Hello everyone. Let's begin this tale of woe from the start.
In December 2009 I purchased a brand new 15", 2.53GHz Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro (5,4) on a staff sale at work (we are an Apple authorised reseller). I have a 3 year Applecare subscription (so I can take it to Apple if that's the only solution).
It came with a 250GB HDD which was not suitable for what I needed, so I upgraded it to a 500GB Hitachi 7,200RPM drive from Umart. Bad idea. The hard drive wouldn't install Mac OS at all. I tried EVERYTHING, and eventually got it to work. Only, it froze every few seconds. Annoyed, I returned it to Umart, and after 1 month of waiting to hear back from them, I sent them an email. They apologised for the delay and sent a replacement the next day.
This one worked (joy oh joy) however after installing Adobe Photoshop the computer froze randomly when doing anything intensive (such as playing Counter-Strike Source). This DIDN'T happen before Adobe (believe me I tested this quite a lot) only after (this is not my main issue but if someone could shed light on this that would be great thanks), also I have NO console logs to shed light on this error. Moving on.
The errors annoyed me and the agonising boot time (from around 20-25 seconds up to 1 minute +, I've had some fixes to improve it but it still sucks) lead me to purchase a Seagate Momentus XT 500GB. Not wanting full SSD (due to cost, plus I transfer files on and off my drives quite a lot) but wanting SSD speed (for once, my MBP might start fast and open apps instantly), I bought one from MSY along with an 8GB Corsair DDR3 1066MHz kit from Penta computers.
The HDD didn't work at all (of course). Refused to install from disks. So I used a caddy to install it, and it worked fine. Put it in my computer, nada. Used the original 250GB Fujitsu drive in the Mac, it worked great. Used my Hitachi 500GB, it booted ok (slow as usual however). Momentus froze constantly, when it did load after around 2 minutes apps took 1 minute + to load and froze constantly. I took it back to MSY and they are running "diagnostics" on it despite the fact that its a major known fault with these drives (I only found this AFTER I bought the drive, of course).
Now I've installed my new 8GB DDR3 kit (grounded of course) my computer can barely handle anything, it crashes Safari a lot (hopefully I can post this before it crashes) and Chrome refuses to load and when (if) it does, tabs crash instantly. Steam won't load at all. Skype sometimes crashes. The error I get is EXC_BAD_ACCESS (SIGBUS). I've run memory tests, hardware diagnostics, I've run fsck, repaired the disk, the permissions, run every single Onyx maintenance script, searched as many forums as I can, with nothing helping.
People of Macrumors, I turn to you for help. Have I just made a series of major blunders, am I just amazingly unlucky, or am I just not meant to have a Mac? Wat do?
- Cam
In December 2009 I purchased a brand new 15", 2.53GHz Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro (5,4) on a staff sale at work (we are an Apple authorised reseller). I have a 3 year Applecare subscription (so I can take it to Apple if that's the only solution).
It came with a 250GB HDD which was not suitable for what I needed, so I upgraded it to a 500GB Hitachi 7,200RPM drive from Umart. Bad idea. The hard drive wouldn't install Mac OS at all. I tried EVERYTHING, and eventually got it to work. Only, it froze every few seconds. Annoyed, I returned it to Umart, and after 1 month of waiting to hear back from them, I sent them an email. They apologised for the delay and sent a replacement the next day.
This one worked (joy oh joy) however after installing Adobe Photoshop the computer froze randomly when doing anything intensive (such as playing Counter-Strike Source). This DIDN'T happen before Adobe (believe me I tested this quite a lot) only after (this is not my main issue but if someone could shed light on this that would be great thanks), also I have NO console logs to shed light on this error. Moving on.
The errors annoyed me and the agonising boot time (from around 20-25 seconds up to 1 minute +, I've had some fixes to improve it but it still sucks) lead me to purchase a Seagate Momentus XT 500GB. Not wanting full SSD (due to cost, plus I transfer files on and off my drives quite a lot) but wanting SSD speed (for once, my MBP might start fast and open apps instantly), I bought one from MSY along with an 8GB Corsair DDR3 1066MHz kit from Penta computers.
The HDD didn't work at all (of course). Refused to install from disks. So I used a caddy to install it, and it worked fine. Put it in my computer, nada. Used the original 250GB Fujitsu drive in the Mac, it worked great. Used my Hitachi 500GB, it booted ok (slow as usual however). Momentus froze constantly, when it did load after around 2 minutes apps took 1 minute + to load and froze constantly. I took it back to MSY and they are running "diagnostics" on it despite the fact that its a major known fault with these drives (I only found this AFTER I bought the drive, of course).
Now I've installed my new 8GB DDR3 kit (grounded of course) my computer can barely handle anything, it crashes Safari a lot (hopefully I can post this before it crashes) and Chrome refuses to load and when (if) it does, tabs crash instantly. Steam won't load at all. Skype sometimes crashes. The error I get is EXC_BAD_ACCESS (SIGBUS). I've run memory tests, hardware diagnostics, I've run fsck, repaired the disk, the permissions, run every single Onyx maintenance script, searched as many forums as I can, with nothing helping.
People of Macrumors, I turn to you for help. Have I just made a series of major blunders, am I just amazingly unlucky, or am I just not meant to have a Mac? Wat do?
- Cam
