When does your Apple computer crash?

coolhandpetecoolhandpete
Posted:
in macOS edited January 2014
But for a few exceptions, my friend's 500 MHz DVD/CD-R iBook with 256 MB RAM (my primary computer until I purchase a new Powerbook following the Keynote in 11 days) *never crashes.* However, it crashes consistently from a few things I do, all of which have to do with the 1/8" audio-video jack.



For the purposes of the following descriptions, Cable #1 refers to the white 1/8" mini-to-red/white/yellow composite cable I purchased at the Apple Store. Cable #2 refers to a standard black 1/8" mini-to-red/white stereo cable that one uses to hook up a portable CD player to a home stereo receiver.



1) Attempting to plug Cable #1 into the audio-video port while the Apple DVD player is running. This crashes the DVD player but I am able to force-quit it.



2) Attempting to plug Cable #2 for listening to CD's _WITHOUT_ causing the machine to think it's Cable #1. Symptoms: the screen flickers as it does when I plug Cable #1 into it for watching DVD's on TV, only it's not Cable #1. I must plug Cable #2 in quickly in order for the screen _not_ to flicker for a moment as it does when I plug in Cable #1, and occasionally this causes the machine to lock up completely with a grey screen and no force-quit available.



Is anyone else having these similar crashes? What about any others?



Regards,

PEte
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Comments

  • Reply 1 of 23
    eugeneeugene Posts: 8,254member
    Generally, I used to kernel panic sometimes when I unplugged my iPod without first unmounting it. This was with 10.1.1 and I haven't had a chance to try it in 10.1.5.



    I basically never crash at all.
  • Reply 2 of 23
    cyko95cyko95 Posts: 391member
    I have one of the 700Mhz iBooks so the video port is shared with where the monitor out is now. So I don't have the problem when just plugging in an audio out cable, but the app crashes when I plugin/unplug the video out adapter in while a DVD is running. OS X doesn't crash, just the app.



    Also, and i've seen others report this too...my desktop goes all funky when the cable is unplugged. The icons stack on top of each other, and the desktop switches to the original blue wallpaper until I reboot.



    Strange stuff. Hopefully Jag will fix this all. <img src="graemlins/hmmm.gif" border="0" alt="[Hmmm]" />
  • Reply 3 of 23
    emaneman Posts: 7,204member
    My iBook pretty much never crashes.
  • Reply 4 of 23
    zozo Posts: 3,117member
    i get often TOTAL OS AND COMPUTER freezes while playing games, especially StarCraft. Its happened to me with RtCW, Quake 1, 2, 3.



    I have an iBook 600mhz 14inch 384MB ram.



    Has happened a couple times just out of the blue also, with a few apps running. I have no clue what the problem could be



    I also have some probs when I have my stereo hooked up through the video/audio jack. Messes with audio at times.



    I've had a few Kernel Panics, mostly with external peripherals, but other times with connecting to windows machines on my lan. Less now though.
  • Reply 5 of 23
    chilleymacchilleymac Posts: 142member
    I have a PB 500 w/768 megs of ram and i have honestly never crashed in 10.1.5. IE did crash today but I just reopened the app and everything was fine. God I love X.
  • Reply 6 of 23
    macgpmacgp Posts: 88member
    I've never had it crash before, I have had some pretty nasty hangs. But OSX seems to work those out if you leave it be for a couple minutes.
  • Reply 7 of 23
    spartspart Posts: 2,060member
    iMac 233MHz 384MB RAM...not a single crash ever in OS X. My hard drive should thank me for installing it. <img src="graemlins/smokin.gif" border="0" alt="[Chilling]" />
  • Reply 8 of 23
    bombthroatbombthroat Posts: 35member
    I have a 667 Ti Powerbook and can honestly say OS X has NEVER crashed on me. I've had an app or two go south, but NEVER the OS its-self.
  • Reply 9 of 23
    wolfeye155wolfeye155 Posts: 425member
    I get a kernal panic almost every time I try to watch a movie with Real Player in Classic. Plus the audio skips. So I'm always finding myself booting into OS 9 to watch anything using Real Player. I don't blame it on the computer. I blame it on Real Networks.
  • Reply 10 of 23
    ghost_user_nameghost_user_name Posts: 22,667member
    [quote]Originally posted by ZO:

    <strong>i get often TOTAL OS AND COMPUTER freezes while playing games, especially StarCraft. Its happened to me with RtCW, Quake 1, 2, 3.</strong><hr></blockquote>Are you SURE it's the "total OS and computer"? Or could it just be the window manager? Or could it be that just that game froze the UI?



    I suggest you run Andrew Welch's <a href="http://www.versiontracker.com/moreinfo.fcgi?id=14756&db=mac"; target="_blank">escapepod</a> and try a force-log-out the next time your Mac hangs. escapepod has saved me twice when it appeared that the computer was totally hosed.



