PB freezes in certain positions

minor555threat

Registered
I was playing WoW the other day and the game started freezing. A loud grinding noise occurs and everything freezes. But I found that if I hold the laptop at odd angles (like if I am sitting and put the bottom of it on my chest, and the screen on my lap) the computer will work flawlessy. I know I have a good angle when the grinding noise stops.

I've searched around a bit, but most people have random freezes, or freezes on loading programs or turning on the computer. Mine freezes/grinds 24/7 if I do not hold it at a certain angle.

Any help or direction to help would be appreciated.
 
What you got there is a bad hard drive reader head. It heads is just makeing a little touch here and there on your hard drive as it is spining. I would say go and get your self a new hard drive and a USB or Firewire Drive 2.5 bay. To put you old drive in and put at the angle that dive likes and get your data off of it. ASAP!!
 
How odd that I came to ask a question about a weird sound coming from MY PB that I come across this thread! (whew!) I have 15" PB G4 ('bout 2 yrs old) that has a slight whrrring sound (not a 'grinding', but nevertheless audible) coming from near/above/below the superdrive (there is no disk in that drive). It causes everything to stop (no processing, no disk read, nada) until I either tilt the PB slightly or apply slight pressure to the top and underside of the casing.

I took precautionary steps and installed OS X on my iPod and migrated everything over (I have to take my finals this weekend and this is the LAST thing I need to happen! ;) ).

Does this sound like a fan issue? or a HD issue? I'm not familiar with the hardware test that was mentioned previously, but I am going to look into it shortly. Any assistance would be appreciated very much. I am (thankfully) located close enough to an Apple Store and a Tekserve to aid me should it be necessary. Thanks in advance!

edit: update- I ran the hardware test and everything passed, so either it didnt detect the hard drive issue, or it is the fan as I had suspected. Hopefully someone out there has had similar issues. Anyone?
 
guys, It should be on your Restore CD/DVD, reboot hold down the option key and the hardware test should appear, run it. Please note that the apple test is "flawed" I've had macs that passed ( CPU ) and found to be faulty!!!!!
 
ok, so i went to the new Fifth Ave. store yesterday and talked with them about the whrrring problem. The genius there seems to think that it is an optical drive issue since that is the side of the PB the noise is coming from. I told him that it does this when there is no disc in the drive and he maintains that the system will spin the drive even w/o a disc in there on occassion. He also stated that a fix may mean replacing the superdrive- costing about $300 bucks, and out for 7-10 days. Any thoughts??

Is this a fix I can do myself? Simple as dropping in a new drive, or is there soldering or something involved? While I'm in there I've considered upgrading the HD as well. (might as well right, since the case will be open anyhow ;) )
Id rather not shell out the cash for the superdrive, is there possibly another fix?
 
So, in this ongoing quest (of which no one seems to care or comment except the 2 people experiencing this problem), after 2 nights of trying to deal with a fidgety PB that will only operate at an angle of greater than 20 degrees from horizontal, i ran disk utility thinking maybe the HD was bad. Repaired permissions, and repaired the disk. It came up with an HFS error of some sort and repaired it. I haven't been able to determine if maybe this fixed the problem yet. Does this sound like a feasible cause of the problem?

As a sidenote, should this be a persistent problem, what are the respective costs for replacing the hard drive and/or superdrive? The Genius at the Apple Store quoted a price of $300 for the optical drive, is that right??

I even toyed with the idea of just having my PB stand vertically on its hinge-end since I use an external monitor anyway- but alas, no deskspace and wouldnt want it to come crashing down! :p For those with enough deskspace, I found this vertical laptop stand- though the price seems a bit steep for 2 pcs of plastic :D
 
well it seems people here don't really want to help out in the ol' hardware section... so i'll post this IN CASE anyone else runs into the similar situation. As noted, it may turn out to be a HD issue. After many trial and error boots from an OS-installed iPod, I was able to get sporatic-at-best recognition of the internal HD. Disk Utility reported it as a "failing" HD (S.M.A.R.T. Status: Failing). Let this be a lesson to all of you out there: Backups-- multiple and often. ;) Since I will most likely be the next person to post in this thread, the next report should be on the adventures of replacing a HD yourself :D
 
As I thought: nobody bothered to help out here. But, being a helpful person I decided to go ahead and post about my HD replacement in the event that future mac users run into similar problems.

I replaced the factory Toshiba 80 GB drive from my PB G4 last night with a Seagate Momentus 5400rpm 100GB drive. ($140 and 1 hour of work; as opposed to the Apple Store's ~$325 and 7-10 days) You can get do-it-yourself guides that were fairly helpful (since no one else bothered to here!) at ifixit.com/guide. The only difficult part was getting the top cover off to access the drive bay. Other than that, it was pretty easy. Be sure u have the right size Torx and Phillips head screwdriver and be ready for tiny tiny screws :p

Do the homework, look at all the reviews for HD's (apparently some are not suited for the PB G4's- Western Digital has had sporatic reports of very noisy drives, but others swear by them). Also, be sure you can come to grips with voiding your warranty (if it still exists, which mine did not- apparently if you mail order an Apple in Florida you are not eligible for AppleCare. WTF!!!!).

This will be my last post since this forum is no longer helpful or useful in any shape or form. Good luck and godspeed.
 
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