iMac Issues

[stevenseelig]

<p>To have two different machines fail in such a short period of time suggests that there may be something else operating here. <br>

1. Is your electrical supply clean and stable? Do you have a cheap surge protector attached to the computer?<br>

2. Are you doing hard turn offs with the power button or leaving it on or soft turn offs? <br>

3. If is only software, you should be able to re-install the operating system. If it is hardware failure, Apple will replace the drive for I think up to one year. I would guess that the Apple store believes you are doing something to corrupt the system (which is sort of hard to do unless you are installing lots of strange stuff or doing hard power downs. Can you say what sort of symptoms you had and why you believe it was a hard drive failure? </p>

[wasper]

<p>I think your problem is a simple one. You need to reformat the Hard drive. But to be charged $200 is way too much. You can do it yourself but if you are not confident enough, I suggest that there are many kids around that are savvy with computers & will help you out for a small fee. But if your machine still running then may I suggest that you copy your important files into a disk or disks. So when you reformat the HD you start fresh.<br>

But to verify that you HD is not faulty & it's mainly a s/w issue, do you hear the HD making a clicking noise? if so then you might a hardware problem.</p>

 

[kelly_flanigan1]

<p>A power glitch before Thanksgiving *injured* many on my computers in one building. There are surge protectors in the two breaker boxes; and surge boxes on the computers; phone lines; cable modems /cable too. Several old CRTS's on PC's that are 10 years old died; one beast has a pincushion look; another old guy lost a on color gun. A HDA on one of our main scanner's PC got hard too boot; it developed a rash of SMART code (05) Reallocated Sector Count; this unit would not boot after 1 week. I placed the HDA on as a slave and recovered most all data. An engineering firm a block away lost several PC's. Many computers here that had no issues; no events with SMART code (05) Reallocated Sector Counts; have since the surge now read many reallocate sectors; some a mess. Thus the computers are being given new HDA's before they croak. The Imac 20" unit that I mentioned up the thread got weird after the surge too. It still has the same HDA; I just reinstalled the OS X with the two discs; it takes about 1 hour; maybe more if one has alot of stuff; ours is a clean box with little stuff.</p>

<p>The same type of HDA is used in a Mac or a PC. A better computer builder like say IBM or Apple buys the HDA's often with a slightly better spec; sometimes they add hooks for testing; or have software preloaded too. They can/might have a tighter spec on the number of reallocated sectors; flagged bad areas; etc. A HDA in a better computer like IBM or Apple is equal or better than a store bought new HDA; you as a buyer will never really know too.</p>

<p>One data point of an Imac having a HDA issue after 2 months is abit rare. In super rare cases a bad group of HDA's gets used; there was an issue with one HDA vendors drive back when HDA's were 1.6 to 2 gigs.</p>

<p>With a bad/poor HDA; on a new computer; just installing another HDA and adding the OS again works. Here with our imac 20" I just used the same HDA; spent 1 hour with the new OS install and all now seems ok<br>

I doubt you 2 month old imac went south by just downloading a file; our FTP box here runs nude on the nasty side of the router and has downloaded gobs of stuffcrap and still works; an imac sees nil compared to this<br>

There may be nothing wrong with your box too; just a password; it is in a dumb mode</p>

[kelly_flanigan1]

<p>An old photoshop dream machine here that cost over 3 grand seems un-phased by the power glitch/surge we had; it still is used on the UPS shipping table to print labels. It went from *total* dream machine to printing labels today. It was born in 1994; a 75 Mhz Pentium with win3.11 and 8 megs of ram. Bumping it up to 72 megs cost over a grand. It has 2 ISA slots and 1 PCI slot. Its 850 Meg HDA is left on all the time; its latest win98se was added 6 years ago. The last time I had virus software on it was via several floppies; maybe about 1998? The plan is to move the OS to a IDE/compact flash card before the HDA dies. The CPU draws 8 watts. One ISA slot has this Y2K adapter so dates are correct; what it my Y2K ISA card dies? :)</p>

