Poll: When was the last time your Mac (OS X) crashed, requiring a manual restart?

[MacRumors]

Vote: Poll: When was the last time your Mac (OS X) crashed, requiring a manual restart? (http://www.macpolls.com/?poll_id=372)

[HexMonkey]

Isn't that an oxymoron? :D

I put 1-4 weeks ago, but I can't remember exactly when.

[pinto32]

I've had my iBook for 2 months, and I only shut it down once, but that what when I was taking to college.....so, its never happened to me.

[pimentoLoaf]

A couple of weeks ago after hibernation whilst playing Ghost Recon. Got a blank screen and had to reboot, as nothing would bring it back.

[MacFan26]

I've had my titanium powerbook since august, and I haven't had to do it since, in fact, I've really only shut it down a few times when I brought it home from college.

[Counterfit]

I had to restart like that twice last semester. I ran one of those apps that runs a screensaver as you desktop pic. Except, it turned my screen off, and nothing, not even killing stuff through ssh, could get it back. So I had to hard restart, only to stupidly run the app again :rolleyes:. The I had to do it over winter break, but I forget why...

[brhmac]

My iBook is less than a week old. Haven't had any problems with it or OS X yet.

:)

[vannote]

- Tue Mar 18 20:16:03 2003

[theipodgod16]

bout a week ago, playing a certain song in itunes brought up the 4-language restart screen. but before that, it had been many months.

[J-Squire]

There needs to be an option saying "My OSX has never crashed"

I've had my powerbook 12" for 8 months and I've never had to do a manual restart.

As for my window$ 2000 peace of junk that crashes every day........

[macnews]

I had to do a hard restart yesterday. It sucks because before that is had been over 6 months.

Oh yeah, why did I have to restart? Was running about 5 different programs, trying to print and then started up Virtual PC. It was the combo of starting Virtual PC whilst in the midst of trying to print that I think caused the problem.

Comparably, I have had to restart two windows machines at work about once every 1 and a half months - like clock work.

[warcraftmaster]

Originally posted by J-Squire
There needs to be an option saying "My OSX has never crashed"

I've had my powerbook 12" for 8 months and I've never had to do a manual restart.

As for my window$ 2000 peace of junk that crashes every day........



yup, they need that its just like my ps2(its the games fault not the ps2) my progarm crash but never my os. so i put 3 months+ well plus i only had my powerbook for 3months+:p

[MoparShaha]

I've had my 12" PB since October, and it just occured to me that it's never crashed. Eh, not bad. I remember the System 7 days of crashing everyday -- literally. Thank goodness for protected memory! :)

[rolnif]

Seriously, I can't remember, that's why I answered more than 3 months! :rolleyes:

[lind0834]

I've got my pre-logic-board problems iBook.

I don't use it heavily, but I use it every day.. haven't had a crash in about a year.

[Nermal]

My Power Mac crashed 2 days ago while I was playing Giants. That game isn't very stable at all :(

[big duane]

i've had my 1.25Ghz PB since november, and it has never crashed. ...and yes, it has been on, and used - about 12 hours a day. :D

[gerror]

My external firewire drive makes me reboot from time to time.

[Crikey]

I can remember two crashes in MacOS X (I got my Mac in August 2002).

The first one was using the Finder's Connect to Server feature to mount an FTP site on my desktop. I can't recall if trying to transfer to the server or from the server did it, but something locked the Finder up just good. My attempts to force-quit the Finder failed, so I power cycled.

The second one was not really MacOS X's fault. I bought a LaCie external FireWire drive and it came with SilverKeeper software that said it could duplicate my system drive onto the external drive, making the external drive bootable. I tried it, and the Mac hung while trying to boot from the LaCie drive. Guess I should have tried Carbon Copy Cloner instead.

Reminds me of OS/2, which I used for about 4 years in the early 1990s. I only crashed it once in all that time, by doing something that the OS said I should not do, just to see what would happen. OS/2 was a less lame clone of the Mac than Windows was.

Cheers,


Crikey

[virividox]

its been like 3 months since my last hard restart. i dont even remember what i was doing :)

[Nermal]

Originally posted by Crikey
The first one was using the Finder's Connect to Server feature to mount an FTP site on my desktop. I can't recall if trying to transfer to the server or from the server did it, but something locked the Finder up just good. My attempts to force-quit the Finder failed, so I power cycled.

Connecting to FTP sites has always been a nightmare.

[Mav451]

An interesting poll indeed, considering i am one of the 6% (or 40 people) that voted that they do not even use OS X voted.

Even more eye-opening is the %s I am seeing:

9.9% or so have had to manually reboot, either today or yesterday. Nearly 10%. Adding that onto the 2-6 day %, that number grows to just about 22% for the 2-6day cumulative.

On the flip side, there's 53% who have not restarted either in 1-3 months or in over 3 months, which is impressive. I wonder how the #'s change if the results from G4's and G5's were separated.

This is because i believe hardware instability may ALSO be the blame in many of these cases. Many blame Windows XP for crashing so much, but fail to realize cheap ram, a weak power supply, or just plain horrible airflow could have contributed to random crashing, stalls, or even automatic reboots (a common symptom of bad ram). If you think about the areas they are cutting to make a 400-500 dollar computer system, you need to begin thinking if that generic ram/fan setup is going to hold for even a month!

Likewise, how many times have users crashed in games (both Mac and Windows)? How do you know if its the game that caused the crash or the fact that the system was overstressed (CPU overheated/is overclocked; video card overheated, instability of cheap ram, etc.)

I have hard-crashed numerous times when i test my overclocked settings, getting the infamous "IRQ_LESS_THAN_OR_EQUALS". With an OS like OSX and presumably, good healthy hardware setup (airflow/PSU/good ram/cool video card) crashes shouldn't even occur for even years).

*For those talking bout FTP sites causing crashing-- is this a common problem on the Mac side, or just a small isolated incident?

[Megaquad]

My iMac crashes in 1 out of 10 times when using both iTunes and Flash MX.
Other than that, it crashes for no reason too sometimes. (Panther 10.3.2)

[nagromme]

A little OS X tip I've picked up: when the occasional freeze happens (unless the Mac TELLS you to restart), you can often "wait it out" and it will come back--eventually. Not that you'd always choose to wait and see, but unlike OS 9 I find that OS X isn't necessarily "dead forever" when it hangs.

I don't think any of my three Macs have ever crashed since Panther. Before that it was very rare. OS X is just rock solid.

Oh curses! I'm crashing right n

[bluedalmatian]

My G3 iMac never crashed but now I'm using a Cube it seems to be more unstable thanks to the USB/ADC combined thing,

[csimmons]

September 2003, I got a kernel panic due to a bad driver for my audio interface. Since I installed Panther (October 2003):not once. :cool:

[Doraemon]

Daily. OS X 10.3.2 sucks.

