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Corrode

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Dec 26, 2008
1,007
2,300
Calgary, AB
Hey folks. Thanks in advance for any help. Here are my symptoms:

Was watching a 720p HD movie on a plane. Movie starts to freeze up. I can move the mouse but the rest of the computer is unresponsive. I force shut down by holding the power button.

Upon restart, all seems well, I login but computer quickly becomes unresponsive again. I force shut down again.

Next restart is over 10 minutes. Gets to login screen but can't login.

I boot from install disk and run HD repair. It finds some problems and repairs them. Reboot. Same symptoms.

I decided it is the HD and archive and install. Install fails. I wipe the HD cleaned and reinstall osx.

All seems fine as I go through set up and login in. A few minutes later same unresponsiveness.

So finally I did what I shouldve done awhile ago which is swap my current hd with my old one. I do and the computer runs fine! I'm at my wits end.

Just so everyone knows, the day before all these symptoms started I swapped my stock 2x1gb ram for 2x4gb ram. I originally thought that was the problem but I've had my original ram in since I've been trying to diagnose and it's made no difference.

Once again, thanks for any help.
 
But when I went to verify it and such it said it appears to be okay. Such varying symptoms as well which is confusing me.
 
Okay. Ill replace the hd, time machine restore, and see how it goes. Thanks guys. Please dint hesitate to add if anyone has other advice.
 
Hard Drive

I would echo the other replies, it most definitely sounds like a HDD. My late 2008 MBP came down with the exact same symptoms after only one year. Luckily I had AppleCare. They replaced the HDD and three months later it died again in the same fashion. They replaced it once again, and three weeks later it died. So they replaced the HDD a third time, and literally one day after getting it back from the Apple store, the HDD failed once again. Same exact symptoms each and every time. After that they replaced the machine for me.

I am still very curious as to what the ACTUAL problem was; it's very unlikely that one HDD would fail on me, but three? There must have been an underlying problem that was causing the HDD to fail, but they obviously did not find it...wonder what it was.
 
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