[Uhooru]

<p>Kelly, you totally crack me up. I'm not sure one thing you said had anything to do with any of this, but if I need a former super-computer re-programed to make peanut butter sandwiches, I'll definately give you a call :)<br>

It seems a mac/pc dispute is totally off-topic and of no use to the OP. Just what strategy can he use to get his computer fixed. He can start with doing a hardware check, he can find out how to do that on the apple site support area. there are things that Apple has always tried to get it's customers to do when they present with a software glitch.<br>

A suggestion might be to go back in, get another so called "genius" and have them look at it. They don't keep track of what the other guy is doing and so you may get a fresh read. Ask them if they've done a complete hardware check, and why they deem it a "software glitch". Don't take the one guy's answer as the final answer.<br>

My own experience with them here in So CAl is I had an ipod go bad, first couple of times they told me I dropped it and its not covered. Finally, I was in there onw time and talking about another problem with a really nice kid, and I mentioned the ipod and said let him take a look, he did and gave me a new one on the spot. What i'm saying that persistence seems to pay with those guys so don't give up. It sux when they aren't responsive as they should be. But keep trying.</p>

<p> </p>

[charles_wood]

<p><em>I think your problem is a simple one. You need to reformat the Hard drive. But to be charged $200 is way too much</em> .</p>

<p>That is the same price quote I received from an Apple store when they mis-diagnosed the problem. I said No, took my machine home and ran Time Machine. Problem solved...stupid me for not doing it before I drove 240 miles ...twice....to the Apple Store. The Apple Store staff personnel seem to be about one notch better trained than the Best Buy types. They're hired, go through the indoctrination process and then get pushed out on the floor or behind a counter.</p>

[rafael_s]

<p>I have used apple computers since 1996 and have had few problems, but I have had problems with 3 different Apple monitors of which I will never purchase one again, so maybe because the imac (I had owned one back in 2000) is an all in one computer with a lot more parts crammed in, it may be prone to having more issues when something goes wrong. The macs I own now are a MacPro 8 core, G4 powerbook, and dual G5 Powermac and none have given me problems. Yes Apple is expensive. back in the 90s and early 2000s they spent a lot of time/money trying to justify their means but now that's it's 2010 I don't think they have much merit to cost. Both PC's and today's Mac's use the exact same parts (Intel.) A friend of mine showed me how I could order all of the exact same parts in their highest end MacPro off of tigerdirect.com and build a pc with even more ram for far less what the Apple cost. Because they are basically the same machines now, just different operating systems, I've done enough searching to find out how to install OS 10 on a built to order pc. In fact that's just what I plan to do in a few months. Apple will not get another dime off of me. And I've done some Windows 7 testing and honestly being a mac user, I was impressed. It was solid. Looks like OS is catching up and I'm deciding if I should even continue to use a mac.</p>

[brian_m2]

<blockquote>

<p>Brian, so which category are you ? :)</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Ha! Benjamin, that's a fair question and one I suppose I walked right into with my post. Actually, I don't believe I am someone to whom Apple markets. I tend to be somewhat contemptuous (if you couldn't tell from my post) of slick marketing campaigns and appearance-heavy products. I find myself almost rooting for the "PC" guy in the ads to give the "Mac" guy the back of his hand one of these days to wipe the smarmy smirk off his face. :-) (At the very least, I would not even engage in a conversation with the Mac guy but would love to take the PC guy out for a couple of beers.) As I mentioned, I was just bored with Windows after using it for the last 25 years (had a Mac LC in college but went on the Windows train starting with my first real job). I use a Windows machine every day at work and found myself not really looking forward to getting back on the same kind of machine at night. So I switched to have a different experience that I could consider more recreational. Like I said, I do like the interface, though I don't think it's any more functionally useful than a PC's interface. I suppose I was influenced most by friends' recommendations, but that's about it.</p>

[bernard_korites1]

