Some advice for my 2011 MBP

[Nonentity]

Hi guys and gals,

I'm looking for some of that Mac Rumors wisdom!

Apple agreed to replace my 2009 MBP with a 2011 version because of ongoing display flickering and graphic issues. I am extremely impressed with this and very happy with Apple.

So my new MBP turns up on Wednesday, it's one of the new models with Lion preinstalled and the new keyboard layout. Even better!

Now I boot up and try to restore with my time machine backup, which hung and refused to install, this is hard reboot number one.
This time I try to set up a normal account, it gets to the screen which asks me to choose/take an account picture, except the camera screen has a line through it with the text “Camera off” on it. This gets me worried, so I try to choose a preinstalled icon and it freezes again, cue hard reboot number 2.
This times it refuses to boot past the Grey apple screen - reboot number 4. I boot into Lion's recovery partition, tried verifying the disk, repairing permission etc but nothing would get me past the boot screen.

I had to format the preinstall of Lion and wait 5 hours for Lion to redownload (but that's another complaint...)

Thursday morning and I finally have a working machine, except finder is laggy, apps take forever to launch (including safari, mail and system preferences), to the point where finder needed relaunching but the system hung and - yup - another hard reboot was needed.

It's seems to be working ok now, albeit a tad sluggish and apps sometimes crash instantly when launched. I'm not sure if this is down to Lion or if it's the machine.

Do you think I have a solid case for another replacement? I just don't want a repeat of last time with problem after problem with my Mac, and this has hardly gotten off to a great start! Or am I just being picky and it's just caused by the instability of Lion?

Help me Mac Rumors!

 

[ktbubster]

I don't have direct experience, but with the few friends I have running lion right now with 0 issues and some happy people on the forum, there is NO way that is normal. Take it into the apple store (or just call apple again) and explain this, it sounds like the harddrive could be a dud, or maybe even the logic board.. heck it could just be a ram issue - but all these things aside, definitely not being picky and that's not normal at all.

Apple will repair this one or swap it out asap I am sure. Just bad luck for you man, sorry to hear it, but apple will take care of it.

 

[jenzjen]

Since you just re-installed and are still having issues, maybe an install one more time, but this time before re-installing Lion, use Disk Utility to completely clean erase your HD. Then, install Lion.

After the install, reset your PRAM and SMC. Login to the machine and let it run overnight (or whatever, just give it time to settle, Spotlight to index, etc) and see if you still have issues after a day or 2.

 

[Nonentity]

I don't have direct experience, but with the few friends I have running lion right now with 0 issues and some happy people on the forum, there is NO way that is normal. Take it into the apple store (or just call apple again) and explain this, it sounds like the harddrive could be a dud, or maybe even the logic board.. heck it could just be a ram issue - but all these things aside, definitely not being picky and that's not normal at all.

Apple will repair this one or swap it out asap I am sure. Just bad luck for you man, sorry to hear it, but apple will take care of it.

Thanks for the advice, I still have contact with my support advisor I'll shoot them an email.

Since you just re-installed and are still having issues, maybe an install one more time, but this time before re-installing Lion, use Disk Utility to completely clean erase your HD. Then, install Lion.

After the install, reset your PRAM and SMC. Login to the machine and let it run overnight (or whatever, just give it time to settle, Spotlight to index, etc) and see if you still have issues after a day or 2.

I tried to completely erase the HDD the first time but it refused to wipe it completely only allowing me to erase the Macintosh HD partition, probably because the Lion recovery partition is stored somewhere on the drive.

Starting fresh has crossed my mind over the last day, but should I have to? This is a brand new machine, and I really don't have the time to do this.

 

[Young Spade]

Starting fresh has crossed my mind over the last day, but should I have to? This is a brand new machine, and I really don't have the time to do this.

You really don't have the time? You paid a lot of money for that machine. You should grow some patience and learn to work with things that cost so much.

Impatience leading to wanting quick/easy results is a sign of immaturity and/or mental strength.

Now if you can take it back, take it back. If it's too much trouble to do that, do a fresh install. If you read around here, 80 percent of the people who complain about problems after installing Lion did NOT do a clean install. However only 5 percent (if that) have a problem with a new machine or with a clean install.

 

[Nonentity]

You really don't have the time? You paid a lot of money for that machine. You should grow some patience and learn to work with things that cost so much.

Impatience leading to wanting quick/easy results is a sign of immaturity and/or mental strength.

Now if you can take it back, take it back. If it's too much trouble to do that, do a fresh install. If you read around here, 80 percent of the people who complain about problems after installing Lion did NOT do a clean install. However only 5 percent (if that) have a problem with a new machine or with a clean install.

It's not impatience, but an incredible amout of work I have on at the moment.

If you had read my original post you'd know that this is a clean install of Lion on a replacement machine. I had to wait two weeks for the replacement to arrive and prior to that, wait for numerous amounts of repairs on my old machine before Apple agreed to replace the it. I don't think patience comes in to it.

As an update I'm waiting on Apple care to get back in touch. It's still not performing: I've had to hard reboot pretty much everyday with no discernible pattern.

 

[Young Spade]

It's not impatience, but an incredible amout of work I have on at the moment.

If you had read my original post you'd know that this is a clean install of Lion on a replacement machine. I had to wait two weeks for the replacement to arrive and prior to that, wait for numerous amounts of repairs on my old machine before Apple agreed to replace the it. I don't think patience comes in to it.

As an update I'm waiting on Apple care to get back in touch. It's still not performing: I've had to hard reboot pretty much everyday with no discernible pattern.

Ah; well my apologies for the ignorance. on to being productive, you should definitely emphasize the inconvenience you're having and press hard for a new machine. If it's specifically hardware related they'll fix it; the harder you press, the faster they'll do it.