New Apple imac hardware failure

[riptide]

Well, my old laptop is still going even though it has a corrupt file on it and is going very slow. Finally plucked up courage to get my first Apple computer. No computer expert so my friend's son installed. In the end took 7 hours as once up and running and updates download, the hard drive went corrupt and we could not get back on the machine. Had to put the installation discs in and competely reboot the system. Worked for 2 hours and exactly the same thing happened. Spoke to Apple support during the whole of this event and cannot fault them. What I do think is poor is the fact that they only have a few shops about, I now have to take it back to the Apple Store in Westfield, West London, 40 miles away.

I will probably get my money back and have a rethink on this as I cannot believe the problems I have had. ?

Has anyone else had problems with the new imacs.

Thanks

Riptide

[Twenty20]

There was a problem with one of the 10.5 updates which did horrible things to a few people's systems but, as yours was a new machine, I'd guess youre running 10.6 so this shouldnt be a problem.

As to lack of shops, many people buy online anyway these days (Macs or PCs) so you dont have a shop to take things back to.

I think youve been extremely unlucky as Macs tend to be very reliable and stable. If you take it back to the shop ask them to load the system for you.

[Gromit]

If you bought a new iMac, it will have the very latest version of the operating system Snow Leopard (OSX 10.6) pre-installed. There has only been a minor update to that which should take only a couple of minutes to download.

Have you tried inserting the OS disk that came with your computer and doing a restart holding down C on your keyboard. This will startup the computer from the disk and you can run disk utility to check the drive. If it is faulty, this will tell you.

It is possible your sons friend may have done something wrong. A whizz on a PC would be a bit lost on a Mac. I am still baffled by what needed installing?