I've had my iMac for a little over a year. It waited a year to do this to me, but I'm pretty sure it's a hardware problem they sold it to me with.
Basically, things go slow and then I get beachballed and programs start freezing until the whole computer is completely locked up. The only thing I can do is hold the power button down to shut it down. At first when i rebooted it would work fine for about a week or so. Then as time went on it happened more frequently. Not only that, but when I try to boot it just gives me the folder with a question mark icon because it can't boot from my drive.
I boot from my external and it first gives a warning that it can't read my internal and when I try to do anything with it, like in Disk Utility, it won't let me. It just labels the drive "Media" (which isn't what I named it) and says it has a capacity of 0 and can't be mounted.
Well, several attempts to reboot would do the trick and I can use my internal hard drive normally... for about a day or so. Then the same problems. Then it would take even more attempts, over the course of a day or more, to get it to boot. I even tried reinstalling Leopard from the restore disk. It didn't work so well. And now it won't boot no matter how many attempts.
I've been booting from my external solely for the last few days. Then today it suddenly starts doing exactly what my internal was doing. The freezing and having to force shut it. And after a couple tries to boot from it it gives the folder-question-mark icon. I finally got it booted again and things are running fine -- of course that's how it went with my internal, and look where I am.
My questions are these:
1) Anyone know what's going on? It can't be hard drive failure or the system install problems because it happened to both drives almost simultaneously. It has to be other hardware.
2) Even though the warranty is up, since I'm pretty sure it's a problem that was always going to happen, i.e. faulty hardware they sold me (as in, it's a lemon), will they repair it or refund it anyway? I mean it just seems like they'd have to.
If they sold me a freaking lemon for which there was never any hope and this was the only outcome and then they don't fix it or give me my money back, I'm going to call shenanigans on Apple. That would be a dick move on their part. Oh and this was a refurb (oh yeah everyone here's telling me to go with a refurb because they're certified and cheaper), if that matters.
The nearest Apple Store-slash-ASSP is quite a ways away and I don't want to drive there just for them to tell me I'm SOL or that I'll have to pay for diagnosis and/or repair when I can't really afford it and it's their fault anyway.
Thanks for trudging through this post. As you can imagine I'm very frustrated. Any help would be appreciated.
Basically, things go slow and then I get beachballed and programs start freezing until the whole computer is completely locked up. The only thing I can do is hold the power button down to shut it down. At first when i rebooted it would work fine for about a week or so. Then as time went on it happened more frequently. Not only that, but when I try to boot it just gives me the folder with a question mark icon because it can't boot from my drive.
I boot from my external and it first gives a warning that it can't read my internal and when I try to do anything with it, like in Disk Utility, it won't let me. It just labels the drive "Media" (which isn't what I named it) and says it has a capacity of 0 and can't be mounted.
Well, several attempts to reboot would do the trick and I can use my internal hard drive normally... for about a day or so. Then the same problems. Then it would take even more attempts, over the course of a day or more, to get it to boot. I even tried reinstalling Leopard from the restore disk. It didn't work so well. And now it won't boot no matter how many attempts.
I've been booting from my external solely for the last few days. Then today it suddenly starts doing exactly what my internal was doing. The freezing and having to force shut it. And after a couple tries to boot from it it gives the folder-question-mark icon. I finally got it booted again and things are running fine -- of course that's how it went with my internal, and look where I am.
My questions are these:
1) Anyone know what's going on? It can't be hard drive failure or the system install problems because it happened to both drives almost simultaneously. It has to be other hardware.
2) Even though the warranty is up, since I'm pretty sure it's a problem that was always going to happen, i.e. faulty hardware they sold me (as in, it's a lemon), will they repair it or refund it anyway? I mean it just seems like they'd have to.
If they sold me a freaking lemon for which there was never any hope and this was the only outcome and then they don't fix it or give me my money back, I'm going to call shenanigans on Apple. That would be a dick move on their part. Oh and this was a refurb (oh yeah everyone here's telling me to go with a refurb because they're certified and cheaper), if that matters.
The nearest Apple Store-slash-ASSP is quite a ways away and I don't want to drive there just for them to tell me I'm SOL or that I'll have to pay for diagnosis and/or repair when I can't really afford it and it's their fault anyway.
Thanks for trudging through this post. As you can imagine I'm very frustrated. Any help would be appreciated.
