Hi


Running OSX.2 (Jaguar) .
Suddenly got a sort of "box" in impeccably Mac OSX style with a message
in English, French, German, Spanish and Japanese t elling me I had to
restart my machine by holding down the on/off switch for several
seconds. This is of course the classic "if all else fails" way to
restart. The message also had a sort of watermarked picture showing the
switch.
Since the whole thing was frozen, no keyboard force-quits possible etc,
I had no alternative. I restarted.
Is this normal? I mean, is it a system thing ? Or is it something more
sinister, such as a sort of virus ( there are some even for Macs) ?

I'd be grateful for advice.

Hope this is clear enough. I'm French ( nobody's perfect) and my English
can sometimes be rather curious.

Greetings to all

Xavier Kreiss

It has happened to me when I crash using Virtual PC.

Xavier Kreiss wrote:
> Hi
>
>
> Running OSX.2 (Jaguar) .
> Suddenly got a sort of "box" in impeccably Mac OSX style with a message
> in English, French, German, Spanish and Japanese t elling me I had to
> restart my machine by holding down the on/off switch for several
> seconds. This is of course the classic "if all else fails" way to
> restart. The message also had a sort of watermarked picture showing the
> switch.
> Since the whole thing was frozen, no keyboard force-quits possible etc,
> I had no alternative. I restarted.
> Is this normal? I mean, is it a system thing ? Or is it something more
> sinister, such as a sort of virus ( there are some even for Macs) ?
>
> I'd be grateful for advice.
>
> Hope this is clear enough. I'm French ( nobody's perfect) and my English
> can sometimes be rather curious.
>
> Greetings to all
>
> Xavier Kreiss
>

--
http://homepage.mac.com/mkatzman/

In article <400DC544.D9C68929@btinternet.com>,
Xavier Kreiss <kreiss@btinternet.com> wrote:

> Running OSX.2 (Jaguar) .
> Suddenly got a sort of "box" in impeccably Mac OSX style with a message
> in English, French, German, Spanish and Japanese t elling me I had to
> restart my machine by holding down the on/off switch for several
> seconds. This is of course the classic "if all else fails" way to
> restart. The message also had a sort of watermarked picture showing the
> switch.
> Since the whole thing was frozen, no keyboard force-quits possible etc,
> I had no alternative. I restarted.
> Is this normal? I mean, is it a system thing ?

It's "normal" in the sense that it's a kernel panic, a message from the
system that something catastrophic has brought down the entire OS.

It's extremely ABnormal to see it.

Something is definitely wrong. Perhaps you have recently installed some
new RAM? Or installed some unstable software (though it would have to be
pretty bad to cause that -- Mac OS X is not supposed to crash at all!).

It could also be that your system has become damaged.

> Or is it something more
> sinister, such as a sort of virus ( there are some even for Macs) ?

None. Whatever it is that's causing that problem, a virus is not it.

> I'd be grateful for advice.

There's a fairly standard set of procedures:

1. Create a new administrative user, log into it and see if the problem
can be reproduced. If not, the problem resides in your Home folder
somewhere (most likely a bit of VERY bad software recently installed).

2. If you've recently installed third-party RAM, that could be the
culprit if #1 doesn't work. Remove the extra RAM and see if the problem
persists.

3. Download and run OnyX's "automate" function to clean out caches,
repair permissions, re-prebind and so on. Then restart the machine and
see if the problem still exists.

4. If it does, you could try running a disk-utility program such as
DiskWarrior or Tech Tool Pro 4 to see if it can detect/repair any
problems.j

5. Next to last resort -- make a backup of your important files, then do
an Archive and Install of your OS. This will almost certainly solve the
problem if none of the other techniques have. You may also opt to ERASE
the drive and start with a fresh install. Be SURE to have a backup first!

6. If none of the above solve the problem, I'd say something mechanical
has happened. Take the machine in for servicing.
--
Cheers,
_Chas_
http://www.apple.com/switch
non-spammers can write to chasm at mac (dot com)

Xavier Kreiss <kreiss@btinternet.com> wrote in message news:<400DC544.D9C68929@btinternet.com>...
> Hi
>
>
> Running OSX.2 (Jaguar) .
> Suddenly got a sort of "box" in impeccably Mac OSX style with a message
> in English, French, German, Spanish and Japanese t elling me I had to
> restart my machine by holding down the on/off switch for several
> seconds. This is of course the classic "if all else fails" way to
> restart. The message also had a sort of watermarked picture showing the
> switch.
> Since the whole thing was frozen, no keyboard force-quits possible etc,
> I had no alternative. I restarted.
> Is this normal? I mean, is it a system thing ? Or is it something more
> sinister, such as a sort of virus ( there are some even for Macs) ?
>
> I'd be grateful for advice.
>
> Hope this is clear enough. I'm French ( nobody's perfect) and my English
> can sometimes be rather curious.
>
> Greetings to all
>
> Xavier Kreiss

Hi,

This is the dreaded system panic. It is the OS telling you that
things are so messed up for whatever reason that it is giving up and
crashing. For more information Apple has an article:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article2.html?artnum=106227 that shows
pictures and shows where
you can find a log where the machine tells you why it crashed.

