renovationism

1:40 PM: While working on my MacBook, in MS Word for Mac, the screen freezes, but the mouse pointer is still alive. This is the first time this behavior has occurred.

1:41 PM: Control is restored. I immediately click to save my Word file. The MacBook freezes again. I notice an uncharacteristic repetitive clicking sound from hard drive.The sound is indicative of failure/retry attempts by the drive.

1:50 PM: After several minutes of no response, I power down and re-start the MacBook. I get the welcome chord and white screen but no Apple logo, and the fan starts and spins up to high speed. I power down.

2:05 PM: I dig out my AppleCare paperwork. I unplug my Time Machine backup drive.

2:17 PM: I call Apple tech support. I have experience troubleshooting and repairing PC issues, but relatively little in the Apple world. Because of this, I feel blind and helpless. In behavior uncharacteristic of other tech support calls I’ve made, I control my frustration, relax, and submit to the skill of the rep. She walks me through a reset, which involves removing the battery and holding down some keys. After this proves fruitless, she walks me through booting from the original OS X disk to access the disk utility, which doesn’t even show the hard drive. Declaring the drive dead, she opens a ticket and schedules a visit that afternoon at the Tyson’s Corner Apple store Genius Bar.

4:00 PM: I drop off the MacBook at the Tyson’s Apple store. I’m told they have the drive in stock, and to expect about a day turn-around. I return home.

6:34 PM: I receive call that the MacBook is ready.

7:30 PM: I pick up MacBook from Apple store. There is a slight delay, and I have to wait a few minutes in the store (torture, I know) while they, as I am told, “clean and polish the unit” before returning it to me.

8:10 PM: Back home, I turn on the MacBook and enjoy the welcome video with the cool flight through space and trippy “doo doo doo” music.

8:12 PM: I reach the screen asking if I want to transfer data from another computer, or restore from Time Machine backup. I select the restore from Time Machine and plug in my Time Machine drive.

8:43 PM: Restore complete, I finish a few registration screens and log in. The MacBook is exactly the same as it was earlier that day. There’s even a restored version of the Word document I was working on. About 20 minutes worth of work was lost.

Elapsed Time: 7 hours, 3 minutes.

So far, the only setting I’ve found that wasn’t restored is the “Require password to wake this computer from sleep or screen saver” setting in Security. And I had to do a couple of rounds of updates. And, interestingly, Time Machine was turned off. I turned it on.

This entry was posted Tuesday, April 7th, 2009 at 12:11 am and is filed under tech. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.