<p>Steven:<br>

"1. To have two different machines fail in such a short period of time suggests that there may be something else operating here. 1. Is your electrical supply clean and stable? "<br>

My daughter lives in a different house so electrical supply is not the problem.<br>

"2. Are you doing hard turn offs with the power button or leaving it on or soft turn offs?"<br>

It always has soft landings. <br>

3. If is only software, you should be able to re-install the operating system. If it is hardware failure, Apple will replace the drive for I think up to one year."<br>

The explanation I got from the Apple store was, it is the nature of hard drives to develop bad sectors. Occassionally, they said, this leads to corruption of the operating system. Now this is what gets my dander up, I was told, and this is a quote, "APPLE CHOOSES TO REGARD THAT AS A SOFTWARE PROBLEM WHICH IS NOT COVERED BY WARRANTY." <br>

As I mentioned, my daughters hard drive crashed, I had a Mac IIcx years ago that crashed repeately, now my wife's hard drive crashed. I'm not exactly a computer neophyte. I started writing software in graduate school back in the 1960's. I've written several books on applied math and programming. I've spent decades staring at computer screens and pecking away at keyboards. In the 1970's I bought four of the original Apple I's to set up a computer lab at a university where I was teaching. Then over the years I have owned and/or used mainframes, minis, Apple II's, IBMpc's, Compaqu's, Zeniths, and Hewlett Packards, Dell's plus one totally awful Apple IIcx. I've come to be very suspicious of Apple's. I don't know what the problem is but I think it might be their software, which supposedly does everything, is so complex it steps on itself and this leads to corrupted hard drives. Either that or the heat buildup inside the stylish but tight packaging leads to electronic failures. I'm not sure what it is, all I can say is these machines seem to me to be extremely fragile. By comparison, Pc just seem to go on and on.<br>

Given that they cost more that double an HP or Sony or any other Windows 7 machine, which is every bit as good as an iMac (I know for sure that's the case since I have a new iMAC and a new HP/Windows 7 in my house running off the same router), you would think Apple would bend over backwards to give good customer support instead of unilaterally, choosing to regard hard drive problems as software issues.<br>

Needless to say, I will never buy another iMac</p>

[stevenseelig]

<p>bernard:<br>

I have owned macs since the mid '80 from boxes to laptops. All of them have received pretty heavy daily use. Have had to replace a power supply and one mother board (fried by my local utility company). I even had an iMac at the end of a 3 year Apple Care warranty period die. Apple replaced it with a brand new iMac with a new 3 year warranty for free. I don't ever recall a hard drive failing, but I do regular maintenance with disk utility. Your story makes me think something else is going on, but not sure what.<br>

Owned PC's as well and have had many blue screens of death episodes. <br>

For both, have traveled the world with my laptops either Mac or PC.<br>

Not sure there really is a difference in my experience on stability.<br>

Anyway, good luck.</p>

[matroskin]

<p>Bernard, i think mac just doesn't like you. did you direct bad vibes towards it from the time you opened the box?</p>

[brian_m2]

<blockquote>

<p>I even had an iMac at the end of a 3 year Apple Care warranty period die. Apple replaced it with a brand new iMac with a new 3 year warranty for free.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Assuming your warranty had just ended (which is how I read your post), I can with almost 100% certainty promise you that Apple would not do this for you today.</p>

[bernard_korites1]

<p>Kostya-<br>

I don't know, maybe it was the store I went to, the sales guy in the tweed skirt, the sales woman with the orange and blue mohawk, or the one with the studs, rings and safety pins stuck in lips, ears and eyebrows. Ok Apple, I get it, you want us to think you're hip and counterculture and oh so mod and stylish. OK, I can handle that, but please don't sell us crappy disfunctional computers at a rediculous price then screw us on the warranty when something goes wrong.</p>

[garrison_k.]

