Mac's, they just work.... dont they steve?

otispunkmeyer

otispunkmeyer

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So now that my 07 macbook pro is out of warranty ( and what a warranty!) i decided to upgrade the paltry 160GB HD to a new 640GB jobbie I also decided to upgrade to snow leopard in the process. the day before the goods arrived i had everything sorted... i'd pared my system to the bone, ridding it of clutter and id made a full backup just in case.

drive swapping took 20-30 min (this model has so many bastard fiddly screws). but it went well.

however the next step didnt go so well. I popped the snowleopard disc in and restarted, holding down C to boot from CD.

the one thing i hadnt checked, on account of it being replaced 3 times and the fact that it burnt a couple CD's from iTunes last week, was if the DVD drive was gonna work.

spins up.....spins down.....spins up.....spins down....spins up.......spins down.....spits the disc out.

you have to be kidding me. the machine has had over 3k of repairs in 3 years... 2 new screens, 1 chassis, 3 logic boards, 3 DVD drives, 4 batteries. infact everything has been replaced at least once, bar the hard disk. you'd think it would be working fine. but no, it spat the snow leopard DVD out and it even spat the Leopard DVD out as well and i know that disc is good. (both discs load up on my gf's windows laptop just fine)

so the great messiah's product cant even read product from the very same company. nice one.

to add insult to injury.... the windows 7 64bit i bought works just fine in my mac!!!! infuriating.

so im stuck now, unless i can borrow another mac to make a USB boot stick with snow leopard on im gonna have to buy an external DVD drive. since my mac can boot from USB... i assume any USB external drive will suffice?

(while im moaning, i have a 16gb usb stick thats super slow on Mac OS X, its like your upoading it across the internet when you save stuff to it...... yet on windows it transfered a couple hundred meg in no time)
 
otispunkmeyer said:
the machine has had over 3k of repairs in 3 years... 2 new screens, 1 chassis, 3 logic boards, 3 DVD drives, 4 batteries.
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You like to throw your laptop against the wall every now and then? All I needed to replace on my 07' Macbook Pro was the charger, which was changed only two weeks ago.
 
And my $1600 Dell laptop died 1.5 years after I bought it (came with a 1 year warranty), with the repair quoted as $720. Laptops breaking is a fact of life. <_<
 
^ nope, the damn thing barely moved from its desk. i got a lemon for sure and they wouldnt replace the whole thing, they just spent double the money on replacing every single part multiple times.

part of the handy work was an apple authorised reseller/repair place and those are the guys that gave it a new chassis. im assuming because they damaged the only one when butchering it apart.

what are my options then to get OS X on to a blank HD?

i can make a USB boot disc, i only know how to do this using disk utility in mac to make an image of the disk on a USB stick. is there a way to do this in windows? when i put the OSX disk in all i get is stuff to install boot camp ????

can i use any old external DVD drive and boot from that?

can i use target disk mode with a FW cable n another mac?

can i use the remote install method they prescribe for the mac book air. i read about it and it seems you can put the OSX disk in any computer, windows or mac and then remote install OSX over your network. ill try this one first i think
 
If you can get your hands on another Mac then you can pop the DVD inside it, and start it in target disc mode. Then start your MacBook Pro with alt, it will see the Hard Drive and the DVD from the other Mac.

The MacBook Air remote install mode only works with the MacBook Air and some Minis, but that's pretty much it...

Another solution is to clone the DVD onto an USB Hard Drive using Disk Utility, as you mentioned. Just select the DVD and then go to the Restore tab in the program. Then select the partition onto which you want to restore the DVD (it's better if you erase it so I would suggest to make a backup of it first :)).
 
will also try a DVD cleaning kit.... i think the open slot loading drives like this are just too prone to dust. so it maybe that.

i think the problem may well be DL discs. the Snow leopard disc is about 7 Gig i think so thats a DL disc, i wouldnt be suprised if the leopard one is a DL Disc too. Not sure how big windows 7 is, but if its a SL disc then that might confirm it.

EDIT: according to M$ their instructions for making a bootable USB stick with Win 7 on it is to have a USB stick of at least 4GB. so that to me says SL disc.

so hopefully, its just a dirty lens not allowing the laser to be powerful enough to be able to penetrate the double layers on the OSX discs.
 
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I'd go the stick route myself - avoids the drive altogether (My 8 Gig Cruzer stick was only 12.00 GBP). Get it built then get a hardware tech to look at the drive and replace if necessary.
 
i give up on the drive, its had 3... im now not going pay for a 4th. its clearly an issue the apple support forums have endless threads on this body type mac book pros DVD drive being generally useless after short periods of time.

i dont use the drive often, theres really no need. except situations like this. so i may well end up with a external drive and swap the internal one for a second hard drive bay.
 
I just wanted to slip in the irrelevant information that the iMac I was given at my former workplace had one PSU and two mainboard replacements in four years. My five year old, measily and cheap HP Windows XP notebook which I constantly carry around and fiddle with however has never ever missed a beat.
 
i have had my mac book pro (and i got the best one out there) for 8 months and the only problems i have seen was my hard drive took a crap on me once (maybe because i punched it, shhh) but thats it! the guy at the apple store says that the biggest issue he sees for these going bad is abuse. people dont respect thier laptops and that causes issues. think about it. like a car, your car will work fine and last a long time as long as you dont go running into things and you keep up on the maintenance. take care of your stuff and you may be surprised.

by the way, its not like this thing sits on a desk all day. it travels with me everywhere i go and i only turn it off MAYBE once a week.
 
