This is a bit of a saga, with a simple question at the end. I apologize for the length!
Two years ago, I sold my late 2009 i5 27"iMac to a friend. It still had a year of Applecare at that point. He called me last week to say he was having trouble with kernel panics at start-up. In addition, some times it would start up, and then freeze. He had received a notice from Apple some months ago of a recall for the hard drives in that model, but hadn't had time to bring it in. I told him to bring it to me and I'd look at it. My first assumption was that it was an impending failure of the hard drive, so I took a full backup using SuperDuper. That produced odd results, in that it said there was 160GB of files on the desktop; my friend swears there wasn't.
I then booted his machine in firewire disk mode and ran DiskWarrior and Techtools on his machine, and they both reported the hardware was fine. I tried to wipe his hard drive, which took several tries because of the kernel panics, with the goal of a clean install of Mountain Lion. I was unable to install or run anything from the DVD player. I finally did get an install working, but when I tried to restart the computer later, it would not restart. I could hear the hardware working, but the screen did not come to life.
We booked an appointment at the nearest Apple Store (an hour away) and took it in the next day. The genius spent two hours in the store trying most of the same things I had tried, with the same results. She then took the machine in, with the instructions to replace the hard drive, but that if it proved to be more than that, to call us first. She said it would be a few days, as they would run various tests and leave it running for a while to see what was going on. We ran a couple of errands, and by the time we were home, the Apple Store had sent an email saying it was ready for pickup. My friend called the Apple Store, and the person he spoke with just reaffirmed that it was ready for pickup. It turn out that the technician had left a voice mail explaining what he had done with the computer, but for some weird reason, it took the school's voice mail system a day to get the message to the right mailbox.
There is where one fault in the Apple Store (I think) in the division between front room and back room. When we came in the next day to pick up the computer, the guy we spoke with had no clue whether anything had been done with the computer. The technician had left a long note about what he'd tried, but the floor guy was trying to read these off his iPhone and was not doing well at understanding them. He finally called out one of the techs, who read over the notes, and explained that the tech had tried replacing the hard drive, still had kernel panics, checked the RAM and hardware, and thought the fault was in the logic board. My theory, given that I couldn't boot from the DVD and the system was more stable booting from firewire, is that it's somewhere in the section governing the SATA connection. Apple should attach a printed copy of the tech's notes to the computer; that would have made our pickup a lot easier. As it turned out, the tech left the original hd and Apple did not charge my friend for the work. To replace the hd would have been around $300, and replacing the logic board would be around another $500. My friend, naturally, is reluctant to put over $800 into a four-year-old computer.
I've been looking for ways to use the screen of an iMac as an external monitor. The official ways involve having a reliable operating system on the iMac. There is the option of booting from firewire and then using the iMac as a monitor, though even booting from firewire was not perfect. Does any one know of an alternative that doesn't require a reliable operating system on the iMac?
Two years ago, I sold my late 2009 i5 27"iMac to a friend. It still had a year of Applecare at that point. He called me last week to say he was having trouble with kernel panics at start-up. In addition, some times it would start up, and then freeze. He had received a notice from Apple some months ago of a recall for the hard drives in that model, but hadn't had time to bring it in. I told him to bring it to me and I'd look at it. My first assumption was that it was an impending failure of the hard drive, so I took a full backup using SuperDuper. That produced odd results, in that it said there was 160GB of files on the desktop; my friend swears there wasn't.
I then booted his machine in firewire disk mode and ran DiskWarrior and Techtools on his machine, and they both reported the hardware was fine. I tried to wipe his hard drive, which took several tries because of the kernel panics, with the goal of a clean install of Mountain Lion. I was unable to install or run anything from the DVD player. I finally did get an install working, but when I tried to restart the computer later, it would not restart. I could hear the hardware working, but the screen did not come to life.
We booked an appointment at the nearest Apple Store (an hour away) and took it in the next day. The genius spent two hours in the store trying most of the same things I had tried, with the same results. She then took the machine in, with the instructions to replace the hard drive, but that if it proved to be more than that, to call us first. She said it would be a few days, as they would run various tests and leave it running for a while to see what was going on. We ran a couple of errands, and by the time we were home, the Apple Store had sent an email saying it was ready for pickup. My friend called the Apple Store, and the person he spoke with just reaffirmed that it was ready for pickup. It turn out that the technician had left a voice mail explaining what he had done with the computer, but for some weird reason, it took the school's voice mail system a day to get the message to the right mailbox.
There is where one fault in the Apple Store (I think) in the division between front room and back room. When we came in the next day to pick up the computer, the guy we spoke with had no clue whether anything had been done with the computer. The technician had left a long note about what he'd tried, but the floor guy was trying to read these off his iPhone and was not doing well at understanding them. He finally called out one of the techs, who read over the notes, and explained that the tech had tried replacing the hard drive, still had kernel panics, checked the RAM and hardware, and thought the fault was in the logic board. My theory, given that I couldn't boot from the DVD and the system was more stable booting from firewire, is that it's somewhere in the section governing the SATA connection. Apple should attach a printed copy of the tech's notes to the computer; that would have made our pickup a lot easier. As it turned out, the tech left the original hd and Apple did not charge my friend for the work. To replace the hd would have been around $300, and replacing the logic board would be around another $500. My friend, naturally, is reluctant to put over $800 into a four-year-old computer.
I've been looking for ways to use the screen of an iMac as an external monitor. The official ways involve having a reliable operating system on the iMac. There is the option of booting from firewire and then using the iMac as a monitor, though even booting from firewire was not perfect. Does any one know of an alternative that doesn't require a reliable operating system on the iMac?
via ehMac.ca http://www.ehmac.ca/showthread.php?t=108098&goto=newpost
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