Calling all Mac tech geeks: The case of the slanted iBook

[Lydia Leftcoast]

Late last night (isn't it always late at night?) Safari crashed. No big deal. I'd just force quit. Wait, Mail, which I had open to check for messages from Japanese clients, was also crashing. When I tried to force quit, I saw that the Finder was also sporting that spinning beach ball. Wait, this isn't supposed to be possible.

Well, I rebooted using the Command/Control/On combination, and I got nothing but that circular thing going round and round under the Apple symbol. Tried again. Same thing. Tried several times. Same thing every time. Tried Extensions Off. Silly me, should have realized that this is irrelevant for OS X. Looked around for reference books to remind myself how to zap the PRAM. Nope, same result. I tried starting up from the system disk. Nothing happened. Nothing worked.

Since I was in the midst of a major job that required me to turn in segments every day at 6PM my time, I took my old computer out and e-mailed the client to e-mail back the work I had done so far. Okay, at least that worry was settled, even though the old computer has an older version of MS Office and doesn't really handle the file well. (This file is a prime example of the irritating Japanese tendency to use Excel as a word processor and to ask to have the translation overwritten in the Excel file, which means that correcting an error in a cell requires me to redo the entire cell, but I digress...)

I was thinking, "Hard disk crash--and after only 15 months, too!" I thought I'd give it one more shot before going to bed. I picked up the frozen computer from the place where I had set it aside before hooking up the old iMac, and suddenly, I began to see very, very slow progress. The blue background appeared with a cursor. The OS X icon appeared. Soon I noticed that each time I tilted the iBook, it would speed up. Finally, it was fully booted, and I had all my functions back. (The first thing I did was to back up everything I had worked on that day.)

This morning, the iBook started up just fine, but it tends to be slow, and the beach ball appears way to frequently, although it disappears when I tilt the iBook off horizontal, and the requested action happens immediately (window closes, menu comes down, etc.)

So my current thinking is that this is a hardware problem, not a software problem, and that the hard disk is unbalanced somehow. Is this a reasonable thought, and if so, is repairing it a huge hassle?

[politicat]

1. Sounds like the hard drive is dying.

Back it up and replace it ASAP. How old is the iBook? Did you get applecare?

Replacing iBook hard drives isn't terribly hard (we've done it with two different machines) but if you're not comfortable with lots of screws and being very precise, let someone else do it.

Is it making any noises?

[Lydia Leftcoast]

2. Oh, no!

The machine is 15-16 months old, and it makes little creaky noises when the beachball is spinning. However, these are not constant, and they go away when I tilt the machine off horizontal.

The hard drive on my 2000 model iMac lasted for 4 years. In fact, after much dithering around (its CD-ROM drive doesn't work. and it has an earlier version of Office), I've managed to open and manipulate the file on the ancient iMac. (The Japanese fonts were the biggest problem, because not all my fonts work either, and I can't reinstall Word because of not having a working CD drive.)

[politicat]

3. That's odd...

Hard drives are most likely to die when they're new if it's a manufacturing defect, but if you've done a lot of disk intensive work (lots of saves, searches etc) they can go.

Still, back ups never hurt anyone. If you don't have one, getting an external firewire drive (and installing the OS on it) and booting from that will tell you affirmatively if it's the hard drive (i.e. if you get the same problem booting from the external drive, you know it's not the hard drive.)

[Lydia Leftcoast]

4. Don't have an external hard drive this evening

but I'm madly backing my most vital stuff up on, believe it or not, Zip disks, since my backup computer, a 2000 iMac, has a bum CD-ROM drive.

The iBook works more or less when it's just been turned on, but it goes really hinky if it's been running too long. In any case, it's going to the computer doctor tomorrow morning.

I HOPE that the repairs aren't too expensive. If they aren't, I'll definitely get me one of those Firewire hard drives. Isn't there some program that automatically backs up everything you do?

[politicat]

5. Yep, but you have to have an external device and keep it plugged in.

Believe me, Marianne and Elinor (my externals - everything in the network is named for book/comic characters) have saved my butt more than once when the software has gone hinky and recovery is either more time consuming than just rebuilding/reloading or actually fucked.

I take it no applecare? On laptops, we always get applecare. It's just cheaper than not.

A hard drive for an ibook runs about 80 to 120; an external runs about 130 to 200 (depending on what you're looking for). The hard drives are not hard to replace (http://www.sterpin.net/uk/ddibookg4uk.htm for instructions).

Good luck!

[Lydia Leftcoast]

6. Latest news

I brought the computer in to the shop where I bought it (they're Apple authorized service techs), but they won't have a chance to look at it till next week.

Meanwhile, I'm on my pokey little iMac, vintage 2000.