Should I shoot my boyfriend?

[Seedersandleechers]

I have an Imac that I absolutely love. My boyfriend hounded me to buy his WD 1T external hard drive because it was silver and he wanted a black one. I know - this makes no sense but I have a strange boyfriend. I really didn't need one but I thought what the hell, I love this guy so I'll buy this thing. After two days of the HD being connected to my IMAC (he loaded it with 500 gigs of music), my computer completely shut down. I disconnected the HD and noticed it was very very hot! I left my computer off for several hours, and when I tried to re-boot all I got was a white screen. I tried this over and over again, with the same results. I called tech support and they told me to turn the mac on while pressing down the control, command, p, and r key. I did this and all the computer did was re-boot in a row, 12 different times. Now I have to take it to the Apple Store which I won't have time until next week. Does anyone know what could be wrong?

[Stinky The Clown]

1. I don't what the problem is, but I bet the external drive is not the issue.

I'm guessing this is an unfortunate coincidence.

[Seedersandleechers]

2. I think you are right

I just now talked to my son and he thinks it's a software problem. I hope he is right - because fixing it will be cheap.

[struggle4progress]

3. Do you have Time Machine backups? I screwed up the bootsector on my main hard drive once

and lost control of the machine. The fix was to use the install disk Disk Utility to reformat the drive, then restore everything with Time Machine

[cbayer]

4. DO NOT SHOOT YOUR BOYFRIEND!!

There are no macs in prison.

:rofl:

Honestly, I can't help you, but I know that blaming him will probably feel good.

:hi:

[ChairmanAgnostic]

8. unless

you use JPEG or TIF formats.
then, shoot away.

[Sancho]

5. Yesterday was my 31st anniversary: I know the answer!

It doesn't matter what 'caused the problem.

Your boyfriend should fix it.

[Deja Q]

6. Send him my way!

:D

Sounds like a coincidence; I doubt plugging in the hard drive was the cause... probably overheated. Even if the circuit board is well made, a fan within could have died and caused overheating which in turn damaged your iMac...

[magcat]

7. dead mac,deadbeat boyfriend

Oh he's not that strange.. he just feels his having a color coordinated drive is more important to him than your need to keep your money..hmmm.

The first things to check are the smells( near the air holes) -does either one or both smell bad (acrid,chemically). If the Imac does stink that's real bad..something fried.

DO NOT EVER reconnect that drive unless you absolutely diagnose the problem. Most likely it has a shorted USB or firewire port and it took out your power supply or motherboard. It will likely take out your new Imac as well

You don't mention what vintage your Imac is but you may need a power unit reset. It was called a PMMU reset and was done with a little button -check your owners manual it will tell you how to do this with your Imac.I think the new ones may only need all cables disconnected and left sit.

Try booting off your system disk that came with your Imac-insert it and hold down the "C" (or option )key and power up. If it comes up it's the internal hard drive. the drive is either dead or corrupted.