[krasivy]

I've got an Air as a second machine, but it's sort-of my Girlfriend's primary

Anyway, have been spending a bit of time on that machine lately, and have realised some weird noises coming from it...

First, there's these random ticking noises coming from what I think is the hard drive. The ticking sound repeats for around 7-8 times before it stops, and there's no guessing when it will happen.

I've tried to Google the problem, and have read from various sources that this is "usual" for this type of hard drive. Personally, I find this very hard to believe and accept - but would like to see what the local MacTalk gurus have to say on this?

The second thing, which bothers me more, is the Air making some very odd squealing sounds that variates in tone, and continues for around 5-6 seconds each time. Am suspecting the sounds are coming from the internal speakers, but this is just a guess on my part.

Again, just like the first problem, this is a random occurrence.

And finally, I'm finding on many occasions that the Air would have issues with connecting to web sites. Usually, it's a long wait - but sometimes the loading would timeout and refreshing (sometimes) works.

Prior to this, I had applied the latest Airport Extreme updater (2008-004) to the Air, and this just made things worse. Sometimes, it would fall off the N-based network (Airport Express and Extreme backend) and refuse to connect back unless I turned the Airport on the Air off and back on - or, if this didn't work, having to do a reboot to resolve the problem.

But the problem just came back after a period of usage, and it really annoyed the crap out of me! So I decided to start with a clean slate again, by reinstalling Leopard with the Air's included media and doing a combo update back to 10.5.5. This took away the major issues with the 2008-004 updater, but I still had the random timeout issues to deal with...

For the record, all the other Macs that I have on the same network (MBP Unibody, iMac 24", PowerBook G4, Power Mac G5) have no similar issues and share the same network configuration.

So my question is: Is there a probable hardware fault with the Air's Airport card?


I think my best course of action is to take the Air into the Apple Retail Store to have it looked at. But I just need to get the facts straight before I do...

[krasivy]

Bump?

[krasivy]

*bumppppp*

[bengrubb]

3 words: Send it back?

I'd probably start fresh with it to.

Fresh install.

[krasivy]

"Send it back" is probably the only course of action, from what I've tried and tried...

A fresh install has been done before, but ultimately, after applying the system upgrades, the problem will ultimately show itself for no apparent reason.

The only thing that'll be hard to prove is the whining and ticking noises, as they only want to show themselves at their own accord.

[microportal]

If you are able to replicate the sounds, bring the machine in to the apple store in chadstone? They are very helpful and receptive..that is assuming you are still under warrenty

[krasivy]

Thanks microportal, for the suggestion... I may have to think about bringing my machine down from Sydney to fix though

Yeah, warranty is thru to March, and I'm supposed to grab an AppleCare for it. Albeit the issues, the Air has certainly served me well as a MBP companion (especialy for those nights when you can't seem to get to sleep!)

[gelfie]

Turn of Sleep Harddisks When Possible in the system preferences.... the tick is the heads parking.

[krasivy]

Noted... thanks gelfie.

Weird though, when you think about it... head parking and it ticks repeatedly... hmmm