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.

Another One Bites the Dust

This morning I got a call from my son in college. I could tell by the stress in his voice that something bad had happened and I waited for him to let me know what it was. He was working on his laptop computer when it froze. This was very unusual as he uses a Mac. When he rebooted, he got the icon of a disk with a question mark on the screen and immediately knew that he had lost his hard drive. Then he called me.

My first question was what assignments he had due that were lost on the computer. Luckily there was only one and it isn't due until tomorrow. I informed him that he would probably have to redo it and he wasn't keen on the idea of taking another four hours to complete an assignment he had done before. He was also halfway done with a computer programming project that would need to be started again.

I was glad this was my son who likes to get things done early and not my daughter who waits until the last minute. Furthermore, he had gotten ten hours of sleep last night and is rested enough to pull an all-nighter this evening if it becomes necessary.

The next task was to assess the best way to get a temporary computer until we could get together on the weekend and see about fixing his current one. The university where he is attending school rents laptops for $35/month. The government just awarded my son an extra $2,000/semester scholarship because of grades and his math/science major. So $35 is not going to put too much of a strain on his finances.

Our final step was to figure out the timing of everything. While a new computer is nice to pick up, you can spend countless hours configuring it which can distract even the most disciplined student from getting more important things done. My son had an hour before his next class and so he was going to assemble his notes for the paper that disappeared. He would then go to class before heading to a computer lab where he could work on getting his assignment in. Finally, he would pick up a rental computer.

I then had my son call my wife to see if she could help out with anything. She decided to give up her computer for the rest of the week as she can use the family computer until my son can come home and we can work on fixing his. She then drove the hour down to my son's university to deliver the computer. She also took my son out to dinner. What a nice Mom.

Last weekend I got to relax and go sailing. It looks like this weekend I get to fix my son's computer. That's OK, I get plenty of time to relax during the week when I am out in California.