(Mail regularly freezes the entire system)

[Mav451]

Doraemon--I presume you are referring to your Dual 2.0 G5 system?

[ALoLA]

Hard restart? What's that? :D Actually, I do remember having to hold down the power button once to restart my iMac many months ago. But that was because I was trying to revive a friend's "dead" iPod, which she had "killed" when she connected it to her PC laptop. iTunes froze up for some reason. All was fine after the restart, and I managed to resurrect the iPod as well. :)

I wonder if every crash can be traced back to something Microsoft-related. Like a six degrees of separation kind of thing. :D

[Mav451]

well when you have significant overclocking experience you will understand. First i will start off by saying that i messed up saying hard restart. I meant "hard LOCK". This is essentially when is clearly a hardware fault that lead to the crash. Hard locks typically occur with HIGH FSB settings or even overheated processors (if you search around Tom's Hardware, you might find a video of the burning CPUs that lead to the development of C.O.P. = Cpu Overheating Protection which is part of every nForce2 board out there now).

Most cases, if the CPU is not getting contact to the heatsink at boot, the entire system will be shut down in 5-10 seconds. On the other hand, if it can get past bootup, then C.O.P. is not involved! And this is where you get your hardlock => you can be using any application, it doesn't matter, you lock up at a random time. Keyboard/Mouse inputs are rendered useless.

Windows related crash is typically, and i have a problem saying typically b/c i haven't had a "OS" crash since 3 or 4 years ago with 98 and those dmn dlls/win32 files. The closest crash I've had with Windows XP is explorer.exe failing, which is usually linked with ntdll (which is corrupted sometimes on XP Home or XP Pro that didn't come with SP1 integrated. Again, this is not really a crash. After a few seconds, the taskbar disappears and is replaced with a new taskbar...services are resumed in 10-30seconds, and your back to normal. Ok, that's not even a real crash.

Ok, so i've explained hard lock. I presume softlock when everything is normal, without involving overclocked/overheating components and the system freezes. I guess this has more to do with "buggy" games than anything. If you KNOW that your video card/cpu are well cooled, than it is more likely the software problem.

*RAM issues, in the windows environment will cause playing games, especially 3d intensive FPS (which make this obvious) to crash back to desktop.

If your RAM is really error prone, it will cause a "reflex" restart on your PC. I have no idea how Macs work in this sense, so bear with me :)

Anyway, the RAM "reflex" restart is not the "hard restart" I referred to in a previous post. What i meant by hard restart is, that you had to manually restart the system by PRESSING the restart key (not the 3 finger salute or the Mac equivalent).

*ALSO, HW locks can be linked to outdate motherboard BIOSes. Watch out in particular to motherboards who only use 1001A or 1002E or similar to that notation. BIOS numbers above 1004 are typically alot more stable. 1007 or 1008 is probably from a motherboard that has been out for 6 months at least.

[slowtreme]

my iBook had "Run away" about a month ago. Just decided to do some process and never became usable for input. After 5 min or so I killed it with the power button. That worked.

The time before that I plugged in a USB thumbdrive and my iBook screen went grey. Power button didnt restart it either. I had to unplug it and then pull the battery. It took about 5 power cycles to get the spinning boot logo back and then I just walked away thinking it was dead. about 20 min later I saw it was sitting at the logon window.

Conversly, my WindowsXP machine hasn't frose in about 18 months that I can recall. But yesterday while I was at work it rebooted all on it's own. Probably a power surge. Florida Power sucks.

[~Shard~]

I just picked "greater than 3 months", because my option wasn't listed: NEVER. :cool:

[zellin]

Originally posted by Doraemon
Daily. OS X 10.3.2 sucks.

(Mail regularly freezes the entire system)
Doraemon:
As I'm sure you know, this is definitely an indivual problem. On my G4 867 MHz PB 12", I have Mail, iChat AV, Address Book, iTunes, iCal, Stickies, Calculator, Versiontracker Pro, Watson, Activity Monitor, You Control, Huevos, and Desktastic open at all times. I have never experienced a crash requiring a hard restart (I have hard restarted but only because something took waaaaaaay longer than I thought that it would and I was unable to cancel.

[MattG]

My Powerbook can go forever without a reboot...I think the longest I've let it run without restarting/shutting it down was almost a month. My Powermac is a different story...it gets cranky if I don't restart it once in a while.

[Mr. Anderson]

Lightwave and Panther aren't the happiest together...there was a time when it would crash / freeze up all the time. That's been fixed, now the app just quits. Hopefully version 8 that's coming out soon will resolve these issues.

D

[Gimzotoy]

Yesterday. Working on Garageband, then (before saving, of course), I decided to fire up the calculator for something unrelated. Complete lock-up, no dock, nothing. Had to manually reboot.

First time I've had it lock up on me since I got it in November.

[1macker1]

My hard drive died, just 2 days before the warranty went out. *things that make you say ummm**

[macFanDave]

because my wife called me on Friday and asked why the four-language obituary was on the screen of my Dual 2 GHz G5 for no apparent reason (she said she wasn't doing anything, she just walked by and heard the fans roaring). But before that, it had NEVER crashed since I got it on the Night of the Panther (10/24/03).

Had you posted this question a week ago, I would have complained that you didn't have a "NEVER" option.

[miloblithe]

10.1 crashed all the time.
10.2 almost never crashed
10.3 has never crashed on me, and that's running it on two computers that I almost never turn off.

There should have been options in this survey for "never" and "over a year ago." It's probably been about a year for me.

[eyelikeart]

sometimes I curse iTunes... ;)

[Analog Kid]

Powerbook locked out the external USB ports after plugging-unplugging a USB-serial adapter repeatedly. There was a reason for that... really...

iMac has been rock solid since 10.2-- on 24 hours, just reboot it for system updates...

[killmoms]

My PowerBook has only crashed once, a few days ago when I stupidly installed a haxie that I didn't realize was for Jaguar. I have Panther. Needless to say, it died quickly. I deleted it after restart.

I've had it stay in black a few times after waking from sleep, but only once was I not able to revive it.

On the whole, it's still better than my PC. ~_^

--Cless

[StudioGuy]

Saddened to say within 2-6 days since it was the first since installing panther on a iMac DV. Happened during an OS9 program in Classic mode, so I'm not too upset. No other macs w/OS X have ever crashed for us.

Odd thing was, I couldn't force quit either the program, Classic, nor log out. Even terminal-ing I couldn't get stuff to kill -9.

Besides that, quite happy with OS X, and even some programs we had problems with OS9 work smoother under Classic.

[whooleytoo]

Originally posted by Doraemon
Daily. OS X 10.3.2 sucks.

Likewise..

