacing, will they do it in the store? I've never had to do this before. Thanks.

pvmacguy said:

You'll go and check in and a genius will see you. They will then ask you what's been going on etc. and will most likely run diagnostics on the hardware of your computer. After that, if something needs repair or replacement, they will let you know what's going on. A lot of the times they will ship your system off to one of the apple repair depots for it to be fixed because that option costs less than doing it in-store. If sent off for repair expect an estimate of 5-7 business days for repair.

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Thank you! I was scared that if I have to send it in, it'd be 5-7 weeks! I can go a week or 2 without it.