Hi all,
For the past few weeks I've been having a strange problem with my MBP and even though I've tried everything I knew and all the solutions available on the net, I still can't seem to fix it. At the moment I'm one step before sending my MBP back to Apple but since it's Saturday and I'll have to wait till Monday, I thought I'd give it one more try and see if there is anything that I haven't done already. So here we go
Everything started when 10.7.3 came out. I installed the update through the Software Update and when I restarted my computer I got the slashed circle sign. After reading a lot of forum posts and various articles on Apple's support pages I tried:
1. Resetting the PRAM / NVRAM
2. Repairing Permissions
3. Repairing Disk through Disk Utility
4. Running Disk Warrior
Nothing seemed to work. So I went through and reinstalled Lion (without erasing my previous installation). That seemed to fix the problem and my MBP was functioning ok for 2-3 days. After that, another update came out, this time for iTunes. After installing it I got a few error messages which unfortunately I can't remember, but they were related to a few .kext files. After restarting the slashed circle appeared again. At that point I thought that a clean Lion installation would probably be better than installing Lion over my previous "damaged" installation. So I booted up in recovery mode, downloaded Lion and installed it again.
Everything seemed to be working fine and I started installing the rest of my apps (iLife, iWork, Photoshop etc). I installed every update available and did plenty of restarts. But after a few days the same problem appeared. So I guess the hard drive was the problem and since I was about to get an SSD, I ordered a new hard drive hoping that this will make my MBP faster as well as solving my problem.
After installing the SSD, I went through a clean Lion install and then I proceed on installing all the applications that I use. This time almost after each app installation, I did a restart just to make sure that no app is causing this. Everything went great. My MBP was super fast and the problem was solved. BUT after 2 days same thing again! So far I've tried:
1. I reformatted the original HDD and installed Lion without anything else (not a single app) - Works Fine!
2. I installed the SSD on an external USB casing to see if I can read/write the disk. I can access it fine but I can't boot from it.
3. I reseted the PRAM / NVRAM while the SSD was installed and it booted fine but only once. On the second boot the problem was back and even if I reset the PRAM again it doesn't seem to do anything.
Like I said before I'm about to ship my MBP to Apple service. But I'm concerned because the whole problem seems to be software based rather than hardware. At the moment I have 2 hard drives:
a) The original HDD that came with my MBP which I formatted and haven't installed anything and appears to be working fine. But I'm almost certain that if I install my apps and start using my MBP on my daily routines, it'll end up with the same problem.
b) The new SSD which has a fresh Lion installation and all my apps but it got stuck with the slash circle problem. Which can be fixed with a Lion reinstallation but obviously it won't last long.
Is there anything else I could try? Has anyone ever seen anything similar to my problem or can you understand more than I do? By the way my system is a MacBook Pro 13" Early 2011 i7 2.7GHz - 8GB RAM.
Thanks in advance and I hope I didn't bore you with my wall of text but I am trying to be as thorough as possible.
For the past few weeks I've been having a strange problem with my MBP and even though I've tried everything I knew and all the solutions available on the net, I still can't seem to fix it. At the moment I'm one step before sending my MBP back to Apple but since it's Saturday and I'll have to wait till Monday, I thought I'd give it one more try and see if there is anything that I haven't done already. So here we go
Everything started when 10.7.3 came out. I installed the update through the Software Update and when I restarted my computer I got the slashed circle sign. After reading a lot of forum posts and various articles on Apple's support pages I tried:
1. Resetting the PRAM / NVRAM
2. Repairing Permissions
3. Repairing Disk through Disk Utility
4. Running Disk Warrior
Nothing seemed to work. So I went through and reinstalled Lion (without erasing my previous installation). That seemed to fix the problem and my MBP was functioning ok for 2-3 days. After that, another update came out, this time for iTunes. After installing it I got a few error messages which unfortunately I can't remember, but they were related to a few .kext files. After restarting the slashed circle appeared again. At that point I thought that a clean Lion installation would probably be better than installing Lion over my previous "damaged" installation. So I booted up in recovery mode, downloaded Lion and installed it again.
Everything seemed to be working fine and I started installing the rest of my apps (iLife, iWork, Photoshop etc). I installed every update available and did plenty of restarts. But after a few days the same problem appeared. So I guess the hard drive was the problem and since I was about to get an SSD, I ordered a new hard drive hoping that this will make my MBP faster as well as solving my problem.
After installing the SSD, I went through a clean Lion install and then I proceed on installing all the applications that I use. This time almost after each app installation, I did a restart just to make sure that no app is causing this. Everything went great. My MBP was super fast and the problem was solved. BUT after 2 days same thing again! So far I've tried:
1. I reformatted the original HDD and installed Lion without anything else (not a single app) - Works Fine!
2. I installed the SSD on an external USB casing to see if I can read/write the disk. I can access it fine but I can't boot from it.
3. I reseted the PRAM / NVRAM while the SSD was installed and it booted fine but only once. On the second boot the problem was back and even if I reset the PRAM again it doesn't seem to do anything.
Like I said before I'm about to ship my MBP to Apple service. But I'm concerned because the whole problem seems to be software based rather than hardware. At the moment I have 2 hard drives:
a) The original HDD that came with my MBP which I formatted and haven't installed anything and appears to be working fine. But I'm almost certain that if I install my apps and start using my MBP on my daily routines, it'll end up with the same problem.
b) The new SSD which has a fresh Lion installation and all my apps but it got stuck with the slash circle problem. Which can be fixed with a Lion reinstallation but obviously it won't last long.
Is there anything else I could try? Has anyone ever seen anything similar to my problem or can you understand more than I do? By the way my system is a MacBook Pro 13" Early 2011 i7 2.7GHz - 8GB RAM.
Thanks in advance and I hope I didn't bore you with my wall of text but I am trying to be as thorough as possible.