I hadn't had a crash/hang in months until 10.3.2. Now I've had three nasty freezes in the last 10 days. (Everything but the cursor stops responding.. eventually the cursor stops too.)

[wrldwzrd89]

I had my iMac crash repeatedly right when I got it. I didn't have to do anything in particular; it would lock up or the kernel would panic randomly (this falls in the 2-5 days ago range). I took it into the local Apple Store, they reset the power management unit, and after setting the system date and time to something reasonable, the random crashes and freeze-ups stopped completely. It hasn't crashed since.

By the way, I'm having a most unusual problem with MacPolls. When I log in to MacRumors.com from 'work' (it's really an internship) and try to vote on a MacPolls.com poll, the (Windows 2000) computer (falsely) tells me that I've already voted, even if I actually haven't placed a vote.

[mohaukachi]

i really dont know why but i have trouble waking my displays up from sleep when its cold. the g5 revs up like always, but it takes two restarts to get the screens back on.

[deejemon]

I had to restart today because my Desktop Picture prefpane wouldn't open, causing System Preferences to go into "spinning pinwheel" mode. It didn't kernel panic or anything - everything else worked fine, but what I was working on necessitated that I test a new desktop pic, hence the restart.

It seems OSX sometimes doesn't like opening a open/save dialog box when lots of servers, discs and or CDs are mounted. That's usually the only other thing that causes me to need to restart. Finder stops responding, it won't Force Quit properly, nor will it "kill" properly, and sometimes even a Restart won't do it. sudo shutdown -r now usually does the trick.

[gopher]

A serious Mac OS X crash is a thing of the past, as long as you avoid issues which can cause kernel panics and permission failures.

http://www.macmaps.com/kernelpanic.html

should help you out there.

[jkojima]

Define crash. If you mean kernel panic, not in recent memory.

If you mean more than one app going down for the count, or any situation only remedied by a reboot - that happens about once a week. But that, I suspect, is more an issue with shoddy apps than the OS.

[MacFinn]

I've had this PB17 since last April. Haven't crashed yet. But I put down more than three months.
My son claims that his G4 450 crashed a couple of weeks ago. Don't know what he was doing. But that's a first since I installed OS X on it Dec 2001. It was mine then.

[groovebuster]

Originally posted by zellin
Doraemon:
As I'm sure you know, this is definitely an indivual problem. On my G4 867 MHz PB 12", I have Mail, iChat AV, Address Book, iTunes, iCal, Stickies, Calculator, Versiontracker Pro, Watson, Activity Monitor, You Control, Huevos, and Desktastic open at all times. I have never experienced a crash requiring a hard restart (I have hard restarted but only because something took waaaaaaay longer than I thought that it would and I was unable to cancel.

Maybe you are just lucky. I have constant problems with Mac OS X since 10.3.2. And the really not funny part is, that it is not even a kernel panic. The IP stack crashes while Mail tries to check for new messages and then the machine gets into an infinite loop. You can't even kill the program, the machine is just locked even though still responding.

I have this problem maybe every 2 days and especially after "deep sleep" (95% of the cases).

AND it happens on different computers... A Quicksilver, an iBook G4, a G5 and confirmation by my brother, who has the same problem with the machines in the ad agency he's running...

I don't even want to mention the daily "little" problems MacOS X causes...

10.3.2 is a piece of **** regarding stability. I feel almost like in the good ole MacOS 9 times. :mad:

groovebuster

[Bendit]

My PowerBook crashes often when I am accessing windows network shares. that's the only time it crashes! It just hangs forever and I have to reboot it or I get the 4 language reboot screen.

The reasons why it crashes seems so stupid too, if i click on a dock icon for a share that's currently offline it just hangs there looking for it, taking the whole dock down with it, and sometimes the entire system.

[chacha75]

I saw a few posts from people who only shut down to take their laptop somewhere. I've had my iBook 600 for over 2 years. It has crashed requiring a manual restart so rarely I can hardly remember but definately less than 10 times. I have taken my iBook on trips to Europe, the States, and back to Japan again...through security everywhere...and it was asleep the whole time, not turned off...:D

[Trekkie]

Mine did this thing yesterday where it popped a window and told me to turn off my computer (iMac FP 800Mhz).

However, this was the first time it's done this ever to me. Over the last year or so the only reason it's rebooted is either a software update, or power went out (thank you Hurricane Isabel)

No idea why it just popped up the window and told me to shut it off, but I did and it was fine.

[MagnusDredd]

I crashed it yesterday. However I do some development work at my job and due to a typo, made a rather stupid system call. Machine got really mad and locked solid.

So not really a fair assessment of stability. I have had a very good experience with OSX as far as stability is concerned. It has not been as stable as my Slackware box (without GUI), but certainly as stable as my Yellowdog box running X11 and Enlightenment.

My XP box is a bit less stable, not horribly so, but I'd say that it reboots suddenly (which I have to change back to blue screen) about 50% more than my G4 tower. Which for a toy (I only really play games on it) isn't bad. It reboots about once or so per month.

[Doraemon]

Originally posted by Mav451
Doraemon--I presume you are referring to your Dual 2.0 G5 system?

On the contrary. Both G4 systems. The G5 is fine.

Originally posted by Mav451
Doraemon:
As I'm sure you know, this is definitely an indivual problem. On my G4 867 MHz PB 12", I have Mail, iChat AV, Address Book, iTunes, iCal, Stickies, Calculator, Versiontracker Pro, Watson, Activity Monitor, You Control, Huevos, and Desktastic open at all times. I have never experienced a crash requiring a hard restart (I have hard restarted but only because something took waaaaaaay longer than I thought that it would and I was unable to cancel.

I fear, I am not the only one (see posts here). I have posted several times on Apple discussion forums and a pretty large number of users had the same problem. I also sent Apple feedback, but apparently Apple doesn't recognize this as a serious problem (which it definitely is).
PowerMac G4 and iBook G4 crash 8 out of 10 times when trying to launch Mail. Complete system freeze (menus not responding, no force quit). I have to hard-restart the Mac. I don't care if I can't use Mail on the PM G4 (I still can use the G5, which I usually do anyway), but when I'm on the road I need to be able to check my mails. And a constantly crashing iBook is just extremely annoying (all are running 10.3.2).

Aside from that, 10.3.2 takes ages to load the login window.

My opinion stands: 10.3.2 is the worst version of OS X for a very long time (even the late 10.1.x versions were more stable!).

[Trowaman]

every so often exposé and the dock will stop working on my computer. In addition the background will stop changing and it will act as though it's thinking about something but nothing ever hapens. I need to call Apple care about thisand my very short battery life in my iPod. *sigh*

[mrsebastian]

can't remember the last my pb crashed? it has on occasion slowed down and felt sluggish, so i did a restart.

