Dingely Dang! I had a severe bad day today. After software update had informed me I needed to update my firmware (Macbook Pro EFI Firmware Update 1.5) I complied naturally. The damn thing wouldn't install properly, the software didn't offer me a choice to restart the machine altogether. I therefore restarted it manually, shut down, boot up. Several times. However, it wouldn't budge, and the version number of the firmware update wouldn't show in System Profiler. So I called Apple (Holland).
After the guy had me:
-install the firmware 5 times
-remove the battery, disconnect the power, keep the on/off switch pressed for 10 seconds
-reinstall the battery, connect the power
-shut down and restart the machine a couple times
-boot up holding shift button for minutes on end!
-boot up holding on/off switch until blinking white led and deafening tone
-say my name AGAIN and AGAIN, don't you people LISTEN?
-say my serial number AGAIN and AGAIN and AGAIN.
-state my phone number OVER and OVER again. Hey! We PAID the bill!
It finally worked! My mistake! (not) Because I SHOULD have OBVIOUSLY shut down the machine by clicking on the Apple logo, and choose "shut down" in that pulldown menu. NOT pressing the on/off switch and choosing "shut down" in that dialog. Stupid me, how can I be so dim whitted! "Shut down" is not the same as "shut down" obviously. That got me in an infinite loop with the Apple service people.
After the firmware was installed, I thanked the guy, who was angelically patient, and it had worked, so I was fine with it, until I booted the machine up to actually do some work today, yes people, some people actually work with computers!
However, my machine kept on whining the fans, heating the CPU to a whopping 80 degrees centigrade, and being slow. Dead slow. The Activity Monitor stated that some process "syslogd" was hocking a staggering 100 CPU cycles in 4 threads, with a virtual footprint of OVER 1 gig in size, and this persevered, how many times I rebooted the machine. Very frustrating. I manually killed this "syslogd" process, the Apple service person didn't really come up with any satisfying answer, and opted that I'd do the battery / powercord thingie again. I stated that I thought of that being a "Microsoft" answer which didn't go down well at all. His last remark was, that I could reinstall OSX and migrate my time machine backup back on to it; I have never done that before and sounds daunting. I think an expensive machine like this should just plain work, call me crazy.
I remembered that Google Desktop was also using a lot of resources, but hey: this is a bloody fast machine, which should be able to cope with stuff like this. However, I uninstalled it. I always get the impression that Steve is eavesdropping on these calls, and they send secret patches to your computer whilst being on the phone with them, because after a full 8 hour working day spent on the firmware update, heating up badly and whining fans, all is well, the machine has somewhat cooled down and the fans have stopped fanning.
Few, I'm so glad I have Apple Care on this thing, I wouldn't have known what to do without it. I still find all of this eerily strange and wack, is this firmware update just plain faulty? They DO make mistakes in Cupertino, they even work in an infinite loop!
I must say: I love the product, but it is just very frustrating if things go sour, and I don't have a lot of respect for the dutch Apple service personnel, I'd much rather have some english speaking person that actually knows what they're talking about, not reading it out loud from the support pages, heck, I can do that!
Going home now.
2 comments:
I honestly think that most people use the pulldown Shut Down menu choice to shut down their computer. I'm not blaming you for that point. The Apple guy should have said exactly what to do. However I'm glad you pointed out there is a difference. I sure couldn't tell by trying both ways.
I've always considered the pressure switch as an on button, though I've often used it to kill the machine by holding it down for a length of time when my MacBook Pro had become unresponsive (a rare event).
Thanks for your comment, Douglas. It was a frustrating and enlighting experience..
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