Kyle Wiens

If you are interested in getting an Answers beta invite, there are three ways to get fast-tracked:

# Follow @ifixit on twitter (we're posting invite links periodically)

# Write a teardown

# Help people out here! We are inviting people who are super-active in the discussion forums.

For more information on Answers, check out these posts. Have any questions about it? Ask here and I'll respond.

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I am proud to announce iFixit Answers, a collaborative repair community of people helping people make devices work longer. We've been working on this for a long time. We are launching the private beta today, but we will be inviting more people throughout the testing period. To get an invite, add your name to our list (we’ll be sending out invites to people on the list as we have room) or, if you want to be bumped to the front of the list, write a teardown!

Those of you who have been active in these forums will be prioritized on the list.

More detail is in our announcement.

I am super-excited about this. I'm confident that, with your help, we will usher in a new era where it is easy for people to fix most things, and possible to fix just about anything.

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I just posted an analysis of the success of this forum on our blog. If you don't have our blog in your RSS reader, stop reading this and DO IT NOW! We're going to be making some exciting announcements over there very soon and you don't want to miss out.

Since we launched the forums, our top six contributors ordered by post count, are:

* Sarabian

* Sunrisetech

* Ben (iFixit)

* Kyle (iFixit)

* Lemerise

* Crisb

Fun fact: Sarabian has posted 3 times more posts than I have. He's helped a lot of people, and he deserves special recognition for being such an incredibly knowledgeable, helpful, and friendly guy.

Thank you all for the help you provide each other, and keep up the awesome work! We're going to have some exciting news for you soon.

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It’s our distinct pleasure to once again announce an addition to our family of Guides. We’ve recently published a new guide for the iBook G4 14" 1.42 GHz, which can be identified by the model number of A1134 printed on the lower case.

We put up a new blog post on Friday summarizing the new instructions.

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We've been trying to write useful blog articles and keep everyone in the loop on what we're doing. How are we doing? Do you have any constructive criticism about what we've written thus far?

Does anyone have any ideas for future blog posts? What do you want to know about? We're listening.

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We asked you all for feedback in this thread, and you came up with some great suggestions. We've acted on your feedback and added a few new forum features.

• RSS Feed for new threads

• Thread watching. You may have noticed that you're getting email notifications of new posts to threads you participate in. You can also 'watch' a thread you haven't participated in.

• Product links. We've noticed (not surprisingly) that sometimes problems around here can be solved with parts that we sell. We want to make it as easy as possible to recommend good solutions to problems, so we've made it easy to link to products in our store. The syntax is: [product|IF137-001|iPhone LCD]. You need the product code that is listed on the product page.

Not only does the new product link format make it easy to link to a product page, but it also created a product photo and link in the sidebar. See the iPhone 3G display product link over on the right? You can make those show up yourself just by referencing a product. I think that's pretty nifty.

We're open to ideas on making this even more convenient. We have a lot of resources on this site, and we want to make it easy for you to leverage all our information to fix your devices. We are listening, so keep up the great suggestions.

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We spend a lot of time in these forums helping people with their sometimes-difficult repairs. It's nice to share when you go through the pain and suffering of finally figuring out a difficult fix-- both so others can sympathize with you, and so everyone doesn't have to reproduce your troubleshooting efforts.

We just posted one such story on our blog: Miro's hard drive install tale of sorrow and woe and eventual success.

What other repair stories do you guys have? We'd love to hear about it.

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Hello, everyone!

We're hard at work behind the scenes here working to improve our forum framework. We're trying to prioritize development, so I have a question for all of you. Which of these features would you most like to see?

(I don't want to get your hopes up too much-- we're not promising we'll implement these, and we may pick just a few of these features to implement.)

1) Thread Following: Request email notification of new posts to a thread you care about.

2) New thread RSS feed: An RSS feed of all threads posted recently (but not new messages to the threads).

3) New message RSS feed: Firehose feed of ALL new messages.

Please reply with the order you would like these features in. Also, we'd love suggestions for any other features that would improve things around here and build a better community!

-Kyle

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The computer is a IMAC 24" late 2006 duo core intel. He also owns a macbook, that he could use to help.

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I'd love it if someone would post a teardown using our tool! That's such an elegantly simple piece of hardware.

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I asked this question in our Answers beta, and I got these responses for you. Let us know if any of them fix your problem!

From tlcgraham:

Sounds like a loose connection for the antenna.

From wtylko:

Every time you loose service a much faster way to get service is to turn AirPlane mode on and off. Also have you updated your iphone to the latest software? If you haven't you should do it. And if all this does not work try restoring your iPhone an and get it swapped out at the genius bar. But don't tell them you dropped it. They have no way to find out! Also un-jail break you're phone before you take it there.

From bmalam:

Hate to state the obvious, but have you tried a reboot?

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I asked this question in our Answers beta, and I got these responses for you. Let us know if any of them fix your problem!

From jhecht:

First test is to boot from your recovery CD. Put the CD in, and then restart the computer, while holding down the 'C' key. If it boots off the CD, at least some of your hardware is working.

Problem is, the Mac restore CD has no file manipulation functions - even though it should... So your next hurdle is to get a qualified tech to boot the 'puter with a Linux CD - (s)he can then recover your data to an external hard drive.

Another option is to have a tech remove the hard drive from the Mini, and connect it to another Mac, using an adapter kit. Even if the hard drive won't boot, it may still be possible to read it. This has to be done with another Mac, as the Mac file system is not very compatible with Windows computers.

From natalia47:

Try re-seating your RAM and see if that helps. I had the same symptom (front light on and nothing else) when I first upgraded my RAM. The problem went away when I re-seated the RAM.

I actually had my logic board fail on my C2D Mini about 10 months after I purchased it and when that happened, nothing would come on. No lights...nothing! I was hoping it was just the power brick, but it ended up being the logic board.

From Wil:

If you have access to another mac and a firewire cable, try starting up the Mini in target disk mode, by holding the 'T' key down on the keyboard while starting up. If it comes up with the firewire symbol on a blue background, you're in target disk mode and you can use the firewire cable to attach to another mac. This will allow you to get your files copied off.

From Wavey:

It could also be the power supply. I have recently had my Mac Pro do a similar thing, where the light comes on, but nothing else.. turned out the power supply had failed

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Great tip! We use tape a lot around here, too. Double-sided is definitely a good improvement.

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Look carefully to see if any of the tabs are broken. Normally the scissors reattach if you press directly down on the key, but the tabs are fragile and can definitely break.

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Take it apart and clean it. Once you're inside you'll have a better idea what needs to be done.

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You're welcome! We promise to keep working this way :-)

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sjrabeloo, we need a lot more information about this before we can provide any meaningful answer.

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I think you're better off starting from scratch-- but keep the old drive around. Worst case, if you do need some data off the drive you can go back and try to do the recovery when you actually need it, rather than put future backups at risk by starting off with a sketchy incremental backup.

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