[wdlove]

I just installed Panther on my Power Mac Dual 450 on January 26th. So far I Haven't had too reboot due to a crash. Only rebooted with an installation.

I have not been able to use Mail. Tired numerous work around trials with no success. The force quit has always worked successfully. :(

[ZildjianKX]

I'm a new mac user, I have gotten it to kernel panic under 10.2, but not once since I've been using 10.3... I'm very impressed.

[TheArchpadre]

My PowerBook G4 (Titanium, 800MHz, and my first Mac) has crashed probably five times since I installed Panther on it a couple weeks ago. Jaguar crashed on me maybe once in the whole eighteen months or so I ran it. Then I "upgrade" to a new system and stability goes down the tube.

Besides the outright freezes people have described, there's a really annoying variant where I come out of the screensaver and get a black screen with the cursor. Stuff still responds, but that doesn't do me a bit of good because I can't see any of it.

Since I only recently got Panther, I assume these are the 10.3.2-related like other problems that people have been having. (I ran the software update as soon as I finished installing to make sure I had the latest version. I figured it'd ensure maximum stability.) These things have been driving me nuts.

I love the new features of Panther and have enjoyed my Mac overall, but this is ridiculous. What the hell, Apple?

[Mav451]

hehe cutting edge technology, but cutting edge software? Interesting...

That is also the same reason I wait an entire year and half before considering a new OS (in Windows XP case, I waited until early 2003, so actually that's 2 years of waiting).

[flyfish29]

I think the overall results are interesting: If OSX is crashing this little I wonder how fewer times it must crash for the ordinary user who doesn't use it as often, for as many things, and doesn't tweak it near as much as we do in this forum. It is no wonder many ordinary people are using it and loving it. I hope the ordinary user is upgrading versions within each major revision to keep their s more stable. Ie 10.2 users have upgraded to 10.2.8, etc.

Keep up the great work apple.
By the way, what is a kernal panic? and I have never in 7 months seen the four language thing you describe. I have rebooted due to slowness, etc., but never out of necessity of a total freeze up!:D

[mc68k]

yesterday, but i have a super-upgraded 9600 running OS X

...and i love to break things, since thats the only way i learn :)

i also crashed OS 9 yesterday, too :D

[emdotdee]

i nearly always get (what i like to call) the grey screen of death (the restart in different languages) when i unplug my adsl modem, whihc is a pain in the arse, but oh well

[whooleytoo]

Originally posted by TheArchpadre
Since I only recently got Panther, I assume these are the 10.3.2-related like other problems that people have been having. (I ran the software update as soon as I finished installing to make sure I had the latest version. I figured it'd ensure maximum stability.)

I didn't have any problems with 10.3, only since the 10.3.2 upgrade. I'm considering reverting.. as much hassle as that is.

[Cooknn]

Have had my G5 Dual 2 since November - came preinstalled with Panther. It's never crashed. The only problem with that is that I still have to work with Windows boxes during the day. At least 5 times a day I appreciate my new Mac :p

[MacFan25]

I've had my iMac for a little over a year. It crashed a few times under Jaguar, but under Panther, it hasn't crashed at all. :)

[RedStar]

No crash here since I got my new G5 5 1/2 months ago, I'm running Jaguar... haven't updated since i see so many people post problems w/ Panther.

[parrothead]

My Tibook crashed last night, but only because the power went out and my external hard drive caused OSX to freeze. OS X crashes for me about once a week due to problems with that disk and my ipod. I just completely erased my disk and reinstalled everything and it seems to be better, except for the power outage. :mad:

[groovebuster]

Originally posted by whooleytoo
I didn't have any problems with 10.3, only since the 10.3.2 upgrade. I'm considering reverting.. as much hassle as that is.

Yup! 10.3.2 is one of the biggest pieces of crap they ever released! I am really NOT impressed lately by the QA in Cupertino.

If I want a computer that's a pain in the ass, I buy a Windows machine! :mad:

groovebuster

[bryanc]

Originally posted by TheArchpadre
My PowerBook G4 (Titanium, 800MHz, and my first Mac) has crashed probably five times since I installed Panther on it a couple weeks ago....<snipage>...

I have two comments to make on this thread. My experience with all incarnations of OS X on a very significant number and variety of different machines has been excellent. However, there are a couple of things you need to be aware of in order to get a stable system:

1) run 'repair permissions' after you install things (esp. system software). This, IMHO, is a flaw in OS X that should be corrected by Apple...yes, it's easy for the user to do this themselves, but why should they have to?!?

2) make sure your maintainance scripts are getting run regularly...if your machine is sleeping or shutdown when these events are scheduled, they won't happen, and unhappyness will acumulate on your system, resulting in instability.

Also, for those of you who've encoutered instability due to buggy applications, rather than shutting down and rebooting, try logging out and logging back in (much faster)...it usually fixes any confusion in Finder or problems arising from applications.

Cheers

[TheArchpadre]

I actually repaired permissions for the first time ever this morning (after posting). It found a number of errors in interesting places (like /Applications). We'll see if it has any effect. I find it odd that having wonky permissions causes the system to completely choke though. It seems like it should be smart enough to just throw an error. Hell, how do the permissions even get altered?

Maintenance scripts should be run regularly, though. I use my laptop as an alarm clock, so I don't let it sleep at night (except for the screen). The cron jobs should be going as scheduled.

[MrMacMan]

I crashed about a week ago...

I have a lot of application crashes tho...


Kernal Panics not recentally...


10.2.8 is very stable for me...

Anyone converting back to jag like me?

:D

[kettle]

either I have a really weird form of system corruption that makes Panther really stable, or there are a bunch of people with some very odd problems.

I love 10.3.2, It runs really well on my 450 sawtooth, I just don't have problems and I'm using it 10-12 hours a day. The only real back step is the dial up connection. It has the same sort of irregularities as 10.1 had, really hit or miss, plus the dissconnect hang. hmm. what else....

the fax doesn't send, but it seems to receive ok.

Last crash? hmm I have the finder get a bit jumpy sometimes, it'll loose the menu bar for a second as it relaunches.

how about this weird one, have you noticed the extra pixel on the corners of the finder selection box, top left and right.

[bankshot]

Originally posted by Doraemon
Aside from that, 10.3.2 takes ages to load the login window.

sudo ln -s /System/Library/Extensions/BootCache.kext/Contents/Resources/BootCacheControl /usr/sbin/

Reboot twice.

[killmoms]

I am somewhat curious as to whether the people reporting all these horrible crashes and instability did upgrade installs of Panther over Jaguar. My clean install of 10.3 has been perfect through 10.3.1 and 10.3.2. So, I'd have to say that it's not the worst thing they've ever released, it's the best.

--Cless

[bousozoku]

Yesterday, when I was trying to download Mozilla Firefox, Firebird locked up. It knew of its impending doom? :D

It would not be killed, so I ended up re-booting.

