Defective hd connector causes cpu A error???

[klaus]

Bought for over 6000€ worth of apple equipment in october 2004. It took them 4 months to deliver my dual 2.5 G5.

Last week, I ran the apple hardware test because I found out my fans were ramping up way too quickly. It gave me an error message which contained "CPU A" and some other digits and characters.

I took it in to my dealer, and now he got back to me with some well, amazing results.

He states that a faulty sata harddisk connector is the problem. He states I broke the connector when installing a second harddrive. But I installed that hardrdive more than 6 or 7 months ago. Both harddrives worked flawlessly, never had a single incident with one of them. And now he claims this causes the cpu fan revving AND the cpu A error code in the apple hardware test?

And believe it or not, since they claim it is my own fault, I have to pay the hourly rate, and they also advised me to install a new HD. Can you believe they are advising to install a 80 gb sata drive??? It's a 3300 euro machine, why whould I ever install such a small harddisk.

Either way, they say it's out of warranty cause I supposedly broke the connector, so my applecare (which i bought) can't help me out.

I'm not happy with this treatment. How is it possible that a faulty connector which causes no harddisk problems at all, is the root of a cpu A error code with very noisy and fast blowing fans??

I don't get it, anybody else has experience with this kind of thing? All I know is, i will not pay for this fix.

 

[risc]

Ring Apple and complain about the dealer, of course it isn't your fault. Even if the HDD connector was broken and this caused the issue, it is a user servicable part, Apple even have instructions on THEIR website on how to do it.

You've paid for AppleCare it gets fixed under AppleCare.

 

[klaus]

Hello,

thank you for your reply. But my dealer says the connector on the harddisk is broken, not the connector that resides on the motherboard. And this harddisk is added by me and supposedly broken by me, so it's out of warranty.

They don't need to repair the motherboard, all they are going to do on my machine is replace the harddrive, that's it.

 

[g0gie]

Thats complete BS, call up apple directly and explain the issue. The dealer can get his apple lisence revoked.

 

[risc]

Thats complete BS...

Well said

 

[klaus]

I also don't really trust what they say.

I spoke with the shop today, and they just confirmed what the technician said:

First of all, they ran the apple service diagnostics cd, and didn't get any cpu error. But I ran the apple hardware test, and it DID show up an error, so that's one weird thing.

Second, they say they then investigated my computer even further, and saw the raptor 74 gb bootdrive with a faulty, forced sata connector. They replaced it with a new HD and said my computer started up without a problem. Well, that's really funny because I never had any problems starting up with the so-called faulty HD in the first place. They even don't want to reinstall the HD since it could cause additional damage to my system.


That leaves these 2 things unclear to me :
1

I've installed and configured several computers in the past few years, never did anything wrong with the hardware, so why would I have broken or damaged the sata connector when installed the raptor 8 months ago!?
I don't think an sata connector contains that many pins so it's not damaged that easily.

2

If the connector was idd faulty or damaged, then why did it never show any harddisk failures at all? Basically, they are telling me I ran this system for 8 months straight on a boot drive with a damaged connector which caused no trouble on the harddrive itself, but instead, caused my fans to ramp up to 100% when doing non-intensive tasks. And it generated this cpu A error in the apple hardware test.


I don't get it. I said I don't want to get my machine fixed by them, and also don't want to pay any hourly rate just to check my machine. I'll take it to somewhere else for a second opinion.