Computer Troubles. Upgrade. Fixed?
I've been having trouble with my personal computer, a MacBook Air, the last few days. Occasionally it would freeze up. The display would be on, but all the apps would be frozen. The Force-Quit keystroke combination didn't work; the only thing I could do was shutdown & start up. At first I thought maybe it was a stability/security issue with my web browser, so I upgraded it. But then it occurred three times yesterday, including while I wasn't browsing the web.
Was it a virus? A software problem? A hardware problem? Would I have to pay for repairs? Would it be time to replace the whole computer? I wasn't sure. My machine was on an older version of the O/S, though, so I decided updating would have a good chance of fixing either of the first two possible problems.
The updates to the newer versions of MacOS are huge. Like, 6GB downloads. On my home network that takes hours. And my machine was growing increasingly unstable, making the download basically infeasible. My computer froze up three more times, mid-download, and after each time the download had to be restarted from the beginning. (Apple doesn't support restarting these downloads.)
"Go someplace with a faster network and try there," was one of my thoughts. But the thought of having to travel and camp out somewhere while working on my computer was annoying. So I tried another few home-remedy type things one can do with MacOS. Y'know, all the stuff like "Restart your computer and after the chime press and hold Command-Option-Derp while patting your head." It was unclear if any of those things helped. That's always the challenge with a problem that occurs sporadically- it's hard to know when you've fixed it. So after doing a few of those remedies I started another OS update download and went to bed.
To my pleasant surprise when I checked my computer this morning, it was still working (not hung) and the download had finished. I considered declaring "Mission Accomplished!" and skipping the upgrade. But my O/S was a few years old so I figured it would be good to do proactively if nothing else.
To my dismay the upgrade went slowly, and then failed. The upgrade tool prompted me to read through a log full of indecipherable problems, where most of the error-looking lines were "Checking battery percentage remaining... Failed." Even worse, after a restart it said it couldn't find the boot volume. Really, my computer's going to die stuck halfway through an O/S install because some stupid script can't see that it's at 100% power on the AC adaptor?
Thankfully a reboot and another run of the installer fixed the problem. It was still slow, agonizingly slow. The status bar reported "36 minutes remaining"; 30 minutes later it stated "33 minutes remaining." In the end, 2 hours later, it was fine.
Was it a virus? A software problem? A hardware problem? Would I have to pay for repairs? Would it be time to replace the whole computer? I wasn't sure. My machine was on an older version of the O/S, though, so I decided updating would have a good chance of fixing either of the first two possible problems.
The updates to the newer versions of MacOS are huge. Like, 6GB downloads. On my home network that takes hours. And my machine was growing increasingly unstable, making the download basically infeasible. My computer froze up three more times, mid-download, and after each time the download had to be restarted from the beginning. (Apple doesn't support restarting these downloads.)
"Go someplace with a faster network and try there," was one of my thoughts. But the thought of having to travel and camp out somewhere while working on my computer was annoying. So I tried another few home-remedy type things one can do with MacOS. Y'know, all the stuff like "Restart your computer and after the chime press and hold Command-Option-Derp while patting your head." It was unclear if any of those things helped. That's always the challenge with a problem that occurs sporadically- it's hard to know when you've fixed it. So after doing a few of those remedies I started another OS update download and went to bed.
To my pleasant surprise when I checked my computer this morning, it was still working (not hung) and the download had finished. I considered declaring "Mission Accomplished!" and skipping the upgrade. But my O/S was a few years old so I figured it would be good to do proactively if nothing else.
To my dismay the upgrade went slowly, and then failed. The upgrade tool prompted me to read through a log full of indecipherable problems, where most of the error-looking lines were "Checking battery percentage remaining... Failed." Even worse, after a restart it said it couldn't find the boot volume. Really, my computer's going to die stuck halfway through an O/S install because some stupid script can't see that it's at 100% power on the AC adaptor?
Thankfully a reboot and another run of the installer fixed the problem. It was still slow, agonizingly slow. The status bar reported "36 minutes remaining"; 30 minutes later it stated "33 minutes remaining." In the end, 2 hours later, it was fine.