Yesterday was one of those days that was full of potential: Nothing on the schedule but a full day of coding and learning. Pure bliss.
I got to work early, sat down with my dog at my feet and a hot cup of joe, and proceeded to get busy. But what’s this? Apple Software Update says that there’s a new version of Boot Camp available? A quick read-up on this Boot Camp 3.1 Update shows that it add compatibility with Windows 7 64-bit, which loyal readers know I just installed, and is “highly recommended” by Apple. Well that’s good enough for me! I clicked update, it installed, rebooted my machine, and then…..
…nothing.
No Apple chime. No boot menu. No video.
The power light appears to be on and I can hear drive noises, but nothing seems to be working. I held down
@#$%*&!
Using my iPhone, I search for anybody else having trouble with this update, but didn’t find any relevant hits. I suspect the Boot Camp update messed up my MBR, but what do I know? Time to go to the Apple Store!
I got to the Apple Store (thankfully we have one in Madison…I don’t know what I would have done without it) and was told it would be an hour and a half before I could get to the Genius Bar. Since it was a little before noon at this point, Janine and I had some lunch at Granite City (pretty good, and not a bad way to kill time at a mall).
When my turn came up at the Genius Bar, Brian took a look at my MacBook, shook his head, and took it in the back room to run some diagnostics on it. I always feel vindicated when it’s not something blatantly obvious, because after all I am in this business too (though it’s been a while since I’ve had to deal with hardware on a regular basis).
Brian returned saying he couldn’t really get a take on what was wrong, but he wanted to keep it overnight. He suspects something’s wrong with the video or something on the main board because of the lack of Apple Chime (although I just realized I might have shut that off since it was always chiming every time I opened the laptop at a conference, which was really really annoying). It may take 5-7 days to fix.
So I wait with anticipation, wondering if there’s a new laptop in my future. If so…what should I get?
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