Problems With My MacBook?

At the moment, I cannot look to see how much free space I have, but I know that I have much more than 15% free. Before I made this post, I should have ran Disk Utility myself to see if there was a problem. I ran Disk Utility yesterday, and Disk Utility found my HDD corrupted. I booted from the Recovery HD as Disk Utility advised. I repaired the disk twice over and also repaired permissions three times. It should be highly unlikely that Disk Utility missed anything.

Upon restarting my MacBook, the same problems continued. Today I took my MacBook to Best Buy and had them look at it. I bought an extended warranty plan when I bought my MacBook, so if there was a hardware problem or accidental damage, it would be covered. The GeekSquad was pretty clueless and rude unfortunately. They basically told me to give it to them and sign all these forms, and they will send it off for two to three weeks. I declined, saying that first I would have the Genius Bar look at it, to their displeasure; I could tell. I would expect a Mac technician working for Best Buy to be much less qualified and experienced than an Apple Genius.

I suspected that it was a logic board or HDD problem; they agreed. Apparently a $330 protection plan does not cover software either. I would have to pay close to $100 for the GeekSquard to run their own diagnostics. The GeekSquad admitted that their diagnostics were not much more advanced than what they suspected I could do on my own. It did not make sense to me why Best Buy did not just give me a new similarly-priced Mac. It would cost them almost as much as a new Mac to ship it, get a new logic board, pay labor, and ship it again, especially only to find out that the logic board was not the problem. Just think if it was a HD problem: they would have to repeat the entire process! Especially consideirng how much I paid for the plan, I can't wait two to three weeks. I won't have a computer for school. All my data could also be lost (even though it's crudely manually backed up).

I went home and did a little more research on troubleshooting possible Mac hardware problems. I found that Apple has a Hardware Test (AHT) for this. I had to put in one of the disks that came with my Mac to launch AHT. AHT ran a quick test and found no problems. I am runnning an extended test now, while writing this post from another Mac. If the extended AHT finds no problems, I expect that the problems are occuring form a software issue, which is not covered under my Best Buy warranty. It is good that I did not give Best Buy my Mac, then. They would have replaced my logic board and maybe the HD for no reason.

I now have significant evidence in the form of photos, videos, and demonstrations to prove that my Mac has problems, along with a few tests of my own to rule out some possible causes. I have a Geniu Bar appointment today at 4:45 PM EST; it is now 3:36 PM EST. I hope and know that Apple will be much more helpful. I will provide an update in a few hours.

Thanks anyways for replying!

The Genius Bar resolved alll of my problems. He ran a more advanced AHD, which found no problems. Then he tried another fresh operating system from their server (connected to my Mac by Ethernet). The problems did not occur in this OS, so he expected that it was my software. He ran an overnight diagnostic, and my hard drive was found to have failed the test.

I authorized a wipe, and one hour later I had basically a brand-new computer. I had so much junk on it, my Mac almost needed it anyways. Alll of this was free too. What is the moral of the story? Buy your Mac from an Apple Retail Store with AppleCare!