Hi,
I'm not exactly tech savvy, so hopefully someone can help me figure out what I should do to fix it, and if there's a way to fix it myself(?)...
I bought a used 13" macbook pro (early 2011), and have had it for about 4 months (the previous owner installed a 500GB SATA, and 8GB ram). I'm asking if there's a way to fix it myself or take it in, as I believe the warranty was void when the previous owner installed the memory and ram himself, and I sadly didn't get the original startup disc from him (I asked for one, but I'm not sure if he gave me a copy from a different computer, as it's not an original bootup disc). That's what I get for not being tech savvy enough, and not doing enough research before the purchase...
But anyways, the computer was working fine for the last few months -- until I updated the software to 10.6.8 recently (or at least I didn't notice any of these problems until after the update).
Normally upon startup, my computer goes pretty quickly through the grey apple screen/blue screen/background wallpaper-finder desktop with icons and dock. I did get an occasional beep/click from the hard drive, but didn't think much of it at the time, spinning beachball and then just did a forced shutdown and cold restart (if those symptoms mean anything too?).
Recently, after the update and upon startup, my computer remains with the grey apple screen with spinner and loading bar for awhile -- the loading bar seems to stop at about 1/8 of the length of the bar (at least 4 minutes+) , then it disappears, and the spinner keeps spinning for another bunch of minutes. When it finally gets past this stage, it goes to blue, then loads my background wallpaper.
However, here are some of the odd symptoms after startup when it gets to the background wallpaper desktop -- there is more than one symptom, hence my getting confused on what could be the reason:
1) No icons appear on the desktop -- no hard drive icon, no folders that were previously saved on the desktop, etc. The desktop is just blank (only the background wallpaper and dock are visible).
2) The cursor is the spinning beachball of death when rolled over the desktop, but becomes a pointer over the menu and the icons in the dock. I can launch programs from the dock, but I cannot create new folders, open windows in the finder to view documents/pictures/files on the hard drive, etc. It's almost like the finder is looping(?) -- somehow it appears it can't access the hard drive(?)
Launching programs from the dock is great, except that I can't do much with the apps -- iTunes can't connect to the internet, etc. Plus I didn't try to save any files, but even if I could, I doubt I could access them with a spinning beachball on the finder... Can't do a forced relaunch of the finder either -- beachball just spins and spins, again without icons on the desktop...
3) Also, before the update, my internal airport extreme was recognized and I could connect and disconnect fine. After the update, upon startup, I got a dialog box saying it couldn't find my connection. I tried to manually type in the network name and password, but it would not retain the information even if I selected the "remember this network" for future use. I also could not connect even if it said it was connected. I had thought this was just a fluke, and did a cold startup the next day, and it happened again. Has happened ever since.
---------
Here's what I attempted so far:
I tried to reboot with Verbose screen (cmd-V startup)-- the only thing that stood out to me in the text was a "fail to repair the disc" and that it would try to launch fsck upon next launch (or something to that effect). Then, on another attempt, I also attempted to start it from the copied disc the previous owner gave to me, but when I inserted the disc, shutdown,and then held down the C key upon startup, I got 3 beeps, silence, 3 beeps, silence, etc -- seems it didn't want to start from the disc either. Not sure if that indicates anything either(?)
Has anyone else encountered this problem? I read a number of possibly similar postings, but nothing that combines it all in one occurrence on a computer... I read something that said the finder's spinning beachball could be from bad RAM, but it seems maybe it's more than that(?)
If anyone could possibly help me with this issue, or shed some light on what might be happening with my computer it'd be much appreciated --even if it's bad news...
Many thanks in advance for your help,
E
ps.I also backed up everything on Time Machine when I first got the computer, so if I did need to reinstall the OS (and was informed how to go about doing that), a future step would be to see if I could recover the original state of programs etc from Time Machine...
I'm not exactly tech savvy, so hopefully someone can help me figure out what I should do to fix it, and if there's a way to fix it myself(?)...
I bought a used 13" macbook pro (early 2011), and have had it for about 4 months (the previous owner installed a 500GB SATA, and 8GB ram). I'm asking if there's a way to fix it myself or take it in, as I believe the warranty was void when the previous owner installed the memory and ram himself, and I sadly didn't get the original startup disc from him (I asked for one, but I'm not sure if he gave me a copy from a different computer, as it's not an original bootup disc). That's what I get for not being tech savvy enough, and not doing enough research before the purchase...
But anyways, the computer was working fine for the last few months -- until I updated the software to 10.6.8 recently (or at least I didn't notice any of these problems until after the update).
Normally upon startup, my computer goes pretty quickly through the grey apple screen/blue screen/background wallpaper-finder desktop with icons and dock. I did get an occasional beep/click from the hard drive, but didn't think much of it at the time, spinning beachball and then just did a forced shutdown and cold restart (if those symptoms mean anything too?).
Recently, after the update and upon startup, my computer remains with the grey apple screen with spinner and loading bar for awhile -- the loading bar seems to stop at about 1/8 of the length of the bar (at least 4 minutes+) , then it disappears, and the spinner keeps spinning for another bunch of minutes. When it finally gets past this stage, it goes to blue, then loads my background wallpaper.
However, here are some of the odd symptoms after startup when it gets to the background wallpaper desktop -- there is more than one symptom, hence my getting confused on what could be the reason:
1) No icons appear on the desktop -- no hard drive icon, no folders that were previously saved on the desktop, etc. The desktop is just blank (only the background wallpaper and dock are visible).
2) The cursor is the spinning beachball of death when rolled over the desktop, but becomes a pointer over the menu and the icons in the dock. I can launch programs from the dock, but I cannot create new folders, open windows in the finder to view documents/pictures/files on the hard drive, etc. It's almost like the finder is looping(?) -- somehow it appears it can't access the hard drive(?)
Launching programs from the dock is great, except that I can't do much with the apps -- iTunes can't connect to the internet, etc. Plus I didn't try to save any files, but even if I could, I doubt I could access them with a spinning beachball on the finder... Can't do a forced relaunch of the finder either -- beachball just spins and spins, again without icons on the desktop...
3) Also, before the update, my internal airport extreme was recognized and I could connect and disconnect fine. After the update, upon startup, I got a dialog box saying it couldn't find my connection. I tried to manually type in the network name and password, but it would not retain the information even if I selected the "remember this network" for future use. I also could not connect even if it said it was connected. I had thought this was just a fluke, and did a cold startup the next day, and it happened again. Has happened ever since.
---------
Here's what I attempted so far:
I tried to reboot with Verbose screen (cmd-V startup)-- the only thing that stood out to me in the text was a "fail to repair the disc" and that it would try to launch fsck upon next launch (or something to that effect). Then, on another attempt, I also attempted to start it from the copied disc the previous owner gave to me, but when I inserted the disc, shutdown,and then held down the C key upon startup, I got 3 beeps, silence, 3 beeps, silence, etc -- seems it didn't want to start from the disc either. Not sure if that indicates anything either(?)
Has anyone else encountered this problem? I read a number of possibly similar postings, but nothing that combines it all in one occurrence on a computer... I read something that said the finder's spinning beachball could be from bad RAM, but it seems maybe it's more than that(?)
If anyone could possibly help me with this issue, or shed some light on what might be happening with my computer it'd be much appreciated --even if it's bad news...
Many thanks in advance for your help,
E
ps.I also backed up everything on Time Machine when I first got the computer, so if I did need to reinstall the OS (and was informed how to go about doing that), a future step would be to see if I could recover the original state of programs etc from Time Machine...
