First crash

[mike]

New os x user, I just had my first crash trying trying to play an AVI movie
over my WLAN using VLC. My cursor is constantly the spinning colour disc. I
can't even turn off my PB, when this happens what exactly am I supposed to
do? unable to restart, unable to force quit anything, unable to shutdown?
unplug the battery?

[Chris Ridd]

On 10/7/04 12:12 pm, in article ccoiuh$iib$1...@newsg4.svr.pol.co.uk, "mike"
<noemailf...@nowhereatall.com.net> wrote:

The spinning colour disc is used by the OS to indicate that the current
application is not responding to UI events (eg mouse clicks, key strokes).
It doesn't indicate anything's crashed, just that it is taking a long time
to do something, and you can switch to another application and keep working.
If you switch to another app you can then use Command-Option-Esc etc and
nail the unresponsive app.

IIRC if you hold down the power button for several seconds it will
definitely power the machine down "hard". You can then reboot normally.

I'm not sure how many seconds it takes, so just keep the button held down
until things start happening.

Cheers,

Chris

[Elliott Roper]

In article <ccoiuh$iib$1...@newsg4.svr.pol.co.uk>, mike
<noemailf...@nowhereatall.com.net> wrote:

How did you post this message then?

ctrl-alt-power has no effect?

Strictly, that's not an OS X crash. With those you get a grey veil and
messages in various languages.

Does the beachball spin when you are hovering over anything but VLC's
windows? If no, then you have VLC guzzling all the machine's resources
it can get. cmd-opt-escape should bring up the force quit menu
eventually. If yes, I'm not so sure, I'd say the window manager went
belly up. If you were lucky enough to have sharing set up properly
before it spun out, try ssh from another Mac's terminal. If you care
enough.

If cmd-alt-power does not cause it to restart, then I'd guess yanking
the battery is all you have left. Don't blame me if it fries your
machine. I have never had to try it.

--
I thought I would be the last on earth to mangle my e-mail address.
fsnospam$elliott$$

[mike]

"Elliott Roper" <nos...@yrl.co.uk> wrote in message
news:100720041249523314%nos...@yrl.co.uk...

> How did you post this message then?

My windows desktop

> ctrl-alt-power has no effect?

I never knew that combination, I do now.

> Strictly, that's not an OS X crash. With those you get a grey veil and
> messages in various languages.
>
> Does the beachball spin when you are hovering over anything but VLC's
> windows?

It was doing it over everything, the desktop, the dock, everything

> If cmd-alt-power does not cause it to restart, then I'd guess yanking
> the battery is all you have left. Don't blame me if it fries your
> machine. I have never had to try it.

In the end I had to remove the battery, when I rebooted VLC had mysteriously
dissapeared from my machine altogether. I hope I didn't cause any damage

[Elliott Roper]

In article <ccollk$qoi$1...@newsg2.svr.pol.co.uk>, mike
<noemailf...@nowhereatall.com.net> wrote:

> "Elliott Roper" <nos...@yrl.co.uk> wrote in message
> news:100720041249523314%nos...@yrl.co.uk...
> > How did you post this message then?
>
> My windows desktop

heh!

>
> > ctrl-alt-power has no effect?
>
> I never knew that combination, I do now.
>

>

> In the end I had to remove the battery, when I rebooted VLC had mysteriously
> dissapeared from my machine altogether. I hope I didn't cause any damage

Yeah, VLC is a scary beast. Coupled with the WLAN you might have been
exploring some untrodden paths in the drivers and stuff.

VLC disappearing like that is a bit of a worry. Ask a unix giant here
how that could have happened. On reboot, the system does an automatic
fsck (file system check), which should have tidied up that kind of
wreckage.

[Jon B]

> IIRC if you hold down the power button for several seconds it will
> definitely power the machine down "hard". You can then reboot normally.
>
> I'm not sure how many seconds it takes, so just keep the button held down
> until things start happening.
>

Around about 5 seconds, the machine may well drop to sleep first so you
have to keep it pressed until you hear the machine whirr down, then you
can push the power button and fire her up again.
--
Jon
Remove "usenetspam" from address above to reply

[PeterD]

Elliott Roper <nos...@yrl.co.uk> wrote:

> ctrl-alt-power has no effect?

Do you mean Cmd-Ctrl-Power, or does ctrl-alt-power do something special?

--
Pd

[Elliott Roper]

In article <1ggsbow.d7oyeh1im5seyN%pd....@dsl.pipex.invalid>, PeterD
<pd....@dsl.pipex.invalid> wrote:

Ohmigawd! You are right. It has been so long since I pressed it.