Computer Woes this Week

A client informed me that the latest DVD I sent was not working, nothing was showing up even though on the back of the DVD we could see that data had been burned. Sure enough, when I loaded the DVD on my laptop there was no data. I tried putting a blank DVD into my HP laptop but it wasn’t recognized.
Oh well, the DVD burner was broken so I just ordered a replacement on eBay and will install it later this week.

Plan B – use my iMac. I inserted a new DVD, got my folder ready, clicked “Burn folder to DVD”, then nothing happened. Disappointed with this reaction I clicked the Eject button, again nothing. Then I tried five other ways to eject a stuck DVD but none of them worked.
On Monday I dropped off my iMac at the Apple store in Bridgeport Village and the Tech guy spent an hour on my machine. His conclusion, the hard drive was suspicious but it would take more testing.
Tuesday morning I heard from another Apple tech guy that my OS was corrupted and that he would have to reinstall the OS.
Tuesday afternoon the Apple tech guy said that my RAM was failing.
Wednesday morning I heard that installing a new Super Drive did not solve the eject issue, so it must by the Logic Board at a cost of $740 installed.
I chuckled and noted that I only paid $1000 for the used iMac in October, so I would not be having them replace the Logic Board.
So today I’m going to pick up my sick iMac without a working DVD, drive to Fry’s and buy new RAM. Maybe in a few years when the Logic Board prices go down I’ll buy one and replace my original.

Yesterday my PC laptop screen started to get fuzzy and show mostly red colors, so I phoned a local laptop repair place in Beaverton. We both thought it was the LCD display, so I drove in with my laptop and we plugged in a new LCD and all was well.
I went home, installed the new LCD and it was perfect for about 45 minutes, then back came the fuzzy screen and red colors. Some Google search told me that many other HP Pavilion laptop users had this similar issue and it was caused by an overheating GPU chip from Nvidia which was highly publicized.
I then remembered how my old laptop had so much dust that it clogged the heat from escaping causing overheating, so I got out my vacuum cleaner and cleaned my laptop. It’s been working great for almost 24 hours now so I think I’ve solved the problem. Now to find out if I can get a refund for a new LCD used only one hour.

This Post Has One Comment

  1. Daniel Payne

    Good news: Apple returned my iMac on Wednesday and charged me $0. They said, "Don't put another DVD into the iMac it doesn't work."
    First thing I did at home was install a DVD, and it's ejecting now!
    I took my defective RAM to Fry's in Wilsonville and they swapped it out for new RAM, thank you!

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