There is nothing more satisfying than being the hero, or an incredibly wise or lucky person, depending on your reputation for feats of wonder.
Last week, I had an opportunity to 'save the day' when a friend told me his PowerBook would not start.
My first thought, based on his description of the symptoms, was that his hard disk was kaput (a remarkably rare occurrence) and that I would have to use a data recovery tool to retrieve the files he had not backed up.
As you might guess, my friend had a proposal on his computer that was due in two days and worth a lot to his company. And yes, it was his only copy. It turned out my friend had been using the computer in extreme heat when the failure occurred.
When I finally received it, the computer screen would illuminate but remained grey. There was no Apple logo and no flashing question mark indicating that the computer was even looking for the hard drive.
My first plan of attack was to start the computer from a portable FireWire hard drive on which I keep all of my disk repair tools. Even though the computer would boot from the FireWire drive, none of the utilities I owned could 'see' the PowerBook drive.