Well, today has been a harrowing day indeed. I've made a fleeting visit back to Birmingham to drop off my iBook at the Apple store to have both the logicboard and the hard disk replaced. After my last visit, I decided to monitor the problem further and was able to narrow it down some more. It seems that after a coldboot, the problem is almost guaranteed to occur. It doesn't necessarily have to be a coldboot, having the hard disk sit idle is enough for it to cause Finder (and other applications) to go tits up as soon as it's asked to find things. Only after 10 - 15 minutes of heavy hard disk activity does the problem disappear. Now if this ain't a hard disk problem then I've run out of ideas.
I got to the Bullring this morning at around 09:30 for when the Apple store opens. They were still cleaning up inside so I had a brief walkaround the floor to kill some time. At 09:40, they finally opened the doors and I was officially the first patron of the day (yay!) and I quickly made my way to the Genius Bar to book an appointment via their online system, "Concierge". Sadly, the store was suffering from several problems and had to have several of the POS PowerBook's seen to by an engineer so I ended up just waiting to be seen instead.
After a while, the Genius of the day turned out to be Toby, who was the other Genius alongside Doug in my last Mac related entry. After describing all the symptoms, what Doug had done about it all, and my new findings, we booted my iBook up using DiskWarrior once again. Interestingly, it reported a new problem which was not there during my last visit. The entire hard disk had a catalog (HFS's version of an index) problem so we set about repairing and rebuilding that. Once that was done, the entire system moved a lot more quickly and the problem with Finder crashing had seemingly vanished! "Great!" I thought. Toby asked me to play about with everything for 10 - 20 minutes to see if I could reproduce the problem, and I honestly couldn't. After a chat with Toby about the Apple Care scheme (extended warranty), I thanked him for his time and shook his hand and left the store a happy bunny.
Sadly, this happiness would last all of 20 minutes... After having a mooch around Selfridges, I made my way to Starbucks for a coffee and to have a further play with my iBook. And would you believe it, the first thing Finder does is crash on me as soon as I open it (I was also on the phone with Khang telling him how everything had been sorted just before it happened!). Not wanting to waste anymore time, I quickly downed my coffee in one, which was a HUGE mistake, and made my way back to one of Steve's retail outlets.
The store was much busier now, and there were 3 or 4 people waiting to be seen at the Genius Bar. Toby was nowhere to be seen so I asked one of the floor staff if he was around and he quickly went off to find him for me. He came back downstairs and I think he could tell immediately what had happened and said "Maybe your iBook just enjoys being here with all it's brothers and sisters?". He said he'd order in the hard disk for me since the logicboard was already available, but had to see several other iPod people first. The other Genius for the day was already late getting in and seemed reluctant to come down, even after a rather frustrated phone call by Toby. He decided to sort out my order as well as somebody else's iPod problem at the same time, alternating between PowerBook's filling in different forms and what not. And then came the crunch; I officially had to sign away my precious iBook for it to be repaired. I autographed one form and was handed back another detailing all the err... details of the repair. I was told it would be ready to pick up Monday or Tuesday so it looks like yet another visit to the Apple store next week for me. For the rest of the day, I felt like a parent who's kid had just gone to school for the first time. Would my iBook be OK? Would the engineers and technicians treat it well and have it returned to me in working order?
Argh, the anxiety's getting to me!
Toby was a pretty cool guy, he knew his stuff and was nice to chat with. Whilst he was arguably less professional than Doug, he was under far more pressure and made the most out of a bad situation when the other genius refused to come down. Once again, keep up the good work!