<p><em>I have read of new imacs that the screen turns yellow, some will not boot, and some are broken on opening a new box.</em></p>

<p>It's not "some" Randal. It was 52% of the new iMac's shipped were having flickering problems. Over 2.5 million people have googled "imac 27 problem". That's sad for a new product, that is low in demand, from a small company. How does a company deliver a product and get a 52% failure rate?</p>

<p>This thread alone has 3900 replies and 550,000 views since Oct 27, 2009 over the 27" iMac.<br /> <br>

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2212682&tstart=0</p>

<p>Sadness. I used to use Mac and up until recently used to recommend them all the time. I haven't had one single friend get through Snow Leopard without compromising something. I have two friends now that are dual booting with Windows 7 and a third asking me how. All this just upsets me because we are bounced between two massive corporations. I just don't get how there is only two choices when computers are everything to everyone now. I love Ubuntu and the whole idea of "for the community" and open source.</p>

 

[Uhooru]

<p>@ Garrison<br>

I wonder what computer world you live in. Everyone I know that moved to Snow Leopard, including myself has had zero problems. Plus where did you get your 52% figure on flickering. That's news. Can you provide a link to that stat?</p>

[stwrtertbsratbs5]

<p>I've considered buying an Apple on several occasions, but the 'all-in-one' designs put me off. I like to open the case myself when it's time to add RAM or an additional HD. That wouldn't be quite so bad if they didn't charge outrageous prices for upgrades. But they do. <br>

So the only Mac that I'd really consider is the Mac Pro, which is a server-class machine. It looks as if I'm not in their target market, either. Apple won't even let the end user change the battery on an iPod. Sheesh!</p>

[eric_brody]

<p>Your Apple Store sounds atypical. Maybe because you're in the East. (I though I'd add another item to argue about since the Mac-PC thing has already been beaten to death). I got my first Mac in April of 1984, switched to PC's a few years later, and then back about two years ago. I like Mac's, my wife's PC seems clunky in comparison, but... to the point.<br>

Bernard sounds angry, perhaps justifiably. My local Apple Store has been great, I have seen them being incredibly patient with an elderly person (not much older than me) who was really struggling. They have cheerfully answered lots of questions for me. If Bernard is as knowledgeable as he says, he should have been able to fix his own problem, and if he has no backups, he's silly (I "choose" not to use the word "foolish"). All hardware fails, hard drives fail unpredictably. Software develops glitches. The more knowledgeable one is the more likely one can fix things themselves but at some point, most of us need help. The store might have been more helpful, perhaps Bernard came in loaded for bear and they reacted, not appropriate but even the creatures who work in Apple stores are people. We do not know, we were not there.<br>

Good luck.<br>

Eric</p>

[garrison_k.]

<blockquote>

<p>@ Garrison<br /> I wonder what computer world you live in. Everyone I know that moved to Snow Leopard, including myself has had zero problems. Plus where did you get your 52% figure on flickering. That's news. Can you provide a link to that stat?</p>

</blockquote>

<p>You seriously had zero problems with Snow Leopard? Wow. Logically, I feel it's unreasonable to anticipate that every app/utility that we use will survive a major OS upgrade. And SL was a major upgrade. And it was released earlier than expected. Many were caught with their pants down half way through driver updates. But maybe you were one of the lucky ones? Maybe you were wise and held off for a few months and didn't have the growing pains of the early adopters like some of my friends that stood in line on day-one did? I'll give you the benefit of the doubt :). You should have been hanging around here, or the mac support forums, when it was released. There was driver support issues everywhere and the sage advice was to hold off installing for a few months until everyone caught up and the wrinkles were ironed out. The conclusion was that Mac released it weeks early and developers weren't ready. But don't take my word for it, plenty in the mac forums to fill your boots.</p>

