My seccond worst day ever

[macuser]

I just had my second worst day ever .

1. I wake up with a cold and sore throat (sore throats are a pain in the neck) (pun intended)
2. I try to upgrade my mac to snow leopard and the main hard drive dies (i mean is not even seen by the bios) I try everthing in the book - nothing works
3. Then I try to boot to ubuntu from a boot disk the system turns off halfway during boot - looks like a memory problem
4. I remove 1 stick of memory - it boots fine
5. I try to boot to my windows hard drive - it won't boot - some files are corrupt
6. my windows hard drive is now dead - bios does not see it
7. i try to boot to my ubuntu disk again to try to get some stuff from my hard disk - my other memory stick is dying
8. I run the bios memory check - yeah bad memory, and run the ubuntu memory check on the live cd - it won't even run - bombs out

I feel like pulling out my hair! this was a perfectly working system 1 day ago (I built it 2.1 years ago)

any help would be VERY appreciated

-regards macuser


P.S. Whenever something bad happens I try to answer these 4 questions:
1. why? - don't know yet
2. why me? - still don't know yet
3. how can it be prevented? - this
4. what can I learn? - not to place my trust in things

[Jorzi]

Have you tried inserting your hard drive into another computer?
What guarantees do you have on your hardware? I know many producers of RAM offer a lifetime guarantee...
Maybe the snow leopard install screwed a few things up, I know apple doesn't like people who install their system on a non-certified (custom) machine. Maybe they have included some kind of stuff to prevent people from installing it on other machines?

[macuser]

no, i've had mac on this computer for about 1.3 yrs. I also just installed snow leopard in a custom i7 machine i just built for my parents. Besides there is a law (not government law, but like newtons 3rd law) that states "software cannot damage hardware" (not including over-clocking which i do NOT do) . About my warranties - none. I just think it's strange that it all went up "just like that" . Yes I have tried it in another computer (i've got plenty of those around)

BTW on a side note about mac on "unsupported" systems you need an EFI emulator/bootloader. EFI=extensible firmware interface - it is like the mac equiv of a bios. There are many bootloaders out there that emulate EFI (No it does not degrade performance - it only is needed at boot). Another area where systems may differ is CPU - for AMD cpus you need a FREE BSD kernel (mac's core is unix and so is FREE BSD). And finally, drivers - this is the most difficult part, however there is a huge community of people porting linux drivers to mac.

[Jorzi]

It's strange indeed...
Too bad you didn't have any warranties, I usually buy stuff that has at least a 2 years warranty, unless it's very cheap of course, and it's been woth it imo (I've had at least one motherboard changed and my friend has had multiple hard drives and a motherboard replaced).
About software not being able to damage hardware, it's not always true. Hardware is, of course, designed so that it wouldn't be accidentally broken by software, but it's hard to make it perfect. Also software can damage the software that controls the hardware...

[macuser]

Hmm i'm thinking it might be my power supply gone bad or my motherboard which is then damaging the rest of the stuff it's plugged into....

[Jorzi]

Maybe try googling your hardware and see if other people have had similar issues...

[macuser]

After 2 and some years? No every one seems fine with the hardware, It's just strange..... I've got a fiend who owns a computer shop, he's got a diagnosis card that he can plug in, but still this one may remain a mystery

[skellr]

Are there kids in the house? A "lost" peanut butter and jelly sandwich can cause big problems.

[macuser]

No. and nothing suspicious either.

[macuser]

OH WOW OH WOW OH WOW!!! I just had my second best day ever. my memory started working again and both hard drives too and now i'm running snow leopard and...... I went to see tron! (it's REALLY cool). I think all i'll need to replace is my power supply .

I'm so happy

-regards macuser

[macuser]

Well I just got my new power supply, I've reloaded mac and i'm ready to go. I'll be getting back to my routine of modeling/texturing oh and i've got snow leopard now

[Jorzi]

Sounds good

Do you have an ups btw? I've heard that some cheap ups systems can break power supplies...

[macuser]

Yes I do.... I hacked it and wired a car battery into it instead of it's standard wimpy one (I read an article on lifehacker how to do this)

[Jorzi]

Note that if it doesn't produce a good-quality sinusoidal wave, it will mess with the active pfc of the power supply, damaging the electronics over time. Passive-pfc power supplies don't have this problem, although they are hard to find since they are less efficient when plugged into a wall outlet.