Back From the Dead

This weekend my son and I worked on getting his computer back from the dead. He has a MacBook and so the first thing I did was try to boot the machine. That didn't work, which was expected and so I booted from a CD. On a Mac, that is done by inserting the disk that comes with the computer and holding down the "C" key while turning off and on the computer. The computer came up and looked like it wanted to install the operating system. Fortunately you don't have to proceed any further. There is a menu across the top of the screen and you can just go into Utilities and select Disk Utilities. That brings up a program that can be used to fix certain problems.

At first, the only drive that registered was the CD/DVD drive. Then I needed to move the computer for some reason and that act caused the hard drive to show up in the menu. Unfortunately, I couldn't do anything with it. My hope was that the "Repair" button would activate, but that didn't happen no matter what I clicked on or selected. My suspicions were confirmed and the drive was toast.

It was now up to my son to make a decision. He could buy a new hard drive, rent a new computer, or buy a new computer. When he calculated how much money it would cost to rent a computer, he decided that the better option was to buy one. I disagreed with his logic because a $300 laptop is not the same quality of machine that he would have been renting, but didn't say anything. I had to go down to Best Buy to replace a hub I use for the network at the house and so he came along with me to see how much a new hard drive would cost. It was only $50 to get a 250 GB drive and so he picked one up.

My son brought home a friend from school who claimed to take apart Mac computers all the time and so I let the two of them figure out how to open the machine. They removed every visible screw on the outside but still couldn't pull off the cover and asked me for some help. There were three screw inside the battery compartment that I was able to remove. Once I did that, a bar came out, revealing a pull tab for the hard disk. I simply pulled the tab and the disk drive slid out. There was no need to remove all those other screws and so I had the boys put them all back. Meanwhile I pulled the old disk off the mounting tray and put the new one on it. We slid the new drive back in place, replaced the aluminum bar, and screwed in the three screws.

Now it was time to see if our hard work had paid off. We turned on the computer, inserted the Mac OS installation CD and waited for the installation program to start. When it did, we just followed the instructions to format the hard drive and install the operating system. That took about an hour and then it was time for my son to head back to school. I sent him with the installation CD's for a number of other programs that were previously on the computer (like Microsoft Office). My son then spent the rest of the weekend finishing the task of getting his computer back in working order.

Yesterday I got a call from my son. He has his computer back but isn't happy with the version of the operating system. I installed the version that came with the original computer and it is a bit out of date. He wanted to install the version that I have on my Mac, but that would be a violation of the software license agreement. It is only $30 to get the latest version of the Mac OS and so he decided to spend the money. It is amazing how much more thought goes into spending money when it is my son's own cash instead of Dad's.