MBP Crash question

[rjpublicover]

MY MPB 17" has crashed again. Last time (Jan 18) the Genious Bar determined it was a hard drive problem. They replaced it. Now the new one has crashed the same way with the screen filling with multiple strange black bar shaped things.

What are the chances of two hard drives crashing with the same symptoms? The first one survived nearly 2 1/4 years. The second 2 1/2 months.

Any thoughts before I return to the "bar"???

Thank you

 

[spinnerlys]

That's unusual, but it can happen. I can't provide you with the statistical probabilities though, as I don't have access to HDD failure rates and my math is sub-par in that region of logic.

When you go to the Genius Bar again, be sure to get a full hardware test, so they can rule out some short in the logic board that may fry your HDD.

 

[t0mat0]

You can do the Extended Hardware Test prior to going, and run the application that Applecare uses?

 

[rpaloalto]

Sounds more like a video card issue or logic board then the HD.
make sure you tell them about the black bars appearing on your screen, take pictures.

This time call Apple care before you bring it in. Tell them this is unacceptable and your loosing productivity.

 

[Michael CM1]

When you say "crash," do you mean locks up to where you have to restart or is not working?

I've been having a LOT of lockup issues lately. I'll just have my MBP sitting here the same as it has been for the past three years and sometimes it'll just lock up. It REALLY did not like me attempting to play World of Warcraft or Spore again. WOW has crashed within five minutes about 10 times. So I guess deciding to go at it for a month has cost me $15 for nothing.

The only common denominator I can see is most of this is since I upgraded to Snow Leopard. I don't think I had played those games since the upgrade. But it locks up at other times, once when I was literally just minimizing Firefox. I have the lastest versions of Firefox and Safari, so it's not like I'm running those outdated.

If it's a hardware issue, I really don't know how to check anything without taking it to a Genius. If there is a free diagnostic I can run, I would love to know where I can get it. I'm not running anything like Norton Anti-Virus or Parallels. The only background thing I run is iStat. I ran Verify Disk in Disk Utility and everything appears OK to it. It's an early 2007 MBP with the ATI 1600 video adapter.

Thanks for any help.