Bad news and some slightly good news

[viktor_haag]

Well, my home computer is almost certainly bricked at this point. Repeated attempts to install from the Leopard DVD have met with no success. I suppose there is a chance that my Leopard DVD has become hosed so, I suppose step one is to get a replacement disc and try it with that. If that doesn't work, then it's off to the repairshop with the desktop, fingers crossed that the problem is a faulty DVD drive or controller (in short, something which is replaceable at not hideous expense). The sadness of this tale is, of course, that all this happens a month after the Applecare extended warranty has passed. Bastards.

I strongly suspect the DVD drive for two reasons:

- the Leopard media successfully installed on my work machine not 12 hours previously

- the home computer seemed to operate with nothing much in the way of problems for the past two years (since the warranty repair on the factory hard-drive fault)

I hope that it really is just a bad Leopard disc, but I fear that it's more likely that my computer has a hardware problem of some kind. I just hope it's not expensive, now that it'll be on my dime.

Comments

[sixteenbynine.livejournal.com]

Here's another possibility: it's a faulty signal cable. Either the hard drive or the CD/DVD drive has a bad signal cable, which is probably a cheap fix.

A good friend of mine was experiencing parallel issues to yours (albeit on a different platform), and two new signal cables made all well.

[viktor-haag.livejournal.com]

Yeah -- that sounds exactly like it could be the culprit. As I say, I doubt it is a fault with the HDDs, as I make fairly solid use of them during normal operation. However, the optical drive hardly ever gets used, and so that's why I suspect it's the most likely culprit. I will soon try to install with the media on my laptop (that I'm using now) to see if I can rule out the media as the cause. The laptop configuration is essentially "throwawayable" so if that botches, too, then I can re-install Tiger on it and not really fell the pain.

[doc-mystery.livejournal.com]

That's awful to hear, Vik. I hope you get your machine working again, soon.

Now I'm glad I didn't get my copy of Leopard Friday after all...

::B::

[doc-mystery.livejournal.com]

According to Slashdot, you aren't alone:

http://it.slashdot.org/it/07/10/27/1838248.shtml

::B::

[viktor-haag.livejournal.com]

Yes; different symptoms to mine. Mine didn't even get the OS fully installed. It would start installing, and then just churn away without doing anything for hours (well, to be fair, after an hour of not doing anything, the installer itself shuts down internally, looking at its logs; however, the UI for the installer doesn't tell you that it's done this... 8)).

[life-on-queen.livejournal.com]

It's been my experience that most machines really don't like it when you upgrade they're operating system - at least my don't. They tend to get cranky and work more slowly like a septegenarian Brit expected to convert to metric.

Good luck!

[viktor-haag.livejournal.com]

When you do an "upgrade", I totally agree. However, my standing policy is to an "archive and install", which isn't really an upgrade. It's more like a "fresh install without clobbering your basic configuration or user preferances". Ever since Apple included this option with their OS releases, I've used it to good results. Except this time. Feh.