[flabasha]

Okay, so I refrained from posting for the last month, but this is too much.

I bought a dual 2.0 PM two months ago, and have a 1ghz TiBook, both with Tiger on them. I live in California, and what with rolling blackouts, I discovered that Tiger (at least for me) will hang on a blue screen at startup after an unexpected power cut, (i.e. if it was not shut down "properly"). After numerous Diskwarriorings, etc. I just reinstalled both systems. Happened again, reinstalled again. Finally I figured out I had to safe boot to get Tiger to reboot after an unexpected shutdown.

Already, never had this problem with Panther (ah, dear, sweet Panther!). Anyway, I bit my tongue.

Yesterday, I installed Quicktime 7.02 and restarted. Blue screen again, but this time, before even a progress bar. Unplug all peripherals, no change. Safe boot, no luck. Single user fsck, no go. Diskwarrior, nothing. Just a Windoze blue screen laughing at me.

It is not a hardware issue (clearly, as it happens on two systems). It is software. And whether it's a conflict with some installed software (BTW, no haxies, no startup items), it's completely ridiculous. Tiger is easier to break than the wind.

I'm always skeptical of "I hate Tiger" threads, etc., but the OS has turned me into That Guy. And I can't help it. Of all the Mac OS'es I've used (granted, only back to OS 8), Tiger is far and away the buggiest. I've now used it for two months and reinstalled my system EIGHT times, just to get to a g-d- desktop. I used to tell my Windoze friends that Macs "just worked". Now I'm the jackass sitting in front of a 2,000 dollar cinder block with a blue screen. So it happens...

For this one, humble user, Tiger is a piece of, well, you know what.

[leperkuhn]

If you're having a problem with blackouts, you should really get a UPS. Pretty simple.

[Randman]

Could the rolling blackouts have messed up the pmu?

[flabasha]

Actually, I reset the PMU, but good idea. No, actually it happens on my powerbook too. It's older, and the battery's kind of shot, so when it runs out of juice, the whole thing shuts down (very little reserve battery power). It's happened twice, same blue screen startup disaster.

Over at Apple discussion boards, it seems there are tons of different ways people are finding their way into the Tiger Blue Screen of Death.

I'm thinking it'll just be easier to reinstall... Panther.

[angelmb]

Do you have SpeedTools installed?

[chris v]

I've sufferred two or three weather-related blackouts with Tiger on a dual 2.0 here, and have not had this problem. Seems odd.

[Eriamjh]

Seems Tiger does not like being powered off in mid-stream. Since most people do not have this problem because they do not have rolling black outs, a UPS seems like the best solution.

[Agent69]

If APC is to be believed, their UPSs not only provide power in the case of the loss of electricity, they also condition the power going to the computer. I don't really know if that is true but I have always used a UPS with my computers, just in case.

[sieb]

All UPS's do this really. I've never had this BS problem though.

Whats stopping you from reinstalling Panther?

[Kvasir]

Originally Posted by flabasha

(i.e. if it was not shut down "properly").

There's your problem right there. You may have gotten lucky while you were running Panther, but there isn't an OS or machine out there that can promise to boot normally after an abrupt system crash. And that's what it is when the power dies - the system cannot possible shutdown in any fashion, it just crashes. Sure, if everything is idle or in sleep mode, you'll likely re-boot just fine. But what if one of the daily/weekly/monthly scripts is running at the time and you get a hard disc head crash, or a corrupted directory? If the disc is spooled up at all, even if not reading/writing, you could have problems. And the system doesn't have a chance to flush caches, clear out tmp - all the things it normally does at shutdown to ensure the system is safe and sound.

Gotta' agree with folks here about the UPS - you absolutely need one, and it's your only solution. Putting Panther on there is no assurance that the same things won't happen again.

[SMacTech]

I suffered through 3 days of 3-4 kernel panics a day. This was on a my 4 yr old dual 867 that had previously KP'd twice in its life.

I never had the problem starting up that you describe, and never suffered any file corruption. While it isn't from a rolling blackout, the end result is the same, it has to be powered off.

The problem was a bad 256mb RAM chip.

[Barry]

<< reinstalled my system EIGHT times>>

AND I bet you have never done a backup/clone that you could restore from...your computer information couldn't be that important

get a good quality UPS (NOT A power strip) and an external drive to store backups on and you will sleep better at night

[budster101]

Why is this 'tiger's' fault again?

[osxisfun]

get a freakin UPS.