    [ 07-07-2002: Message edited by: starfleetX ]</p>
  • Reply 11 of 23
    lucaluca Posts: 3,833member
    I've never had OS X crash on me, though OmniWeb has unexpectedly quit a couple of times. But I've never had anything so bad that I HAD to restart. I've only restarted the computer three or four times since I installed OS X a couple of weeks ago. Half of those times, it's because I had to access my external HD, which is not hot swappable but it's pretty noisy so I turn it off most of the time.
  • Reply 12 of 23
    serranoserrano Posts: 1,806member
    buggy apps go down with regularity, but my os has never crashed, never a kernel panic.

    ...almost a year now
  • Reply 13 of 23
    lucaluca Posts: 3,833member
    I just had Snapz Pro X f*ck up my dock. I was just messing around, taking some pictures just to get a feel for the application, and now my dock doesn't have magnification anymore. It doesn't even list the name of the icon the mouse is over. It still works. I tried relaunching finder, no luck. I'll need to go to Ambrosia's web site and see if there's a newer version. I'll probably have to restart.



    And AI just happens to be excruciatingly slow right now.
  • Reply 14 of 23
    jonathan brisbyjonathan brisby Posts: 318member
    I'm with the never crowd. Once I got that dang Eudora off of there it has been smooth sailing.
  • Reply 15 of 23
    zozo Posts: 3,117member
    starfleet, I'll try that then



    When the games crash, I cant do a damn thing. Nothing moves, no key combos seem to work, and to be honest I dont remember how to reset OS X through Telnet and all that.



    I have the crash/log monitor to keep track of ALL crshing apps, but honestly havent been bothered enough to look at the logs to see if it recorded what happened when StarCraft and Quake and such crashed.
  • Reply 16 of 23
    surfratsurfrat Posts: 341member
    I literally have never had a single OS crash since installing X on both of my computers.



    Obviously though, some of the beta apps I have installed on my computer will quit unexpectedly from time to time.



    I run Mac OS X v. 10.1.5 on both of my computers:



    PowerMac G4 400MHz - 192MB

    PowerBook Pismo 400MHz - 192MB



    Having OS X has significantly increased my productivity level and that "wow" factor when showing it off to my PC buddies.
  • Reply 17 of 23
    torifiletorifile Posts: 4,024member
    Never. I don't remember the last time I had to reboot due to the OS going down. Actually, I do: last time I was in OS 9. But last night, I had quite a scare. I was restarting my computer after installing the July security update and applescript 1.8.3 and I got the question mark in the folder thing. I have no I idea what could have cause the problems. DFA off my 10.1 cd didn't fix it, nor did DFA in 9.2. 6c35 worked Thank goodness for carracho.
  • Reply 18 of 23
    ghost_user_nameghost_user_name Posts: 22,667member
    [quote]Originally posted by Luca Rescigno:

    <strong>I just had Snapz Pro X f*ck up my dock... and now my dock doesn't have magnification anymore. It doesn't even list the name of the icon the mouse is over...</strong><hr></blockquote>Actually, that Dock bug isn't related to Snapz. Believe me, I've encountered just about every Dock bug imaginable.



    My suggestion:

    Use either ProcessViewer or Terminal to kill th Dock process. The Dock should automatically re-launch. Alternatively, you could just log out and back in.
  • Reply 19 of 23
    torifiletorifile Posts: 4,024member
    [quote]Originally posted by starfleetX:

    <strong>

    My suggestion:

    Use either ProcessViewer or Terminal to kill th Dock process. The Dock should automatically re-launch. Alternatively, you could just log out and back in.</strong><hr></blockquote>



    If you use <a href="http://www.versiontracker.com/moreinfo.fcgi?id=11295&db=mac"; target="_blank">TransparentDock</a> (even if you don't want the transparency), you get a few additional menu options when you ctrl+click on the separator between apps and docs. There's one for 'Quit'. If the dock is responsive to clicks, that should do it a little easier than starfleet's suggestions.
  • Reply 20 of 23
    failedmathematicianfailedmathematician Posts: 95member
    [quote] i get often TOTAL OS AND COMPUTER freezes while playing games<hr></blockquote>



    This is a real common problem, but it seems like people are afraid to talk about it. I have been tracking it for several months now. I assume that when your lockup happens, it just loops a second of music over and over. Unfortunately remote login does not even work, so your computer is dead until you hit the reset button. Just for the record, this problem was first thought to only affect Sawtooth G4's with Radeon cards, but I have seen people describing these symptoms with everything from G3 imacs with Rage 128s to G4 towers with Radeon 7500's (me) to new iMacs with Geforce2mx cards. It seems to affect virtually every Carbon OpenGL game. My speculation is that the underlying problem is NOT hardware at all, but that certain hardware configurations increase the likelihood of the crash. Unfortunately, it is almost impossible to track because the crashes are so random. And anyone who may be able to help will just say you have bad RAM. Hopefully Apple will come up with an answer in 10.2.



    Crashes? Yes, 3 on Friday trying to play Diablo II for an hour.
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