My Mac crashed just now. Completely crashed, froze for a sec, then went into a re-start.
It re-started no problem, the only thing which was lost was the couple of minutes it took to re-start and re-open all my apps.
Why did it crash – I was trying to get into Audacity at the time and I’m running a beta version of Audacity on the Mac so I suspect that was the culprit. I had had Audacity running for over 24 hours – probably not a good idea for beta software.
Fortunately I have the Session Saver plugin for Firefox so all my Firefox windows and tabs opened up again exactly where I left them.
I have had applications freeze on me in the past on the Mac – I just force-quit them and move on but this is the first time in close on six years of working on OS X that I have had the machine crash!
I guess that just goes to show how stable an OS it really is.
Are you using an Intel Mac, or one of the old PPC models? If so, the guys behind Audacity strongly advise that you don’t use it, especially the beta, on and Intel Mac. Supposedly they’re going to have an Intel binary when 1.3 goes stable.
Another thing: I used to use SessionSaver myself, but it caused me nothing but problems (and the interface was atrocious) and leaked awful amounts of memory. I find Tab Mix Plus much, much better.
I should be so lucky! – Nope, I’m using a PPC iMac (2.1ghz 20″) – one of the last of the PPC based iMacs. Boy was I kicking myself when they brought out the 20″ Intel model a month after I bought this one!
Hadn’t come across Tab Mix Plus before Keith, thanks for the tip – must try it out.
Well you’re lucky that the absolute worst a Mac can do is crash. Check out what happened to this Dell! http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=32550 🙂
You’re welcome! One other extension I’d try out if I were you is Download Manager Tweak. It puts a much more friendly face on FF’s download manager.
I think your Mac probably performed a ‘Panic’ crash, a common enough thing for Unix like os’s. Next time hold down the ‘v’ key and watch to see if it is doing a ‘crash’ dump. or when if it had to do a diskcheck on the way back up.
In any case, there is probabally a lot of interesting info in the console log.
Eoghan – ouch!
Keith – Excellent, I’ll look into that one as well, ta.
Branedy – next time? You think in 6 years time when the mac next crashes, I’ll remember that? I have trouble remembering my own name (that’s why I registered it as a domain, it is a daily reminder 😉 ). Ok slight exaggeration but you take my point.
It’s happened me a couple of times, but not like you describe. Once, I got the spinning beachball of death which just wouldn’t go away, and everything froze. I couldn’t even get Force Quit to work. Then I looked at my Dock and counted 15 open apps…probably not a good idea on a 933MHz iBook which at the time had only 256 megs of RAM! A hard restart fixed it. The other time was when the logic board developed a fault and it kept getting kernel panics. A trip to Mac hospital was needed to sort that one out.
I can see how that might be an issue alright Gerry!
My PowerBook has 1gb of RAM and my iMac has 1.5gb – I always over resource my machines when it comes to RAM and disk as a form of future-proofing.
Hi Tom,
My PB has “crashed” about 2/3 times.
One possible solution for you would be, *IF* the machine still has network connectivity (a simple ping would confirm this), *AND* you have SSH enabled, you should be able to ssh into the machine and kill the app (“ps”, get the process ID, and then “kill -09 psid”).
If an app caused the crash, then this may work.
If not, stick your finger on the power button.
hth.
bernard
That’s a really helpful plugin. Thank you for pointing it out.
http://sduff.speedyb.co.uk/HWKill/kills/Powerbook_Flambe/powerbook5300_flambe2.jpg
check this out then
My mac has never crashed thats because i use micromat net tool pro the only thing ive ever had to change is my fan