Friday, September 18, 2009

Ongoing Mac Problems

[Update Oct. 3 - see this later post for what the Snow Leopard problem was for me. Doesn't mean it will work for you, but it seems to have solved my problem.]

My relationship with Stephen at the Apple Help Desk is growing much closer. It's all due to installing Snow Leopard. I have his direct line and his email. My black screen continues to show up. When it was at the MacHaus, they never saw the problem and their hardware diagnostic was negative. After a day at home, it came back.

So, what could it be? I've been trying to isolate factors.
1. It happened after I installed Snow Leopard. It seemed to go fine after Stephen walked me through resetting the parameter ram and the SMC.
2. But after I added Rosetta (I'd left it off when I installed Snow Leopard) it started again.
There's one other factor that I'm pretty sure of:
3. It only seems to go black when I'm plugged into my Mac adapter. I don't think it has gone black when I've worked on battery only. And at the MacHaus, they didn't have my adapter and they never had the problem.
4. It doesn't happen while I'm working on the computer, it happens when I stop for a while - go to get a phone call or do some other errand away from the computer. A few minutes away is enough.

It went black a couple of times yesterday and after I rebooted twice, I decided to leave the cord unplugged except when I needed to recharge the battery, but if I was going to get up I unplugged the cord. Stephen had me reset the SMC and parallel ram again yesterday afternoon, but it went black again. I left a message. (He's in Dallas and it was after he left work.) But I didn't plug it in again and it was good overnight and today. When Stephen called today about 1pm, we reloaded Snow Leopard, but he had me plug into another outlet to see if the outlet was a problem. I went to pick up J and when I got back it was finished installing, and the screen was black and unresponsive.

So I'm battery again now and we'll see. He said if it went down again, he'd send a new power adapter.

Meanwhile I did find out my friend does NOT have lung cancer. Now, that is very good news. And J's back. Also good news.

Making salads for Rosh Hashona dinner with friends.

1 comment:

  1. Hmm. Reminds me of a problem I had for months with our wireless signal in our home. Tech support call after call and no improvement. Then, I got a different tech person who, while going through the check-list of things we had done, came up with a different one than I had ever heard before: some other electronic device plugged in?

    It turns out, I had heard the query before, but hadn't thought it was possible that my rechargeable beard trimmer could cause a problem. It wasn't it, right? So I didn't really answer truthfully when I was asked about other devices; I had ruled it out in my own mind.

    Wrong. As soon as I unplugged the bugger, I had no problem with our signal--strong and clear.

    Oops. Make a note to self: keep mind open.

    Good luck, Steve. This was all to say, yes, perhaps it IS your adaptor. I know here, that I was told to bring mine in when I had to de-bug a problem last year. It just might be it. Test, test, test.

    ReplyDelete

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