Any Mac technicians around? - DPChallenge Forums

Canon EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS

10/17/2006 02:09:06 PM · #1

Howdy folks,

I have a sick Macbook Pro that is in turn causing me much stress. Stress due to the fact that my very last wedding is on there which I haven't printed yet!

When I turn it on it powers up like normal but gets 'stuck' on the start-up page (the sundial that lets you know it's starting up just keeps turning....for as long as I keep it on). I tried running the recommended diagnostics and it all comes back clean - no hardware errors! I called the dealer I bought it from and he said it 'sounds' like hardrive failure..the problem lays in the fact that I'm in rural Newfoundland and I bought the thing in Alberta.

There's only ONE Mac technician in St.John's (3 hours from here) who hasn't returned my phone call or email thus far.

Anyone have any experience with this sort of thing?

- Thanks in advance, Lori

Konador

Canon EOS-500D Rebel T1i

10/17/2006 02:20:18 PM · #2

My friend's Mac did this last year and it was indeed a hard drive failure. He had to get someone out to replace it.

scalvert

Canon EOS-5D Mark III

Canon EF 24-105mm f/4.0L IS

10/17/2006 02:21:56 PM · #3

Try this: Startup holding down the Commend and S keys. You should get a black screen with a bunch of code on it. At the prompt, type "FSCK -FY" and hit enter. It'll take a few minutes to run through this process. If it reports ANY errors, run the same command again. When it reports that the system appears to be OK, type "reboot" and hit enter.

Oh, and buy DiskWarrior. It will save your butt when things go wrong.

zeuszen

Canon EOS-1Ds Mark II

Canon EF 24-105mm f/4.0L IS

10/17/2006 02:24:22 PM · #4

Originally posted by scalvert:

Or boot with "Shift" key down In Safe Mode or
boot via start-up CD, pressing the "C" key...

Sony SAL-50F14 Normal 50mm f/1.4 Autofocus Lens for the Sony

10/17/2006 03:12:20 PM · #5

*gulp* hardrive? The first tech (in Alberta) I talked to this morning said it sounds like a hardrive failture..but the guy I just talked to in St.John's told me it doesn't because he has two mac laptops already with hardrive failure and they all apparently make a 'clicking' noise. *shrugs*

I've tried holding down D, C, Option, Command/Option/P/W and everything in between except for what Scalvert just posted.

*oh please oh please oh please* not a hardrive failure*

ladyhawk22

Sony DSLR-A700

10/17/2006 03:27:03 PM · #6

I just recently (in the last few months) had to replace the harddrive on my apple laptop. It was behaving similarly to what yours is now. Do you have the software that came with the computer? It helped me to reinstall the System software and let me choose an option that saved all of my previous system data in a separate folder. That helped for a while, but then the drive finally went kaput on me.

I would try reinstalling your system, and if that brings it back up---BACK UP EVERYTHING IMMEDIATELY! That way you have it all safe in case your drive does fail and needs to be replaced. My computer was acting poorly for about 4 months before the drive failed for good.

You should be able to boot up off of the system software disk.

Mattel Barbie Photo Designer Digital Camera

10/17/2006 03:30:22 PM · #7

I still have the disc and was using it earlier with the booting options I mentioned. I'm not the most computer literate gal out there so I'm just bringing it all into the tech - he seems pretty cool.

I guess I was sorta-kinda-okay-definetly hoping someone would say it was NOT the hard drive :-)

digitalknight

10/17/2006 03:33:47 PM · #8

there ARE different kinds of hard drive failures - when my macs have acted like yours rebooting from a system disk and re-installing system software has always worked for me. (18 years on a mac now)

There's a bright little experience in this otherwise gloomy place. Have faith.

Message edited by author 2006-10-17 15:34:18.

kirbic

Canon EOS R5

Canon RF 24-70mm f/2.8 L IS

10/17/2006 03:37:20 PM · #9

Make darn sure the tech knows that there is data on the drive that is business-critical. They have a way of wanting to "start clean"...

Bobster

Canon EOS-20D

Tamron SP AF 28-75mm f/2.8 XR Di for Canon

10/17/2006 04:24:11 PM · #10

you can re-install the OS without touching other files..

have u access to an external drive? if u have access to another mac u can copy the OS onto that and then boot from the external and use a disk doctor to check ur inernal?

nemesise1977

Canon EOS-300D Rebel

Sigma 70-300mm f/4-5.6 APO Macro Super for Canon

10/17/2006 04:48:44 PM · #11

if it were a PC I would say pull the HD slave it pull the data to the good drive, then start clean, being a MAC only thing I could say is ask someone else or use a good sledge hammer, might not fix the prob but would be theraputic.
All kidding aside I am 99%sure you can slave the drive in a mac and pull the data if the drive is not "dead" if is a hardware failure there are data recover specilist out there that can take the drive apart in a clean room and trans plant the platters into a good drive then recover the data, this is not cheap by any imagination but if it is for a client and you make a significant part of your income in photography, then it might be worth it, and explain to you client that you had a hardware failure and it may take time to get the data recovered but you will spare no expense to get the pics for them, will make them feel good your willing to go through that much to save their memories, should make for a happy client wihich is always a good thing.

lkn4truth

Sony Alpha a77

Sony SAL-18250 18-250mm f/3.5-6.3 High Magnification Zoom Lens

10/17/2006 05:20:43 PM · #12

ladyhawk22, hate to do this here but I've sent you several emails and PM's and haven't heard from you other than on the boards I see you're around. Are you still wanting to take part of the WPL team? If so, I need a good email address from you so I can update you on things.