[Goblin2099]

Panther has seemed a lot less stable to me. Before 10.3, I think I had to force a restart maybe twice (and I've been using it since 10.0), but I've had about a half dozen kernel panics in the last couple of weeks, usually as the result of plugging in a usb hub to my laptop and then activating iTunes (either by playing a song or plugging in my iPod).

Hope that gets fixed soon, OS X used to be so rock solid for me...

[joker2]

I, too, am wondering if a lot of the problems are dealing with upgrades from Jaguar (and the applications they were running before.) When I first got my machine, it looked/felt like it was upgraded to Panther over Jag (I couldn't give you any specifics, it just felt clunky), and I had all sorts of problems: programs crashing, kernel panicking, etc. Since I didn't have any data on it yet, I wiped and reinstalled and then installed the apps from the UpToDate panther disc that was included in my box. (The kernel panics kept happening until I changed out the Airport card) No more application crashes for no reason.

(I can still make a few act funny, like if I haven't restarted Safari in a while, I'll lose the ability to see tabs in a new window. They're there, and if I cmd-W it will go to each successive tab, but I just can't see the tabs!)

[TomSmithMacEd]

Wow, who are you people? I thought OS X was suppose to be stable. I know it has been for me. Not one problem and I've had the computer for probably aroudn 4 months now.

It has been on 24/7 and I am a multitasker. I have the occasional program freeze, but whole system freezes are a thing of the past for me.

[eric_n_dfw]

I use 2 10.3.2 machines daily and have had different experiences:
At work, a G4 500 that stays on 24/7 with all Apple installed hardware (plus some memory) works fine, albiet a bit slow. It has the factory installed ATI AGP Rage 128 card and a 2nd Rage 128 card in a PCI slot. The only 3rd party driver installed is the Logitech mouse driver. Other than system updates that required a reboot, and several office relocations :rolleyes:, that think hasn't missed a beat since the 10.2.6 ethernet disabler fiasco.

At home, a G4 500 Dual Processor, also on 24/7 has problems with the mouse not responding upon waking the screens up from power saving mode ALL OF THE FREEKING TIME!!!! (not sleep, just monitor power down) The weird thing is that moving the mouse turns the monitors on, but the pointer is frozen. If a button happens to be under the pointer, you can even click it - right clicking brings up the contextual menu too. (It's a Log.itech optical mouse)

I've since turned off the energy saver and it doesn't happen any more, so I have wonder if my Radeon 8500 GPP card drivers have bug.

Another strong possibilty, is that when I migrated from my old Blue & White with a G4 last year, I just moved the hard drive over and kept running. That was 10.2 and I've since done the 10.3 upgrade so I've got a new system folder - but who knows. Maybe I just need to do a clean install and see if the problem just goes away.

Another thing that scared me a couple of weeks ago: I installed an Orange Micro USB 2.0 / Firewire PCI card at home (got a new Epson R300 printer) and I got a kernel panic on boot up on 2 out of 4 boots that day. Haven't seen once since though.

[TheArchpadre]

Originally posted by Cless
[B]I am somewhat curious as to whether the people reporting all these horrible crashes and instability did upgrade installs of Panther over Jaguar.[B]

I did the archive-and-install option, or whatever it's called. I forget. Not an upgrade, but a not a completely clean install.

I'm sorry, I refuse to do a completely clean install unless absolutely necessary. It's just too much hassle.

[iPC]

yesterday

10.3.2

something fishy with the password to get back from screensaver thing. turn off password and it is fine...

[deejemon]

Originally posted by Bendit
My PowerBook crashes often when I am accessing windows network shares. that's the only time it crashes! It just hangs forever and I have to reboot it or I get the 4 language reboot screen.

The reasons why it crashes seems so stupid too, if i click on a dock icon for a share that's currently offline it just hangs there looking for it, taking the whole dock down with it, and sometimes the entire system.

Ditto. It's like, why has everything hung when System Preferences opens, or why is it hanging when I bring an app to the foreground, or something odd like that. Normal, everyday operation like opening, closing or bringing something forward, and there's a hang. Not all the time, and not everytime for the same event. Weird. Sometimes a force quit will do it (although often that means that you can't open that app again until after you restart), sometimes you can't force quit that app and subsequently everything else collapses in a heap.

[groovebuster]

Originally posted by bryanc
1) run 'repair permissions' after you install things (esp. system software). This, IMHO, is a flaw in OS X that should be corrected by Apple...yes, it's easy for the user to do this themselves, but why should they have to?!?

Of course I did that all the time. Even though it is crazy that you have to do it just because installed a program or a system update.

Originally posted by bryanc
2) make sure your maintainance scripts are getting run regularly...if your machine is sleeping or shutdown when these events are scheduled, they won't happen, and unhappyness will acumulate on your system, resulting in instability.

n/t :rolleyes:

Originally posted by bryanc
Also, for those of you who've encoutered instability due to buggy applications, rather than shutting down and rebooting, try logging out and logging back in (much faster)...it usually fixes any confusion in Finder or problems arising from applications.

How do you want to log out, when you can't anymore? To be able to log out all apps must be "quitable"! If they are not you are screwed!

groovebuster

[bankshot]

Originally posted by bryanc
2) make sure your maintainance scripts are getting run regularly...if your machine is sleeping or shutdown when these events are scheduled, they won't happen, and unhappyness will acumulate on your system, resulting in instability.


I agree that Unix wants to be left on all the time (my Power Mac runs 24/7, no sleeping), but I think this is a bit of a myth. There's nothing critical in the cron jobs that will cause your system to become unstable if they aren't run. Take a look at the scripts in /etc/periodic. Basically rotating log files and cleaning up temporary files. No system is going to slow down or become unstable without this -- unless POSSIBLY the hard drive is nearly full. But if it's that full, I doubt this maintenance will make much difference anyway. ;)

[edenwaith]

As far as kernel panics, I haven't seen any past Mac OS 10.1, and even then I only saw one when upgrading from OS 10.0.4.

As far as the OS itself running, it has been excellent. There have been a few naughty applications (VirtualPC and IE) which amazingly enough locked up the entire system, but that's it.

[Doraemon]

Originally posted by Cless
I am somewhat curious as to whether the people reporting all these horrible crashes and instability did upgrade installs of Panther over Jaguar. My clean install of 10.3 has been perfect through 10.3.1 and 10.3.2. So, I'd have to say that it's not the worst thing they've ever released, it's the best.

--Cless

Clean install, of course.

[Doraemon]

Oh, and did I mention frequent Safari crashes (only the app)?

Just crashed on me while I was submitting the last post. :mad:

10.3.1 was much more stable than 10.3.2. I hope 10.3.3 fixes these issues.

