What's happened? Should I be worried?

[wattso]

I was surfing on e-Bay with no problems when the mouse pointer turned into a colour spinning disc and I couldn't do anything! In the end (after about 5 minutes) I resorted to switching machine off by holding power button down. Anyone able to shed some light on this for me? I have a 20" imac with c2d and 2 GB RAM machine is only weeks old and I am a recent convert! Many thanks... Wattso

 

[WildCowboy]

Something caused your system to hang. Are you sure it was your whole system and not just your browser? When something like that happens, the first step is to hit Command-Option-Esc to try to bring up the Force Quit window and quit the browser. That shouldn't happen often, but it does happen occasionally. But if the Force Quit window doesn't come up, it's likely that your system has completely hung, which really shouldn't happen. In reality, it does happen, and sometimes all you can do is hit the power button and reboot. If it happens often, it's a problem, but if very rarely isn't a huge deal.

 

[wattso]

Thanks Cowboy ... It was definately the whole system that froze, couln't get to dock or anything else. have read about force quitting BUT (call me stupid) I can't for the life of me find an "OPTION" key on the keyboard????? Using standard Apple keyboard that came with the package.

 

[NJuul]

option = alt

 

[wattso]

Ahh ........did try using command option escape but it didn't bring the force quit menu up. Anyway everything seem OK now after a restart.