^thats the irritating thing though... i take care of everything i buy, even my clapped out skoda superb, even though its full of dings and scratches i dont want to get any more. ive had my mac book pro over 3 years now, if its even been taken out i had a very nice crumpler bag to protect it. otherwise it sits on one of those griffin stand things. theres not a mark on it, you'd think it was brand new. yet its had failure after failure. the last repair i came out the apple store with a receipt as long as my arm for over a grands worth of replacement parts.


its nuked 3 batteries on its own (running off battery, then it suddenly switches off despite having over an hour left on battery, switch back on and battery health has dropped from 90 to 36%....)

all ive ever done is use the damn thing and look after it, and all its done for me is have multiple failures.

so yeah if i bashed it around maybe i wouldnt be so pissed off..... but i havent, i paid a premium for a premium product and i looked after it like a baby and yet its been the most unreliable piece of equipment i have ever purchased. even my old computer, which i built myself without really having a clue what i was doing, still works flawlessly and its 7 years old.

thing is im a sucker for looks and id contemplate another ..... im a bad person for that lol
 
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otispunkmeyer said:
^thats the irritating thing though... i take care of everything i buy, even my clapped out skoda superb, even though its full of dings and scratches i dont want to get any more. ive had my mac book pro over 3 years now, if its even been taken out i had a very nice crumpler bag to protect it. otherwise it sits on one of those griffin stand things. theres not a mark on it, you'd think it was brand new. yet its had failure after failure. the last repair i came out the apple store with a receipt as long as my arm for over a grands worth of replacement parts.

its good to know you take care of it and it sucks its gone bad so much. i sit around people all day why basically run thiers over with a car and then complain about it crashing and dying all the time. you just wanna slap them.

i really love my macbook pro, about a one month before i got this i had picked up a new laptop and it has sat in my closet since.
its nuked 3 batteries on its own (running off battery, then it suddenly switches off despite having over an hour left on battery, switch back on and battery health has dropped from 90 to 36%....)

all ive ever done is use the damn thing and look after it, and all its done for me is have multiple failures.

so yeah if i bashed it around maybe i wouldnt be so pissed off..... but i havent, i paid a premium for a premium product and i looked after it like a baby and yet its been the most unreliable piece of equipment i have ever purchased. even my old computer, which i built myself without really having a clue what i was doing, still works flawlessly and its 7 years old.

thing is im a sucker for looks and id contemplate another ..... im a bad person for that lol
Click to expand...
 
otispunkmeyer said:
^thats the irritating thing though... i take care of everything i buy, even my clapped out skoda superb, even though its full of dings and scratches i dont want to get any more. ive had my mac book pro over 3 years now, if its even been taken out i had a very nice crumpler bag to protect it. otherwise it sits on one of those griffin stand things. theres not a mark on it, you'd think it was brand new. yet its had failure after failure. the last repair i came out the apple store with a receipt as long as my arm for over a grands worth of replacement parts.


its nuked 3 batteries on its own (running off battery, then it suddenly switches off despite having over an hour left on battery, switch back on and battery health has dropped from 90 to 36%....)

all ive ever done is use the damn thing and look after it, and all its done for me is have multiple failures.

so yeah if i bashed it around maybe i wouldnt be so pissed off..... but i havent, i paid a premium for a premium product and i looked after it like a baby and yet its been the most unreliable piece of equipment i have ever purchased. even my old computer, which i built myself without really having a clue what i was doing, still works flawlessly and its 7 years old.

thing is im a sucker for looks and id contemplate another ..... im a bad person for that lol
Click to expand...

Sorry, are we talking Macs or Italian cars?
 
i'm using an old powerbook g4 daily which was already bought used by a friend a couple of years ago, so i don't know how old it is but 5 years for sure and apart from the battery which had degraded over time nothing has ever been changed. the screen isn't as bright as it used to be and its getting a bit loud likely due to being clogged up with dust lately but nothing really failed yet.
 
On the other hand, my 07 MBP has only had power cords and batteries replaced despite the fact I dropped it on a regular basis, once from over 4 feet up then feel on top of it with my elbow. I have caved in the entire left side of the damn thing and still the main reason it was replaced was it was getting old slow and crashy. The only other real issue was the DVD drive doesn't burn anymore, which was annoying but it still read so I didn't bother replacing it as a thumb drive is easier anyway.

I'm not a big fan of apple honestly, and I would not own many of their products if given to me for free but with that many issues I think you got a lemon. Maybe even a cursed one.:confused:
 
Can't help with trouble-shooting, but I *will* say that Snow Leopard is Apple's Vista. Worst operating system they've ever made. That was the final straw; my next computer will not be another MacBook Pro but instead will be a Vaio.
 
Really? Snow Leopard has been rock solid for me. Leopard on the other hand...
 
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