What do I do when I get the beach ball icon on everything?

[DELTAsnake]

Last night Firefox crashed and I got the beach ball icon. Soon every program had the beach ball icon when I moved the mouse over them. I tried to force quit them but the force quit window didn't even come up.

I ended up just holding in the power button and turning it off. What should I do in this situation in the future. I'm guessing that just like with a PC you really shouldn't turn it off from the power button.

 

[r.j.s]

You could try to wait it out, or you can do what you did.

I wouldn't worry about it unless it starts happening a lot.

 

[Fishtalk]

Crashing OFF dosen't do much harm.... ihope ????

Boot it up then "Repair the Authorizations" using you're disc ultitys, then RE BOOT that should fix your beach ball problem

 

[Cave Man]

These kernel panics are generally because of hardware issues. However, booting from your Installer DVD and doing a disk repair is a good idea. Failing that, start with the usual suspect (RAM).