My MBP 17" most times alows a login and opening of one application.

thanks for the information.

I followed your reccomendation to the letter.

I believe the hard drive is a 500gb, with 360gb free.

There seemed to be no problems discovered or encountered by repair disk application.

Things are still the same as before. I am using the computer in question to type this, but I can still only use only program at a time. I got a notice there was an upgrade for itunes, told it to upgrade and things froze until I held the power button and rebooted.

Could the hard drive be bad and not show bad in the repairdisk?

I have read elsewhere that there is/was/may be an issue with the OS 10.5 upgrade, could that be it?

I bought the computer directly from apple, the battery swelled up to about 4 times the thickness a while back and i operate the computer w/o a battery using the wall plug, could this be part of the problem?

I am becomming disenchanted with the quality of apple products. I have this 17" MBP, a 13" ibook g4, a time capsule, an iphone 3g and none of them work. I have over 5k in these. I take very good care of my possesions. It burns me that I cannot get them to work without giving more money. At least windows machines are cheap enough to throw away when they go bad. (I still have a compaq 8086 I bought in 1984 and IT works) Sorry for the rant. I just get frustrated.

Bernie

Thank you for the continued help.

I ran the AHT in the default mode and it said it was ok. I then ran it in the extended testing mode. I started it about an hour ago and now the screen says Testing memory PassNumber 2, total testing time 18mins 54secs. The time hasnt changed for the last 10 minutes or so. The pointer still moves with the trackpad but things seem to be unresponsive. I'm just gonna let it perk for a while and see if anything changes.

I haven't heard any wierd noises- more from the fan, not much of any noise from the hard drive.

If the hard drive is ok, what else would I look at? Could it be some sort of software issue? Ill Logicboard? Aliens?

I have noticed that at the login screen if i try to log into my "clean" admin account it freezes. I have to log into my everday account (with full admin priv).

Thanks

Bernie

Well thats what led me here to you folks.

I took it to an authourized apple computer repair place. They charged me, told me it was the memory, and all was fixed. I specifically asked up front if this was all or would it need something else after the first cash installment. No they said. I believed them. Imagine my chagrin.

So now I'm trying to see if I can diagnose this problem myself, and if it would be more cost effective to fix it or buy a new machine.

I think the closest apple store is 60 or 70 miles away.

Oh and the Hardware test screen updated the time to 1hour13min45secs. All is not hopeless.

I thought you might like to know what finally happened, it has a happy ending.

As I was pulling out what little hair I have left trying to figure out "what next?" I spied an external hard drive sitting up on the shelf I had used for 16 track recording. I plugged it in to my laptop, installed the OS, endured endless hours of various upgrades, now it boots from the external drive and all is groovy.

I ran the disc utility on the internal drive again, this time from the external drive not the install disc. It found some volume errors and said it repaired them. Then I ran the check permission and it listed about 20 or so pernissions that were wrong and an unexpected ACL. I have the log if you want to see it, not sure if its important or not. Any way - I disconnected the external drive and rebooted from the internal and got the same old problem. I suspect it is toast or at least browning - I am backing it up to external and will get a new internal drive.

Thanks for all your help. May the gods smile upon you.

Bernie

Thanks for the info. The activity monitor doesn't show anything over 14% usage and only spiking that high.

I have decided to get a WD Scorpio Black 750gb 7200 to replace the internal hd. I believe my MBPro is 3rd revision (2.4 Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo).

The system profiler says the port speed is 1.5 Gb, the WD drive is 3.0Gb. Does anyone know if this HD is compatable with my 17" pre unibody?

I am also going to upgrade my OS from 10.5.8 to 10.6.

Thanks again, I couldn't have done this without all your help.

Bernie

@grant - used to live just outside gloucester on good harbor beach back in the 70s - oh to be young and dumb again.