Sorry to the board for this personal message.

wimbello

Canon EOS-10D

Sigma 30mm f/1.4 EX DC HSM for Canon

10/17/2006 07:24:14 PM · #13

A useful feature on macs is Target disk mode.

Power on and hold "T" until you see a firewire icon. Using a firewire cable, plug it into another mac and the drive should come up on the desktop. If it doesn't, then the problem is hardware of some sort. (Hard drive, hard drive connector, logic board.)

lynnesite

Canon EOS-1D X

Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM II

10/17/2006 07:49:25 PM · #14

Originally posted by wimbello:

A good thing to try but it's still not necessarily hardware. A disk with logical damage might still not show up. If you indeed have another Mac around google for "Applejack", a free utility that will do repairs. You can use that on bootup, or Disk Warrior or TechTool Pro's performance/directory maintenance routine to repair the damaged catalog.

jazzmik

Nikon D300

Tamron SP AF 28-75mm f/2.8 XR Di for Nikon

10/17/2006 08:03:25 PM · #15

I believe you mean:

/sbin/fsck -fy

Originally posted by scalvert:

scalvert

Canon EOS-5D Mark III

Canon EF 24-105mm f/4.0L IS

10/17/2006 08:38:27 PM · #16

Originally posted by jazzmik:

I believe you mean:

/sbin/fsck -fy

"fsck -fy" will work just fine all by itself. I use it all the time.

ladyhawk22

Sony DSLR-A700

Sony SAL-50F14 Normal 50mm f/1.4 Autofocus Lens for the Sony

10/17/2006 09:17:13 PM · #17

Whatever you do, Goldberry, don't worry too much. I've been using Macs since 1984 and my current computer is the only one I've had ANY problems with. The quality of the hardware in Apple machines is generally really high. I'm sure once this gets straightened out it will be smooth sailing!

asimchoudhri

Canon EOS-5D Mark III

Canon EF 17-40mm f/4.0L USM

10/17/2006 10:27:57 PM · #18

Very important: Have an external hard drive ready before you try any of the above options for rebooting. Once it boots, the very first thing you should do is copy over criticial files. There is always the chance that it will boot but not work long-term, which is why you need to be ready to save your files immediately. Hopefully you will already have your computer up and running by the time I post this. Good luck!

annasense

Olympus E-500 EVOLT

Olympus 14-45mm f/3.5-5.6 Zuiko Digital ED

10/17/2006 10:50:00 PM · #19

I had this same problem a few months ago... it was after an OS/Quicktime update... I think I got it to work by starting up from the disk and moving the Adobe VersionCue folder from the start-up items to the desktop (or anywhere else). If you have that installed, I would try that first. I then had to go back to the old OS/version of Quicktime, but I have since been able to upgrade to all the most recent versions.

alanbataar

Canon EOS-400D Rebel XTi

Lensbaby 1.0 (The Original)

10/17/2006 11:04:07 PM · #20

Former Mac sysadmin...

DO NOT copy any files to the flaky hard drive -- and this includes DiskWarrior -- until after you get your data secured.

You can purchase a bootable DiskWarrior DVD by mail order, which will run your system.

You will need an external HD as a place to store your data, be it because the drive is visible when booted with DW, or because DW fixed your drive well enough that it boots on it's own.

Back up early, back up often.

a

Sigma 70-300mm f/4-5.6 APO Macro Super for Canon

10/19/2006 08:02:55 AM · #21

Hey everyone, thanks for all the posts!

Update: I dropped my laptop off with the ONLY Mac technician in the entire province and he was able to burn off all my photos and important info onto DVD's for me...he's pretty sure it's a bum hard drive but I'll find out soon - luckily it costs me nothing.

I backed up everything from my PC before getting a Mac and then for some reason turned off the reasonable part of my brain that suggested I do the same on my new laptop. Duh. One can only hope I've learned a valuable lesson!

Oh yea, and I'm about 90% sure it was all because of the QuickTime update I did a while back..I did get an error like that when the system crashed once.

Thanks again everyone!!!!!!

- Lori

nemesise1977

Canon EOS-300D Rebel

10/20/2006 01:52:22 AM · #22

if it was a bum hd that I dout he could have pulled the data off it.