[Counterfit]

Originally posted by Doraemon
Just crashed on me while I was submitting the last post. :mad: I hate it when that happens.

[kettle]

Originally posted by eric_n_dfw

I've since turned off the energy saver and it doesn't happen any more, so I have wonder if my Radeon 8500 GPP card drivers have bug.

I have an ATi 8500 in a 450 Sawtooth running 10.3.2, seems fine with me, there was an update that put the ATi displays control panel in the system preferences app. It did some other things but I'm not sure what that was. found it.

This update fixes the following potential issues:

* Installer program putting some required files into the incorrect folder on the 10.3 boot drive (namely ATITVOut.kext)
* ATITVOut.kext fails to load with Mac OS_X 10.3
* ATI Displays shows an error stating ATITVOut.kext version is too old
* ATI Monitor not launched by ATI_Displays
* ATI Displays does not quit or takes very long to quit
* ATI_ROM_Xtender is not required for Panther (replaced by ATIRuntimeDriver - included in Panther)

ATi Panther software (http://www.ati.com/support/products/mac/radeon8500/osx/radeon8500maceditionosxpantherdrivers.html)

there was a firmware update for the 8500 - 2002 09 04 HERE it is... (http://www.ati.com/support/drivers/mac/ati-radeon8500-mac-rom-126.html)

hope this helps deduce the problem.

[wdlove]

Originally posted by TomSmithMacEd
Wow, who are you people? I thought OS X was suppose to be stable. I know it has been for me. Not one problem and I've had the computer for probably aroudn 4 months now.

It has been on 24/7 and I am a multitasker. I have the occasional program freeze, but whole system freezes are a thing of the past for me.

That was always my thought also. Then I went to MWNY 2002 and they had 2 classes on problems with X. It sacred me at the time. Was wondering what was going on, they were memntion so many problems and the fixes.

It has been so heartening to so many singing the praises of X.
So far I have good luck. Wondrering if the Mac Genius should have done a clean install on my G4 on the 26th of January.

[bousozoku]

Originally posted by groovebuster

...
How do you want to log out, when you can't anymore? To be able to log out all apps must be "quitable"! If they are not you are screwed!

groovebuster

Exactly!

I had that problem the other night with Firebird. For some reason, Mac OS X could not force it to quit.

I know that they'll handle the problem eventually. It's not like it was a problem with 10.2.8, but it certainly is a problem up through 10.3.2.

Overall, the operating system is stable and speedy and I rarely have a problem with it.

[Counterfit]

I had that problem yesterday (or was it Monday...) I tried updating my iPod to 2.1, which it was already at :rolleyes:, and the updater app would not quit, it wouldn't even show up in top or Activity Monitor. So I activated FUS, switched to my backup admin account and shut down.

[bryanc]

Regarding the mantainance scripts bankshot writes:
No system is going to slow down or become unstable without this -- unless POSSIBLY the hard drive is nearly full. But if it's that full, I doubt this maintenance will make much difference anyway. ;)

I think the rebuilding of the various databases and clearing of the caches is the biggest thing. Rotating the logs will prevent them from growing out of control, but, as you say, that's not likely to cause system instability unless the drive is very full. I actually went and deleted all my old logs the other day, and it freed up a significant amount of drive space.

Something else I do sporadically, which dramatically improves the speed and accuracy of searches is to re-index my drive contents. Takes a long time, but it sure is nice to be able to find that file who's name and location I've forgotten, but that I know has something about apoptosis in the retina in it :-)

Cheers

[iPC]

Originally posted by bousozoku
Exactly!

I had that problem the other night with Firebird. For some reason, Mac OS X could not force it to quit.

I know that they'll handle the problem eventually. It's not like it was a problem with 10.2.8, but it certainly is a problem up through 10.3.2.

Overall, the operating system is stable and speedy and I rarely have a problem with it.
That is what the terminal will fix, amongst others.

$ kill 2645

you don't type the dollar sign, and 2645 is just an example PID (process ID).

to get the PID of the nasty app
$ ps ux

In general, the mozilla project puts out some pretty buggy code. Every new release I give them a shot, and I end up back with Safari (1.2 is very nice now).

[bousozoku]

Originally posted by iPC
That is what the terminal will fix, amongst others.

$ kill 2645

you don't type the dollar sign, and 2645 is just an example PID (process ID).

to get the PID of the nasty app
$ ps ux

In general, the mozilla project puts out some pretty buggy code. Every new release I give them a shot, and I end up back with Safari (1.2 is very nice now).

I did a kill -9 5235 and it wouldn't even die then.

I've been using UNIX shells for nearly 20 years. :D

[pimentoLoaf]

I installed Panther by first backing up my drive, erasing it, then booting the install disk.

Just discovered something weird yesterday: I dragged several files to the Trash, selected Secure Empty Trash from the Finder menu, a dialog popped up showing the number of files about to go away, and then the system just froze. Rebooting, the Trash then emptied without my having to select anything from the Finder menu.

[benpatient]

Owned a G5 Dual 1.8 for 3 weeks now.

Hard reboot 5 times and counting on panther with latest everything.

rock-solid my butt.

today I've had "Mail" quit 3 times (just the app, but i wasn't even using it, it was just on in the dock) and safari once. It's only 11 AM!

What's up with this system, anyway? This thing is pretty fast overall, and when the processors get grinding, it's quite nice, but the stability isn't even as good as my XP machine...which is sad.

Not impressed with Panther so far...

except for Exposé. It's cool.

[joker2]

Owned a G5 Dual 1.8 for 3 weeks now.

Hard reboot 5 times and counting on panther with latest everything.

rock-solid my butt.

today I've had "Mail" quit 3 times (just the app, but i wasn't even using it, it was just on in the dock) and safari once. It's only 11 AM!

What's up with this system, anyway? This thing is pretty fast overall, and when the processors get grinding, it's quite nice, but the stability isn't even as good as my XP machine...which is sad.

Not impressed with Panther so far...

except for Exposé. It's cool.


Have you done a (backup), wipe & reinstall? I had a couple of problems the first day or two of having my PB G4, and wiped and reinstalled from the discs.

My problem turned out to be a flakey airport card, but that didn't explain why I had a bunch of application crashes that weren't related to that before. Now I haven't had a hard crash (kernel panic, many language restart screen) since I replaced the airport card, but will have an application unexpectedly quit maybe once or twice a week. Usually a Microsoft Office program. (planning to phaser that installation this weekend and reinstall)

[gopher]

Owned a G5 Dual 1.8 for 3 weeks now.

Hard reboot 5 times and counting on panther with latest everything.

rock-solid my butt.

today I've had "Mail" quit 3 times (just the app, but i wasn't even using it, it was just on in the dock) and safari once. It's only 11 AM!

What's up with this system, anyway? This thing is pretty fast overall, and when the processors get grinding, it's quite nice, but the stability isn't even as good as my XP machine...which is sad.

