My 13-inch white MacBook (running OS X, 10.5, Leopard) started working goofy, and then just not working at all, a few weeks ago, after running smoothly since I’d gotten it in January. I’d get the spinning beach ball abruptly, and not only would it lock me out of whatever application I was in, but all my other apps would lock up in short order (I could access them, but as soon as I’d click something, down they’d go), and I couldn’t even force-quit—the old Option-Apple-Esc routine—out of them. Sometimes the hangup or lag lasted for just 20 to 30 seconds, but more and more often it was indefinite and I’d just have to manually shut down and restart. At which point the problem would recur after a few minutes.

Two different places (our local independent Mac shop, whose attitude toward customer service is such that I will not patronize them again, and the Apple Store at the mall) ran some diagnostics and told me it was probably a software issue. That was disheartening, because (1) that meant I couldn’t just reload my backed-up data from Time Machine, as it was presumably corrupt; and (2) only hardware issues are covered by Apple’s warranties. A Genius at the Apple store reseeded (I think that is the word) my RAM yesterday and sent me home with instructions to reinstall my OS if the problem came back; and it did, so I did. I wiped my whole hard drive clean.

And then the problem came back! And even got worse, in that the laptop wouldn’t even start. So I made a new appointment at the Genius Bar, from whence I have moments ago returned, where they installed a new hard drive in my MacBook. I remain tentatively confident that the problem has been solved. The Genius happened to mention, by the by, that as laptop hard drives reached capacities higher than 100GB, their quality had started to diminish noticeably—which I think was the root of my problem and of similar, unsolved issues I read about while researching all of this online.

All of which is to say that if you encounter a similar problem yourself, this may be your solution. And keeping your AppleCare up to date might not be a bad idea either.