And then it just sits there. I’m guessing a hard drive failure, since I don’t hear it spin before the Apple logo turns into that thing up there. Genius Bar, here I come…
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Evidence that we are truly living in the end times:
1. Al Franken is now a Senator.
2. News of 20,000 people in revolt in Terhran was eclipsed by news that a long suspected serial child molester had died.
3. The President of the United States of America has just joined forces with Communist dictators Castro and Chavez to interfere in the internal affairs of Democratic Honduras to allow the President of Honduras to go ahead and subvert the constitution and become a dictator for life himself.
4. The weight from the ink alone on the US Federal Budget just caused local space/time to collapse into a singularity. The response from Congress was to pass yet another spending bill so they could study the environmental impact from the new spatial phenomenon.
5. Apple computer hardware now dies like all other computer hardware.
Well that about wraps it up for me. I’ll be headed off to the backyard Nuclear bunker just as soon as I find where I put the arc welder, so I can weld the door shut from the inside.
All it really means that it can’t find a working Mac OS X installation. Could be hardware, could be software.
First thing I would do, if you don’t have DiskWarrior, is to toss in your OS X install CD, and use Disk Utility. That way, at least, you’ll be able to tell if the hard drive is completely fried. If Disk Utility sees your hard drive at all, it might just be your install that’s borked. In that case, you can either plug the hard drive into another Mac by one method or another so that you can poke around, or just go straight to the reinstall.
Above all, I hope you have a very recent backup. Also, I second the DiskWarrior reccomendation. It’s pulled me out of several tight jams. Of course, the initial Leopard version also royally blighted my permissions causing a number of great headaches, but overall it’s a great product.
As a long time Mac user I’ve found Disk Warrior essential to the continuing health of my computers. But understand, all it can do is repair/maintain the volume directory on your hard drive(s), which it does quite brilliantly. It cannot address hardware issues.
It could be a disk failure, it could be that an update choked mid-install and the disk doesn’t have a bootable system on it any more. Throw the DVD that came with the MacBook into it and boot off that, then launch Disk Utility. If it sees the drive, it’s probably not a hardware issue. If it doesn’t, you’re gonna need a new HD.
This is pretty much what the guy at the Genius Bar is going to do.
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15 Comments
1. arhooley:Uh-oh. Could be BSOD. It’s one of those horrible things you find out about only when it strikes you.
Jun 30, 2009 - 10:32 am 2. Will Collier:Yeah, that’s bad. Might be repairable with Disk Warrior.
Jun 30, 2009 - 12:13 pm 3. John:Two words: Mechanical Agitation
Jun 30, 2009 - 12:42 pm 4. Frank Martin:Evidence that we are truly living in the end times:
1. Al Franken is now a Senator.
2. News of 20,000 people in revolt in Terhran was eclipsed by news that a long suspected serial child molester had died.
3. The President of the United States of America has just joined forces with Communist dictators Castro and Chavez to interfere in the internal affairs of Democratic Honduras to allow the President of Honduras to go ahead and subvert the constitution and become a dictator for life himself.
4. The weight from the ink alone on the US Federal Budget just caused local space/time to collapse into a singularity. The response from Congress was to pass yet another spending bill so they could study the environmental impact from the new spatial phenomenon.
5. Apple computer hardware now dies like all other computer hardware.
Well that about wraps it up for me. I’ll be headed off to the backyard Nuclear bunker just as soon as I find where I put the arc welder, so I can weld the door shut from the inside.
Jun 30, 2009 - 1:46 pm 5. bgates:Is that the new Mac Err?
Jun 30, 2009 - 1:57 pm 6. Obi-Wandreas:All it really means that it can’t find a working Mac OS X installation. Could be hardware, could be software.
First thing I would do, if you don’t have DiskWarrior, is to toss in your OS X install CD, and use Disk Utility. That way, at least, you’ll be able to tell if the hard drive is completely fried. If Disk Utility sees your hard drive at all, it might just be your install that’s borked. In that case, you can either plug the hard drive into another Mac by one method or another so that you can poke around, or just go straight to the reinstall.
Above all, I hope you have a very recent backup. Also, I second the DiskWarrior reccomendation. It’s pulled me out of several tight jams. Of course, the initial Leopard version also royally blighted my permissions causing a number of great headaches, but overall it’s a great product.
Jun 30, 2009 - 4:10 pm 7. ed:It just missed you. After you have been bome for a couple of days, maybe it will come around.
ed
Jun 30, 2009 - 7:09 pm 8. calvon:If you haven’t already done so, you might try pulling out the battery and then putting it back. That sometimes works.
Jun 30, 2009 - 7:45 pm 9. Raspy:Karma for dissing Vista so much.
That sucks, dude.
Jun 30, 2009 - 7:55 pm 10. jaymaster:I’m a bit disappointed with Apple.
That’s not nearly as expressive as the frowny face that greets you when your iPod dies…
Jun 30, 2009 - 8:26 pm 11. jon:jaymaster,
An iPod screen is too little to punch in its frowny fucking face, while an iMac or an iBook screen wouldn’t be. Apple knows what it’s doing.
Jun 30, 2009 - 9:20 pm 12. peter jackson:DiskWarrior is the shit.
Jul 1, 2009 - 12:07 am 13. KZ:As a long time Mac user I’ve found Disk Warrior essential to the continuing health of my computers. But understand, all it can do is repair/maintain the volume directory on your hard drive(s), which it does quite brilliantly. It cannot address hardware issues.
Jul 1, 2009 - 12:38 am 14. rosignol:+1 to above comments Re DiskWarrior.
It could be a disk failure, it could be that an update choked mid-install and the disk doesn’t have a bootable system on it any more. Throw the DVD that came with the MacBook into it and boot off that, then launch Disk Utility. If it sees the drive, it’s probably not a hardware issue. If it doesn’t, you’re gonna need a new HD.
This is pretty much what the guy at the Genius Bar is going to do.
Jul 1, 2009 - 1:14 am 15. Richard:#4: Frank Martin…
That’s funny stuff! Well, funny until you realize it’s all true.
Jul 1, 2009 - 10:53 amSorry, comments for this entry are closed at this time.