Not impressed with Panther so far...

except for Exposé. It's cool.
Such issues with crashing are unusual for Mac OS X. It is indicative of something more wrong in your system. Whether it is bad RAM, or bad preferences you should isolate it. Here are a couple of good tidbit pages:

http://www.macmaps.com/Macosxspeed.html
http://www.macmaps.com/kernelpanic.html
http://www.macmaps.com/directoryfaq.html

[TheMacOS.com]

since installing OSX panther, the OS has NOT crashed once yet...

Mabe once with Jaguar...

With OS 7, 8, 9? ALL the time... thats why I dont miss pre-OSX versions one bit.

[Urdam]

I don't even remember...

[o1b2]

today, I loaded some app. that was a pieace of junk. and caused the screen to go blank so I couldnt force quit. other wise that maybe the first time i have had a machine off in months.

[MacFan26]

today, I loaded some app. that was a pieace of junk. and caused the screen to go blank so I couldnt force quit. other wise that maybe the first time i have had a machine off in months.
what was this app?

[o1b2]

sim city 4, just got it , it black out on start up. I check on EA.com and aspyr.com and they had an update, for this issue. but then download was for windows. so I figured it was a screen res. issue so I lowered my res. but that didnt help. Great I dont know why I bought this anyway I dont play games much, but I did, still having issues with it, waiting for email back from EA support on a fix. I am sure it will not be till monday or later so I went googling for help and it landed me here, I kind off got of my track of actully fixing the problem though. and writing posts here, humm.

[MacFan26]

sim city 4, just got it , it black out on start up.
There was a thread about sim city 4 causing crashes if you haven't seen it yet. This might help: http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=84414

[gopher]

sim city 4, just got it , it black out on start up. I check on EA.com and aspyr.com and they had an update, for this issue. but then download was for windows. so I figured it was a screen res. issue so I lowered my res. but that didnt help. Great I dont know why I bought this anyway I dont play games much, but I did, still having issues with it, waiting for email back from EA support on a fix. I am sure it will not be till monday or later so I went googling for help and it landed me here, I kind off got of my track of actully fixing the problem though. and writing posts here, humm.
Simcity 4 takes a long time on a machine older than 800 Mhz to load. Sometimes it could be sitting on a blank screen for as much as a minute or two at a time switching resolutions. Make sure your machine meets not hte minimum specs, but the specs that are suggested.

As for force restarting your Mac. That is possibly going to yield to a directory failure. Check this FAQ on how to repair the directory:

http://www.macmaps.com/directoryfaq.html

[Fredstar]

Had to do my first manual restart today, had my imac since August. I logged onto my account as usual and my desktop showed and after a long 10 secs my dock appeared but nothing else, no desktop hd/files and no bar across the top.
I think it was a problem with the finder, i tried relaunching it but it didn't load completely and kept 'not responding' - reminds me of the window days. A manual restart sorted it all out but was pretty weird.

[puckhead193]

I never had to do a manual shut down/restart. I had to do a force quit a few times. :cool:

[devman]

never (in 11 months).

[iGary]

Every day for the last week when opening any type of video app on the net.

Waiting on a new stick of RAM from Crucial. :rolleyes:

[~Shard~]

Every day for the last week when opening any type of video app on the net.

Waiting on a new stick of RAM from Crucial. :rolleyes:

Yikes, that's unfortunate! Oh well, at least it's not Apple fault in giving you a bad or buggy machine itself...

[virividox]

the other day, sometimes i get apps that lock up a lot, but its mainly my fault cuz i keep runnig things taxing the proc

[iGary]

Yikes, that's unfortunate! Oh well, at least it's not Apple fault in giving you a bad or buggy machine itself...

No, not at all, this has been an excellent REV A machine IMHO.

I just had to up the RAM to a gig because I'm starting a project requiring a batch process of about 6,000 images :eek:

Ideally, I'd have a dual 2.5 PM for this, but alas, my business is not Fortune 500 yet. :p

Very interesting how the RAM stick (bad) caused only selective video apps to kernel panic the system.

Put the old stick back in, no problems. As usual Crucial is replacing it, no questions asked. :D

[~Shard~]

No, not at all, this has been an excellent REV A machine IMHO.

I just had to up the RAM to a gig because I'm starting a project requiring a batch process of about 6,000 images :eek:

Ideally, I'd have a dual 2.5 PM for this, but alas, my business is not Fortune 500 yet. :p

Very interesting how the RAM stick (bad) caused only selective video apps to kernel panic the system.

Put the old stick back in, no problems. As usual Crucial is replacing it, no questions asked. :D

Yah, that's a great thing about Crucial...

Funny how bad RAM can cause so many "interesting" apparently random problems!

[Mitthrawnuruodo]

I got a kernel panic once on my iBook, about a year ago, I had FileVault on and three or four weeks uptime (didn't even log off every once in a while) when it just, well, panicked... :eek:

After that I didn't keep it running for long streches... that is until recently when I turned off FileVault to save space (I don't really have anything that secret, either... :p). Now I keep it on most of the time, just put it to sleep when I go to sleep myself... ;)

[Eastend]

Last night I hooked a iPod shuffle to a G5 PowerMac, after updating my shuffle, I ejected it within the iTunes window. The eject button stuck on iTunes, but the shuffle did eject. When I looked back at iTunes the eject button was still stuck and I had a spinning beachball. So I hit Command, option and esc key to force quit iTunes, it did quit, but I still had a spinning beachball. So then I quit the Finder, big mistake, now I had a spinning beachball with no finder. In frustration I unplugged the whole thing, plugged it back in and rebooted, worked just fine. Strange?

Brian

[leekohler]

Never. Not one time. That's why I love these things! :)

[Eastend]

Never. Not one time. That's why I love these things! :)

Your not trying hard enough. Once when Final Cut Express first came out, we put it on a new Dual G4 at that time. We tried to crash it and it was pretty easy, do not remember exactly what we did, but iMovie did it easy.
Anyway we put the G4 into a kernel panic, we took screen shots with digital camera and saved all logs. Apple had the machine over 2 weeks, nothing wrong. (Excellent Service, no charge and no change) When it came back, my systems engeneer recreated it again, same problem. Conclusion was that it was a quark of our machine only, however I think Final Cut Express was just a tad buggy when it first came out. I think he simpy rendered one segment of a shot and then tried to do it again with the same rendered file. Sometimes things you would never really do in normal circumstances will make them crash, probably because nobody ever tested it doing silly or unusual things. Personally never had a kernel panic, but I have seen them on other machines. As to spinning beachballs that never seem to end no matter what you try, seen those a couple of times on a couple of my Macs. Even through those isolated problems, I still think this is the best platform bar none.

