Thread: "I had a heart attack because of my computer" association

I just lived through a terrible experience I wanted to share - not shaving related - and maybe start an association to regroup people who had a similar experience to help each other live again, without anticipation of catastrophe or nightmares.

I am actually full of work, and at the same time making job applications for next year (yes, you are reading me well, they need one year to choose and appoint somebody to a place of Assistant professor). In order to accomplish that mission, I needed to talk to a friend in the US to discuss my applications (I am applying all around the world). So, I prepared everything on my Mac (a present from my father dating from less than two months ago - my old PC died) and was browsing the web waiting for the evening to make the video conference. And I am sure you can guess what happened...

Firefox crashed. Annoying, but nothing special... I closed all other programs, and switched off my Mac. Pushing the button to restart and... nothing! only three beeps repeating every 10 seconds. Grey screen, horrible noise... dead.

First thing... a call to the emergency line... after a few minutes of description of my problem, the verdict: RAM problem; I needede to go to a Mac Doctor Hopefully, there is one not far from my home. Entering what looked like an informatics cave full with Mac Geeks, I presented myself and the unfortunate beeping dead computer to the secretary. She was friendly, filled up the form, and said: "the computer will be ready next week". NEXT WEEK *heart attack* I don't know how I managed to say that I couldn't wait THAT long... I had a video conference appointment in the evening... the nearby Mac-Doc-Geek said in a law voice: "it is impossible. Next Thursday maybe"; and taking the computer from the hand of the secretary he begun to work on it.

Not working
Trying to remove and change one RAM
Not working
Testing
Not working
He said, almost to himself: "the RAM is dead"... I wanted to say: No, I am dead but didn't - my mouth like sand, sweating, white as a sheet of paper.
He said again: "need to change the RAM. Now that everything is made in China..."
He changed the RAM and switch on the computer again.
Not working
He said: "there is a problem with the hard disk"... I don't know how I could manage to say without fainting: "but I switched it off correctly, no problems. I always switch it off when carrying it..."
He tried to boot the computer and access it from an external hard drive.
Not working.
He said: "we'll need to format the hard disk again. You'll have to bring me your time machine backups. Maybe it will work". And as he was saying that, as I was praying for a divine help, the software to re-organise the hard disk begun to work.
And after half an hour, my computer was back to life!!!

I decided to change its name for a more adequate one: Lazarus!

Now, after all this adrenaline strike, I am calming down with my loving wife, drinking a good beer, and thinking of a possible future as professor.

All people who have died because of their computer, unite!

That's why I usually buy cheap generic PC's.. They're easy to work on, parts are easily obtainable and all of the possibilities that you mentioned would have taken a couple of hours to take care of. The only downside is that the new ones coming out now run on Vi**a (the reason why I am running Linux on this one)

Oh man - I had a cold sweat as I was reading that. Similar thing happened to me several years back just as I was finishing my thesis. It all ended well in the end, and I was able to get the machine working again.

I backed up and went and bought a new computer the next day.

Glad things worked out for you in the end Ockham - and good luck with the job. I know how much effort those jobs take to get. I'll be rooting for you!

James.

I've had some major issues, but mostly cause computers have been a huge hobby of mine for the past five years.

I remember countless nights in college where I'd have crashing issues and refused to go to sleep until I had everything up and running perfectly. Once I get to troubleshooting, I just can't seem to stop.

I've backed off recently now that I've gotten quite into straights; my last big computer project was setting up my watercooling system on my gaming rig (which is in the same, double-wide case as my fileserver). That was... I don't even remember, but sometime last school year.

I once managed to screw up my thesis, a couple of days before having to hand it in.
It sucked, but I have always been paranoid about having daily backups, so I lost only a day of work.
In this day and age, USB keys are your friend. I always copy important stuff to USB storage.

Eeek. I hosed my Mac during a firmware update...the folks at the Apple store were great...I didn't lose anything...the tech made a copy of the entire HD to my external drive and I just had to copy over my files to the MacBook. Still scary.

Rules:

1. Backup hourly.
2. See Rule 1.

Also, what the tech did, you could probably do yourself if you got the steps and watched him in detail.

I've had more problems with PCs than with Macs....much of which I attribute to Microsquish and some of their resource-hogging apps.

MS Outlook...the world's only virus with a GUI.

Being in the computer industry I know exactly how all you feel. One thing I learned early is have a back up plan. If I asked a few of you what type of back up plan you have and you had to stop to think about it, then you are in for a world of hurt sooner than later. They can be as simple as an external hard drive or as complicated as an online backup utility with a redundant network server. Personally I have 2 external hard drives in rotation that I have copies of anything personal (photos, videos, music, and documents). Everything else can be replaced. Start researching now before it's way too late.

WireBeard - I love that Outcrook quote, too bad it's true

What a bummer. Anything important of mine is backed up pretty regularly to a different hard drive or kept in the cloud. I've got everything I need to resuscitate a Mac or PC though, so unless all my rigs go down, I shouldn't be too hurt by it.

For those of you with multiple systems and a Mac, invest in a firewire cable. You can hook that mac up via firewire and access the harddrive like an external. If you're a Mac only type person, you can use it to write images back onto the harddrive, making things extremely easy (assuming you know how to use it). I bought a good firewire cable just for that!

The absolute worst time you'll ever have though is when a harddrive literally dies. When freezing and tapping just won't do it, and there's absolutely no way to access it unless you send it in to one of those expensive recovery companies. That's a rough thing to have to tell a client

Scary! Glad everything resolved ok.

Bad luck with the ram but bear in mind hard drives have a limited lifespan especially in laptops. Always be backed up.
The software is pretty bombproof but things that spin real quick can break real quick.
I'm an early adopter of OSX (2001) and till now only had to reinstall the system 3 times. Always due to a hard drive problem of some sort.
" There are 2 categories of computer user. Those who have suffered a total drive failure and those who haven't - yet. "