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Sosa · Dec 6, 2003, 03:30 PM

I didn't think it was possible for but 1.5 months into using Panther my computer froze and I had to do a crtl-cmmd-power restart. Here is how it happened:

I had opened Disk Utility to make a blank CD image. I inserted a blank CD, gave it a name, and made an .img file which was placed on the blank CD, the disk image of which appeared in my desktop. At this point I then had two disk images on my desktop with the same name.

I then attempted to Eject the blank CD and it worked, although I received a message stating the CD could not be ejected because it was in use (due ti the .img file). On my desktop at this point were the two disk images still.

I then reinserted the blank CD, so I had three disk images on my desktop. I attempted to eject the disk image that I had created, it worked. I then attempted to eject the disk image of the blank CD I had ejected but which still appeared. At this point the spinning beach ball effect began.

I opened iTunes to start buning some music into my blank CD. iTunes opened and froze. None of the applications would respond at this point except for the Dock.

After waiting a few minutes, I attempted to force quit Finder from the Dock (as option-cmmd-esc was not responding, and neither was activity monitor). When I selected force restart, even the Dock froze!

After waiting a few more minutes, I forced quit the system manually.

So, is complete system freeze in Panther rare? Should I have waited longer or done something differently?

hadocon · Dec 6, 2003, 03:43 PM

Sh!t happens. Don't worry about it.

kovacs · Dec 6, 2003, 04:03 PM

I had to force restart a couple of times this week, usually my dock freeze first followed by the finder, I can't restart the dock because I can't open the terminal or activity monitor, I don't know if they start or not but I do know that I never see a window. The finder has serious problems data DVD's, opening a folder on a dvd with a large number of files causes the finder to freeze ( beachball ). General stability is still pretty good though, I'm sure that my system will feel much more stable when all these annoying bugs are fixed....

chris v · Dec 6, 2003, 04:16 PM

10.3 is definitely less table on all 4 machines I have it installed on compared to 10.2.8, which was utterly rock solid. I got 59 uptime days out of my Dual Gig on it's last start-up under 10.2.8. I have yet to go a week under 10.3.

My cube lost all USB earlier today. The mouse and keyboard went dead, and the light on the mouse went out. Had to hold the power button down to force-restart. Classic is variable from one day to the next, and I have a lot more app crashes and spinning beachballs, especially in the finder with network disks, or my iPod attached.

I ran DiskWarrior on all my machines immediately before installing, and did an archive and install.

Looks like 10.3.2 might have quite a few fixes in it-- hopefully stability will get back to where it was pretty quickly-- I'm beginning to get annoyed.

CV

cpac · Dec 6, 2003, 05:42 PM

just for contrast, I have had no hard freezes or kernal panics on my TiBook 500 since I installed (the day it came out)

restarts so far only for security updates and the like...

spiky_dog · Dec 6, 2003, 06:30 PM

i, too, have found panther to be less stable than 10.2.8. no system crashes yet, but mail.app and safari are both notoriously buggy imo, and networking support positively sucks (for instance, saving an exported gallery from iphoto to an appleshare volume crashes the app every time if you select a directory that exists previously and select to overwrite it...).

SSharon · Dec 6, 2003, 07:14 PM

my MDD is much more stable than last year (when I averaged 30 day uptimes) but yesterday I had to force reboot after an odd problem.

I was copying a CD (data) from my roommate and it was going painfully slow so I would stop it and try again, then I tried it in the superdrive and it opened toast after telling me OS X couldn't read the CD. note the cdrw could read it just really slowly. after ejecting it and trying the cdrw again it would start reading from the disk (green light was on) and not stop but also not make any progress in copying it. Quicktime locked up, then toast, then finder. The first time I managed to relaunch finder after that everything was dead. But, I switched users and then got myself stuck there as the dock showed up and responded but no icons or menu bar.

Sage · Dec 6, 2003, 07:23 PM

The OS itself has been much more stable for me with Panther (haven't had a kernel panic yet; had several in Jaguar), but I've had more application crashes for whatever reason.

Detrius · Dec 6, 2003, 08:03 PM

Hard freezes in OS X always turn out to be hardware related. However, as Panther only supports machines that came with USB, you are likely running with a USB keyboard. The fact that ctrl-command-power actually worked implies that the OS was still running underneath. USB does not have hardware reset, like ADB did. The core of the OS received the key combination and gave a reboot command. If the system had actually crashed, ctrl-command-power would not have worked. Therefore, I wouldn't worry much about it.