Frozen

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My laptop froze when I was using it. I’ve been rebooting for two hours but it goes to this ^ very slowly and stays there.

I’ve restarted several times.

I have no idea if it’s updating but usually that happens overnight and I didn’t see any update at the beginning when it first froze on screen.

I can get into Guest mode but it’s Safari and doesn’t know any of my passwords.

All ideas welcome.

The old TV's one would tap the top and they would work again. Do computers do the same?

If you don't have any files you want like photos, could you do factory reset?

Alas, no.

@IsabellaLinton it could be a million and one things. What model is the laptop? There's a checklist here that might apply and seems fairly sensible: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/8185987 though I'm not an Apple user, so certainly seek more knowledgable opinions.

Since you can login in guest mode - that to me implies there is something wrong with the "Isabella" user so I would try option 6 first - that is, make a fresh user account and if there are no problems transfer all your personal data over to it.

Think carefully about your files and what you have backed up externally if you decide to attempt 8 or 9 - these are nuclear options that will probably fix the problem, but will lead to loss of all personal data on the laptop.

It's totally fried.
I had to take it for repair and haven't heard the verdict yet.

That screen that I showed stopped happening.

At the end all I had was a black screen with an apple -- over and over and over.
If I pushed any key it would just shut down and restart with the same black page.

I have a good iTunes / Apple Music library and about 20,000 photos on it.
My biggest problem has been keeping my logins on sites.
For some reason none of them are saved on my other laptop, not even my email.

It's been hell trying to reset passwords without an email account.

Hmm. The problem sounds more serious than it had initially presented, maybe a creeping drive failure. I hope whoever is fixing it at least attempts to save your data.

Thanks. ^

Yeah, it's so weird.
It was totally fine and then randomly froze.
Then that white line froze on the login.
Guest worked a bit, at first.
Then that stopped working and didn't even have a cursor.

Then it just went black.

Even when I took it in, they seemed perplexed.

I've never had any problem with it before.

It's just so annoying that my logins keep failing on the other laptop.
I haven't been able to do banking (pay bills), or do anything.
Any time I log out of a site (like this one), I need to reset the password.

It's like living in the twilight zone.

Update:

I took it for Apple-certified repair. The guy said I had no operating system (?!) He said it would be $90 to put an operating system and $280 to save my data (about ten desktop folders and about 10,000 hard drive photos). I agreed to $280. He gave it back and it looked OK. I saw my folders and assumed everything was fine. It's an old laptop but he didn't suggest adding RAM or doing any upgrades. I assumed it was good to go.

I got home and realised about four folders were missing and there were ZERO photos saved in my hard drive. He told me the hard drive was encrypted (?!) and he couldn't save them (?!) even though I paid $280.

Within 24 hours the laptop started screwing up. I couldn't open, move or delete ANYTHING from the desktop without the whole thing freezing for hours / indefinitely, and needing a reboot. I was constantly having to force quit programs that weren't open, and refresh Finder. iCloud, iPhoto, and iTunes were completely non-responsive and wouldn't open at all even though I was signed in on Apple ID. My backlight didn't work on the keyboard. All I could really do was Google but I couldn't save anything because the desktop was messed. YouTube didn't work for about 36 hours but I finally got it going somehow.

Two days ago the whole thing crashed again. It won't load Safe Mode or Recovery Mode, and Terminal gives me error messages. It says that my Admin password is wrong, so I can't even log in when that pops up. I can get to Disk Utility or Reinstall, but First Aid doesn't fix anything and Reinstall (Option-Command-R) just leaves a complete progress bar and never loads anything.

I talked to Apple Support online and they said the repair guy should have to fix it for free. I'm too scared to go in there and complain because I know I'll start crying or having a meltdown about being ripped off (and losing my precious photos). I can't go to real Apple stores because of sensory (too bright and crowded). I've also been really sick since getting the laptop back, so I don't have the energy to go back to that first guy and explain everything. The longer I leave it, the less chance I have of the repair guy feeling sorry for me and fixing it for free, like Apple Support said he should.

I give up. I'm a loser who just gets scammed.

I guess it's time to buy a new Macbook online.

That's a shame

Thanks klanka.
I should move this thread to the Rants section because it's so frustrating.

Also,
Shouts out to two of my WP friends who've spent hours troubleshooting.
I love you both.

oh wow, that all sounds like a lot. Have you got a friend who can go with you back to the guy and support you, or do some yelling for you?

I've never been a Mac person really though I have some old mac minis as doorstops (OK slightly more, at one stage).

Is the other machine a mac too with the passwords 'failing', um what does that mean exactly? I'm kinda worried it might have some evil software on it that is resetting passwords and doing something else bad, like stealing your ID.


and maybe off-topic?
passwords can be super frustrating if you lose them, or aren't carried across. I use a "Password Manager" to manage them, because well, there are good free ones, but I actually pay for the paid Premium version of a freebie one.

I'm a nerd and have four different main computers on a mix of operating systems and about five different browsers that I use, and my android phone, and passwords are securely synced across them all...

I know Apple have a way of doing within their own ecosystem, but I want MORE!! ! 8-D

Next time you set up Mac OS use Disk Utility and make a non-encrypted volume, and install to it. Makes data recovery much easier. At the company I work for we don't use disk encryption for this reason.

Yes, it is possible to recover data from an encrypted Mac disk if you have the correct password or the decryption key. I think you got scammed on that "repair".

That said, you better start thinking about doing backups either to cloud or external storage.

Good point, we never used Macs, and all my servers were windows or linux and had way better fault tolerance.

It sounds like your HDD was failing for a while, I would have thought there was a mac app that alerted you of SMART problems ahead of time.



heartily agree with both of those!

Hugs for hardware horror stories though, can be very painful :s

D

I gave up on that laptop and never took it back for repair.
At this point it won't even turn on except for a black screen.
I'll have to just do without it bc I'm not in a position to buy new.

If I ever try again and get it back to Utilities I'll post a picture.
There were very few options and it looked like things were missing.
Reinstall didn't work.

I have no idea what a volume is or any of that, but I did see the word.

Thanks again folks.

I might have misread about you having a lot of photos there. But yeah, okay.

I had thousands of photos on my hard drive.
Years of ancestry research and every family photo ever taken for generations.
All catalogued and cross-referenced.

They vanished when he repaired it, the first time it went black.
He said he saved the pictures and I paid him for saving them but they were gone.
Then he said he couldn't save them but didn't offer a refund.

Then after 24 hours the whole laptop shut down and died again.

fml