Hello All, I am new to the board, and was hoping to get some insight on a certain situation with my 12in G4 Powerbook. Ok, here goes.... I recently bought my PB a little less than a month ago from Powermax.com. Sunday, it froze up on me, wouldn't get past "waiting for apple file service" window. I did some troubleshooting, took it in to one of my Graphic Design professors, we ran disk warrior on it, turns out my it's my hard drive that is screwed, not permission problems that were fixable. Well, I spoke with powermax, who then told me "oh, that sounds like a RAM problem, have you installed new Ram?" I assured them it was the HD, then they made it sound like the HD problem is fixable (which made me think they don't want to have to replace the HD), powermax also gave me an extensive process to send it all the way back to oregon. Now my question is; Should I spend a month w/o my PB in hopes that Powermax puts in a new drive, or should I go to Compusa, get a hard drive, have it put in and only have a couple days of down time? Sorry for the long post, but I just need some advice.
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Powerbook Hard Drive Problem
- Thread starter William Ninja
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I would call applecare.
Since it's a new PB, it should still have the Apple 1-year Warranty.
Or.. if it's under a year old, same deal. I'm not sure how Powermax.com works.
If you call and tell them the serial number, they should be able to tell you if it's in warranty.
if you DO open up the PB, keep in mind the apple warranty will be 100% void FOREVERRRRRRR unless you're a certified apple tech.
Good luck! Keep us updated!
Since it's a new PB, it should still have the Apple 1-year Warranty.
Or.. if it's under a year old, same deal. I'm not sure how Powermax.com works.
If you call and tell them the serial number, they should be able to tell you if it's in warranty.
if you DO open up the PB, keep in mind the apple warranty will be 100% void FOREVERRRRRRR unless you're a certified apple tech.
Good luck! Keep us updated!
Powermax: "All new Apple cpus come with Apple's 1 year warranty."
Question - was this a new or reconditioned machine you bought?
If new, you can get it fixed at any Apple authorized repair centre.
If reconditioned, or if Portamax did modifications to it, it does not have an Apple warranty, likely, and you have to deal woth Powermax or nothing.
Question - was this a new or reconditioned machine you bought?
If new, you can get it fixed at any Apple authorized repair centre.
If reconditioned, or if Portamax did modifications to it, it does not have an Apple warranty, likely, and you have to deal woth Powermax or nothing.
Hey Guys, well I guess I should have specified it is a refurbished, that is a little under 2 years old (i'm in college it was all i could do to upgrade from my old G3 haha) So basically it only has the Powermax warranty which is 3 months. They just seem like they might try to fix the HD, but I would feel more confident in having a new one, not a repaired once faulty one. Plus, the fact that I would have to have the worry about shipping, down time w/o the PB, I guess I want a quick solution.
William Ninja said:
Well, I would still send it to Powermax.
It won't necessarily be a faulty one-- HDs die, it's a fact of life!
My 15" PB's HD died about a month after I got it.
I used that warranty SO GOOD!
Call them tomorrow and see how long it will take to get it repaired?
by the way, I hope there isn't any chance it is a logic board problem? maybe I'm troubleshooting too much, cause I keep running into that, but it's always for G3 ibooks. hmmm, well still any word on whether or not I should at least get the Compusa Apple guys to check it out?
So youre saying it's out of warranty, you'll ship it to Powermax at your expense and once they have, they'll tell you what it costs to fix it and send it back, and if you elect not to pay them you're still out the shipping cost both ways??William Ninja said:
Umm... no brainer decision for me, at least. Buy a new hard drive and put it in yourself. You risk that the problem is the logic board, but then you have a $700 repair anyway. Once you have the machine running (get the 60 Gb Seagate Momentus 5400 RPM with the 8 Mb cache and 5 year warranty, BTW - best bang for the buck), you can inquire with the original drive manufacturer if the drive is still under their warranty. The shipping cost from Plan A there will pay for half of the new Seagate.
Thanks
Trevor
CanadaRAM.com
Well, the Powermax lady sounded real hesistant that they would put a brand new hard drive in, she kept saying that they would try to fix the old one. Personally, I don't want to have to ship it there on my dollar, wait for them to tell me what they might do, then it be something like "oh, we were able to fix the old one, so we'll ship it back to you in 7-10 business days (they might as well say 10). I'm not trying to be harsh or sound like a brat, I just made an investment, granted I know it's a refurbished unit and what may come with that is expected, but I guess I just want the security of knowing at least the hd is new. As far as the logic board goes, I think I'm just making myself paranoid by continuing to research, all I can find is ibook logic book problems.... Ah, I'm just a little confused guys, sorry about the ramblings.