*eep*

[ksmith]

Came home at lunch to find the iMac racing and the display showing a grey Screen of Death along with some stuff about kernals and failures and such--yes I should have written stuff down, but I sent the error to Apple and maybe the text is still in the system somewhere--and the multi-language order to reboot. Tried rebooting once, and got the same grey screen and order to reboot. Called Apple tech support as I tried rebooting again. This time, the iMac came back, with a message that there was an OS failure. This is the 5 4 year old iMac, so maybe something is ready to go. Tech advised running a hardware test, but only after I backed up. I will do that tonight.

Not the sort of thing one likes to come home to. I do have the new MacBook as back-up, but the back-up to that is the old G4 iBook with the slowly fading m-board. So, of three systems, one is reliable at present. It may be worth replacing the m-board on the iBook just to have a reliable back-up.

Comments

[galeni.livejournal.com]

You probably already did this, but have you done a full cold boot after having unplugged the machine for ten minutes? Battery out if it's a laptop.

Somehow that seems to help it restore itself, I've found.

Fingers crossed!

[kristine-smith.livejournal.com]

No, I just did a warm boot. Before I do the hardware test--and after I do the back-up--I will do a cold boot. Although it does seem to be behaving. She said. Fingers crossed.

It was weird--one of the lines on the grey screen of death read something like ' we are not panicked', or something. At first I thought it was a virus, but I use Intego and I would think of there was a Mac virus out in the wild--yes, I know about the poker game--we'd have heard about it.