I upgaraded to iTunes 7.6 and now my MacBook is not working at all

Question

I'm posting from an internet cafe so I wont be able to reply, but can anyone tell me what happened to my MacBook last night?
(it's going back to the shop tomorrow BTW)
Was using safari and iTunes, suddenly it starting hanging, so after some perseverance I managed to get (Ithink) all of my windows closed. Then there was this software upgrade window open. I clicked check for software updates, and it prompted me with 4 upgrades, one for quicktime and one for iTunes 7.6. I didn't spend much time reading what the other two were as I kind of trusted apple that the content I was downloading was kosher.
I go to the kitchen and come back tem minutes later to find it was aksing me if I wanted to restart. So I clicked restart and it wouldn't shut down. So then I held now the on/off button and turned it on.
THEN when I turned it back it all I got was the registration procedure, and I tried many things and several times I went through the registration process you get when you first use it again, only when you click done at the end it goes back to the start. There is no way that I can the OS system to boot again. I've tried closing it down, forcing quit, I've tried the boot CD it comes with, nothing works.
Is my machine bricked? Did I do something wrong?
I don't understand it.
It also says that I have 88Gb of memory which leads me to beleive that my data is still on there. Will it be retreivable?
I didn't back up my HD, I was saving to buy an external drive, but I have all my iTunes purchases on my 2Gb iPod. Only the 50 CD's I put into it over Xmas are not backed up anywhere, and all my CD's are currently back home in scotland.
MODS this is a serious issue here, if you feel it deserves more attention in another sub forum feel free to move it and retitle if you like. I don't know what caused it, but I thought I would start here since a lot of people seem to be having trouble with iTunes 7.6.
Message was edited by: STU9000
Message was edited by: STU9000
Message was edited by: STU9000
Message was edited by: STU9000

Answer 1

I have no idea what may have caused your MacBook to stop working, but from your description it kind of sounds like it may have started before you ran Software Update and installed the new Apps. Just the general slow feeling and bugginess is what tips me off. You said that you weren't sure if you had closed all open windows, that doesn't matter if the computer restarts itself. It automatically closes all other open applications when restarting.
As to your data being retrievable, if when you take it in they do a fresh install of the OS, then no, it will not be unless you want to pay several thousand dollars to a software retrieval company.
I am glad to hear that you have taken into the Apple Store to get it fixed, and that you have all of your purchased music backed up to your iPod. You should be able to just transfer it all back to iTunes once you get your computer back should it be necessary.
As a side note, the proper place for this topic would probably in the MacBook forums, not iTunes since there is no evidence that iTunes started the issue.