There are many reasons this could have happened but if it's only
once in a great while (i.e. less than once a month) then chalk it up
to fate or something. If it happens more regularly then you
should investigate.

Look at your RAM - Sometimes slightly out of spec RAM causes the
problem
System extensions or haxies - If these are for an older version of OS
X than you are running
they cause problems. If you just added one and now the system crashes
that could be the
problem.
Anyway try to reconstruct what you were doing when it happened. Also
the panic log sometimes gives clues. Others here are much more
qualified to comment on that.

--jim

In article <5d6ed6b4.0401210130.51b1dbfa@posting.google.com >,
vze35xda@verizon.net (Jim Schimpf) wrote:

> There are many reasons this could have happened but if it's only
> once in a great while (i.e. less than once a month) then chalk it up
> to fate or something. If it happens more regularly then you
> should investigate.

WHAT???!!

No, sorry, that's grossly inaccurate and misleading advice. If it
happens ***EVER*** you should investigate. It is not supposed to happen
AT ALL as in NEVER .

The very IDEA that someone with a UNIX-based system (like Mac OS X)
should have a kernel panic once a month and just "live with it" would
get you laughed out of the room at most geek socials (there's an
oxymoron for ya!) and is a sure reminder that things in OS 9 were far
worse than we spoiled OS X users remember.

I've been running OS X for almost three years now, and the notion that I
should have a crash once every YEAR, let alone every month, is unknown
to me.
--
Cheers,
_Chas_
http://www.apple.com/switch
non-spammers can write to chasm at mac (dot com)

Charles Martin <rubbish@bollocks.org> wrote in message news:<rubbish-072555.02005122012004@news06.east.earthlink.net>.. .
> In article <5d6ed6b4.0401210130.51b1dbfa@posting.google.com >,
> vze35xda@verizon.net (Jim Schimpf) wrote:
>
> > There are many reasons this could have happened but if it's only
> > once in a great while (i.e. less than once a month) then chalk it up
> > to fate or something. If it happens more regularly then you
> > should investigate.
>
> WHAT???!!
>
> No, sorry, that's grossly inaccurate and misleading advice. If it
> happens ***EVER*** you should investigate. It is not supposed to happen
> AT ALL as in NEVER .
>
> The very IDEA that someone with a UNIX-based system (like Mac OS X)
> should have a kernel panic once a month and just "live with it" would
> get you laughed out of the room at most geek socials (there's an
> oxymoron for ya!) and is a sure reminder that things in OS 9 were far
> worse than we spoiled OS X users remember.
>
> I've been running OS X for almost three years now, and the notion that I
> should have a crash once every YEAR, let alone every month, is unknown
> to me.

I have to respond. I have a dual 533 Mhz G4 and living through 10.0
with that machine enforced a certain war weariness. This system was
not well supported in these early versions and you got used to crashes
(or lost or partially working sound etc). It did get better every
update so I was patient. Later running a program of my own devising I
found that it would spin off Zombie processes and killing those off
would panic the machine. I knew what caused it but I didn't know how
to prevent the root problem. (Yes, I asked at various places
including programming lists here.) . I have finally got that out of
the way so now I only get panics in very rare situations. Understand
I am writing code (in C horrors....) on this machine and doing things
at a low level so I expect problems as anyone subscribing to an apple
development list can read about.

Anyway I spent time trying to come up with an appropriate sentence
in the original response. Obviously this person had not had this
happen before so perhaps this was just his one panic this year. I
just wanted to reassure him that while unusual the simplest thing to
do is just keep on going unless it happens more often. One can
investigate but the trail is complicated and obscure and unless it
happens more often or one knows an Apple developer what you can find
out is not much.

I have read a number of papers about the Panic log files and
attempted to analyze the ones I generated but this never lead to a
clear pointer to a problem. If you have some analysis information on
what to look for or how to analyze these these things I would be most
interested.


--jim

On 1/22/04 1:00 AM, in article
rubbish-072555.02005122012004@news06.east.earthlink.net, "Charles Martin"
<rubbish@bollocks.org> wrote:

> In article <5d6ed6b4.0401210130.51b1dbfa@posting.google.com >,
> vze35xda@verizon.net (Jim Schimpf) wrote:
>
>> There are many reasons this could have happened but if it's only
>> once in a great while (i.e. less than once a month) then chalk it up
>> to fate or something. If it happens more regularly then you
>> should investigate.
>
> WHAT???!!
>
> No, sorry, that's grossly inaccurate and misleading advice. If it
> happens ***EVER*** you should investigate. It is not supposed to happen
> AT ALL as in NEVER .
>
> The very IDEA that someone with a UNIX-based system (like Mac OS X)
> should have a kernel panic once a month and just "live with it" would
> get you laughed out of the room at most geek socials (there's an
> oxymoron for ya!) and is a sure reminder that things in OS 9 were far
> worse than we spoiled OS X users remember.
>
> I've been running OS X for almost three years now, and the notion that I
> should have a crash once every YEAR, let alone every month, is unknown
> to me.

True. My post on this topic may have led some to believe I have experienced
this often. Maybe three times, twice after installing something, and the
third time out of the blue. On reboot, all was normal on all three
occasions.
--

Brian Ehni