Installing Tiger fixed my iBook!

I just installed of Tiger -- the first time I've ever done a 'clean' install of any OS on my 600MHz iBook -- and it fixed my dead combo drive!

My iBook originally came with OS9 and 10.1 installed. I have upgraded the OS before, but never a clean install. About a year ago my combo drive started to act up intermittently (for no apparent reason), and eventually it stopped working completely. In fact, I had to use the computer with the drive tray open all the time, because if you closed it the finder would get fixated on trying to mount the optical drive (which showed no other signs of life), and would hang the computer until you popped the drive tray open with a paperclip.

Apple told me I should consider buying a new computer, and when pressed quoted me "around $1000" to replace the optical drive (if you can believe that).

I'm glad I didn't, because it seems to have been a software problem after all. As I now have an external HD, I was able to back up my /Users/ folder and do a clean install of Tiger (which was a little bit of a trick with a dead optical drive). Now my combo drive works just fine, and so do my screen brightness keys, which had also become intermittent.

When I first started having troubles with the combo drive people suggested repairing permissions, etc, but with the way the drive was acting I was sure it was a hardware problem. I have a new respect for giving a computer a good enema with a clean install!

 

It was about a year ago that I called them, and I was pretty stunned at the $1k price tag to replace the combo drive, so my memory's a little hazy, but I don't think they suggested that. In fact, now that I think of it, they weren't really interested in hearing any symptoms, etc, but I was out of warranty and didn't have Applecare so I can't really blame them for that. If they give away the answers who'd pay for Applecare?

As I recall the only way I was able to get their attention at all was to ask them if it might be a logic board issue, as my iBook is one of the ones that's prone to logic board failure. After they decided they weren't going to consider it as a possible logic board issue they didn't offer much help. They wouldn't even quote me a price to replace the combo drive until after I pressed the issue, and even then they would only give me a 'ballpark' figure of "over a thousand dollars".

At the time I didn't really have a way to back up my whole HD (or even the /Users/ folder), so a clean install wasn't so much an option.

Thanks! Me too.