Brian

[willhclark]

Never

[~loserman~]

To numerous to count.

Things have gotten much better since 10.3.7 though. Now we only get about 1 crash ever couple weeks.

[Mitthrawnuruodo]

My iBook actually froze twice today... not a kernel panic, but I had to force it off by holding the power button down for 4 seconds... :(

The prime suspect was BitTorrent, as I was using that for the first time in ages (was downloading the Mercedes-Benz Mixed Tapes (http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=77633&highlight=mercedes) but then I downloaded Bits on Wheels (http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=110039&highlight=bits+wheels) and everything started acting normally again... :)

[Nermal]

Since the thread's been resurrected, I might as well post. A couple of months ago my Mac was crashing 2-3 times per week. I discovered that this was due to the RAM overheating. I fixed that, and it hasn't crashed since :)

[crispy]

My powermac G4/466 crashes fairly often. I think one of my hard drives is on the way out though. last night it crashed instead of going to sleep. Other times it goes to sleep and refuses to wake up! bit bizare

[wdlove]

My powermac G4/466 crashes fairly often. I think one of my hard drives is on the way out though. last night it crashed instead of going to sleep. Other times it goes to sleep and refuses to wake up! bit bizare

Have you tried running Tech Tools Pro or some other Mac utility? There might be a repairable software problem or it might indicate a hardware problem.

[Lacero]

Mine has never crashed. The only time was when I was running Azureus before the latest version. Bad RAM and naughty USB peripherals make up the bulk of OSX crashes.

[Chappers]

I just can't remember.

[g5_11]

My G5 does not always wake from a screensaver or sleep. The screensaver does not freeze but the mouse or keyboard will not stop it. Any suggestions?

[BenAKL]

I have never experienced a crashed. Only had to reboot after an upgrade. Applies to both iBook and eMac.

Going to upgrade to an iMac soon :D

[Mavimao]

I remember booting in OS9 back in January and it crashed on me after opening a program.

I had to restart OSX last week because RockNES kept skipping frames..and when you have an NES game skipping frames you know something's not right. But I don't think I've ever had to do it manually on my computer.

I LOVE YOU OSX! Here's to Tiger coming out tomorrow.

[Santaduck]

All the time with a bad CPU card on my G4.

But on my new iMac it's been fairly rare. One kernel panic, and one crash via Doom3 (vid_restart console command) that took down the OS and somehow corrupted my HD so I couldn't boot. Compared to my OS 9 days, I'm incredibly satisfied at OS X's unbelievable uptime.

However after a bad crash, rebuilding is a pain, esp. if you end up being forced to reinstall OS X using 'archive & install'... going through all of the prefs and receipts is a pain, and you never are sure you got them all, which means reinstalling all your apps.

[RacerX]

Well, about a year an a half ago I got a CD-RW expansion bay drive for my PowerBook. The first time I put it in while the system was running everything stopped responding and when I pulled it back out it kernel paniced on me.

I then realized that the system needed time (between 30 seconds to 5 minutes) to recognize the drive. Once recognized, I can pull the drive back out when ever I want. I've gotten used to this, I just grab a snack from the kitchen after putting the CD-RW drive back in and when I get back it is ready to work again.

That marks the only forced restart of my system since I installed Mac OS X v.10.2 on it three and a half years ago. But I don't think that tells just how great this PowerBook has been running. I responded to a question about Mac OS X stability in another forum last week where the person also asked about application stability too (which is also an important question).

Here are the main questions asked (in bold) and my responses from that post:

Is it necessary to reinstall your OS and applications once every year as with Windows?My primary system (my PowerBook) was restarted once in calendar year 2004. It is still running the original installation of 10.2 that I installed on it back on September 18, 2002.

Best uptime: 231 days. Current uptime: 62 days. (67 days as of this post)

Do you run into a lot of application conflicts with OSX?Applications conflicting with each other? No.

I tend to use Cocoa apps, and these tend to help each other more than anything. And even my Carbon apps behave nicely.

Here are the dates of the last crashes of my primary applications on my PowerBook (based on crash logs): Adobe Acrobat 5.0 -2003-10-03
Adobe GoLive 6.0 -2005-02-03
Adobe ImageReady 7.0 -never
Adobe LiveMotion 2.0 -2004-03-14
Adobe Photoshop 7.0 -2003-08-26
AppleWorks 6 -2003-03-06
BBEdit Lite -never
Create -2004-07-18
Curator -2003-05-15
MacJournal -never
Mail -2004-07-16
Nisus Thesaurus -never
OmniDictionary -never
OmniWeb -no log (earlier this week)
PhotoToWeb -never
PixelNhance -never
Preview -2005-02-26
PStill -2004-05-12
RBrowser -2005-03-18
Safari -2004-04-01 (I hardly use it)
Sound Studio -never
TextEdit -2004-08-16
TIFFany3 Professional -never
TimeEqualsMoney -2003-02-19
ToyViewer -2005-02-09
Watson -never
Hopefully that gives you some idea of what type of stability (both with the operating system and my applications) I've experienced.

[JzzTrump22]

A few weeks ago.

[wrldwzrd89]

I haven't had one of those crashes in about 420 days. My little iMac has been rock-solid ever since I took my Mac into my local Apple Store to reset the PMU. Corrupt PMU settings caused numerous random crashes and freezes when I bought it.

[dsharits]

Well, I'm looking at about three months ago on my B&W, but that was when I was still tweaking the processor speed and I got a kernal panic due to an unstable setting. On my iBook, never.

[kubark42]

I've had my PowerBook 5 days and it's already crashed twice. After reading the posts, I'm beginning to wonder if something's messed up. :confused:

[Langly]

Getting to about once a day in 10.3.8, usually waking from sleep. Strangely it doesn't happen when i've got my Speedtouch 330 USB unplugged... Am waiting for replies to angry letters written to Speedtouch and my ISP. :mad:

[Mechcozmo]

Once... after trying to open this disk image: Linkety (http://www.nd.edu/~jvanderk/sysone/sysone.img.sit.hqx)

Don't try it under OS X people. OS 9 or below. You have been warned.

Unless, of corse, you like reading 5 different languages on a greyish screen....

[fetec]

infrequently ( incidents occurring a few weeks to a month(s) apart), i'll try to shut down my mac whereupon a message will appear telling me that i need to reboot, that i should hold down the power button for five seconds. applecare advice was typically useless snakeoil charlatanry. I thought it might have been because of the latest update (10.3.8) since it has only occurred after my downloading it. I know software is most likely the cause, but what may be done to silence this problem. also has anyone else experienced this? feel free to email me (fortrampart@hotmail.com).
thank you in advance. :confused:

[azrussell132]

last week for the first time had to restart my powerbook. Oddly enough I was in a hotel hooked up the their FREE high speed internet. Other than that...NEVER.