<p>I spent 45 min trying to provide you with a link to that 52% stat. Sorry, I can't, I tried, but I must move on with my day. It was way back in late Noveeber when they were still shipping them and shipping them with the known problems. Judging from customers reactions, that thread with 4K entries, AND the halt in shipping it caused by December, I don't doubt the 52% figure. 15%, 25%, 75%, I could care less, they've already lost me. I used to personally prefer the options that came with a Windows machine and can geek out, but for years I would recommend Mac/Apple to friends that can't do their own maintenance and just need to to turn a machine on for a couple years. It's come back to bite me too. Like when CS4 was released in 32 bit, a couple Mac friends slapped me.</p>

<p>Off topic, this week, a friend of mine and I have to figure out how to install new 7200 rpm 2.5 samsung drives into his two mbp's, install SL and bootcamp and then Windows 7 64 bit. A new hdd and an oem copy of W7, it's a $200 upgrade that many out there in the forums doing now. I'm looking forward to the operations and learning. The best of both worlds he anticipates. His GF and he will do all their entertainment and "lifestyle" stuff on the Mac and boot into W7 to run CS4 and get busy. I'm doing it right now with Ubuntu and Windows 7. I consider Ubuntu the best OS out there. Their philosophy sits well with me. It's amazing that when it comes to computers, how many get sentimentally attached like their pick up truck or camera. "Ford sucks, Chevy rules!" or "Nikon is better than Canon". Yep, many consumers are just successful products of marketing. Not for me, I just want to get in and drive without being told which gas station I must fill up at, or get a "sorry" when I want to upgrade the stereo. Yellow pill or the blue pill? Neither, thanks.</p>

<p> </p>

[Uhooru]

<p>Seriously, Garrison, I haven't had a glitch. I got a refurbed laptop with Leopard loaded, upgraded to Snow Leopard and everything just worked fine. Office, Lightroom, CS3, Aperture (don't ask me how I ended up with both those) everything. I did wait a couple of months as I usually do with any OS including all the Windows variants. </p>

[j_herman1]

<p>I've never been a Mac owner, but I can say that all hard drives do get corrupted over time. It's rather unusual for a drive to become corrupted in two months time. The reasons for the corruption could stem from hardware issues, software issues or lack of maintenance (i.e. defragging). Having worked with Windows, Linux, and (believe it or not) OS/2 Warp, I can say that best way to solve the issue of a corrupted drive is to reformat and/or reinstall the operating system.<br>

Some advice:</p>

<ol>

<li>It's always best to partition your hard drive: have one partition set for the operating system, the other your files. In the event of an OS partition failure, you can always reformat & reinstall the OS on that partition without loosing your data.</li>

<li>Always back-up your data to multiple external drives: Every Mac comes with time machine so there's no excuse. If you're running a PC, I recommend SyncBack Pro (http://www.2brightsparks.com/syncback/sbpro.html); it's the most flexible backup software solution I've ever used. Don't rely on online backup services, you'll be sorry in the long run.</li>

<li>Defrag your hard drives on a regular basis. The more fragmented your files are, the the higher the risk of file corruption. </li>

<li>Don't run to the Genius Bar at the Apple store; you'll find no geniuses there. Many common problems can be solved on your own with the aid of a good manual and some patience. </li>

<li>OS X is not immune to malware. The number of threats affecting OS X are negligible at best, but don't count on it staying that way. OS X has proven to be just as vulunerable as Windows, and in some cases, <em>less secure. </em>As Apple's market share increases, so will the threats of virus, trojans, etc. </li>

<li>OS X is no better than Windows, Windows is no better than OS X. Linux is worse than both. They all stink.</li>

</ol>

 

[Tim_Lookingbill]

<p>Disagree with 1., 3. according to what an Apple engineer wrote online about SATA drives and OS X and yes I read manuals and try to do it myself most of the time which is why I agree with 4. I also agree with 2.</p>

<p>In my 12 years using three Macs and surfing the web for about 8 of those 12, I haven't found any evidence to number 5.</p>

<p>Don't get your point with 6. Nothing works? You sound pretty jaded. You should get a Mac. It has given me confidence to answer you with such conviction.</p>