[zerostar]

I got an APC Back-UPS XS 800 for my G5 tower recently I think for abound $60 with rebates. On a machine that cost me almost $4000 I always have a UPS or shut it down when I am done with it.

[IamBob]

I've got the same machine on a surge protector and have had at least 3 outages without the problems you're describing. Luck? I don't know - I've got 3 Macs (not counting my iBook), none on UPS, all run Tiger and all boot/function normally afterwards.

I did have problems with my revA B&W but that's par for the course - the HD liked to slowly corrupt itself even when it was functioning normally. But I think an outage did screw my USB ports - plug-n-play became plug-n-reboot-or-the-new-device-won't-function. That was before I plugged it into the surge protector (just moved in, hadn't unpacked much but the comp.)...

Oh well, live and learn. Surge protector is a must, UPS is better - can't blame the machine (/OS) for the power failures. If it's still under warranty maybe you could send it in to get check out.

[flabasha]

Wow, thanks for all the suggestions, but apparently i was not clear. This is NOT a thread about power outages. If you note, the situation that finally caused me to post had nothing to do with a power outage. I simply installed Quicktime, and now, again, my machine won't boot.

This is about the millions of easy ways (for me, it's been two different ways) that Tiger can break, and in such a way that no repair program can fix, you just have to reinstall.

Over at Apple's discussion pages, there are Blue Screen experiences abound... for some, it's networking, others it's a corrupt .plist, some have common haxies that have never broken OS X before, but now do, and yes, others have lost power momentarily....etc., etc., ad nauseam.

The biggest problem is that the Blue Screen of Death is not fixable with permission repair, Disk Utility, Diskwarrior, fsck, etc. As many knowledgeable members over on those forums suggest... if you can't Safe Boot, you just have to reinstall. Which is sad.

Every operating system has it's bugs. I remember Jaguar's first inception gave me kernel panics. But all I had to do was restart. Unfortunately, Tiger's way of breaking is all too often to simply not boot... and force a system reinstall. When it breaks, it BREAKS. For me, that's just completely unacceptable.

My .02.

(BTW, I do not have Speed Tools. Will look into that, thanks!)

[budster101]

Funny. I've never had a KP or any problems up to Tiger. What software are you running? Any Haxxies?
3rd party stuff?

There are far more people having zero problems. They just don't post...

[flabasha]

No, no haxies or third party stuff. And my experience is meant to be taken as only that, my experience. But in searching around, I'm certainly not alone...

Just a few of the many, many threads I've consulted...

Topic: Blue Screen Startup
http://discussions.info.apple.com/[email protected]

Topic: Cannot log in-Only blue screen
http://discussions.info.apple.com/[email protected]

Topic: 10.4.2 Blue Screen, no boot, no safe boot
http://discussions.info.apple.com/[email protected]

And from our very own MacNN...

Possible solution for "new blue screen of death"
http://forums.macnn.com/showthread.p...ht=blue+screen


Again, nothing against those who have no problems with Tiger. Oh, how I wish I was among your blessed ranks. I'm just really, really not. Still, because I'm a latest-greatest-Mac whore, I'll keep trying to troubleshoot Tiger. (Don't worry, I won't post any more angry threads about it, I got that out of my system).

[budster101]

Glad you got it out, but that is what people do... only people with problems post was my point.
If those who have had no problems would post, I think yours would be lost...

I want you to have your problem fixed. So, keep in touch.

[Big Mac]

I've seen a lot of stupidity on the forums, but at least as far as computer subjects go this thread may be the very dumbest. Congratulations!

[IamBob]

Count me as one that hasn't had any problems with Tiger. It has been a joy. Spotlight is fast and finds what I'm looking for, Dashboard was easy enough to turn off, I haven't had any more KPs, blue-screens or excessive beachballs (even on my under-powered iBook), ect, etc.

As far as being the easiest OS to screw up, no, that was everything *before* OS X.

[leperkuhn]

Minimal problems. I was having some issues with safari crashing, but that's pretty much gone away. recently mail will hang after a few days.

For the most part, tiger is the greatest OS I've ever used. in the few instances where there isn't a GUI to do what I want, I've been able to do via the command line with unix tools.

I hated OS9, windows XP, and every variation thereof. OSX has been the only OS that I've really liked, and Tiger is the best version of it.

leperkuhn out.

[Laurence]

I know you said that you have the same issues on two systems and thus concluded that it can't be a hardware issue, but the second thing I would do in this situation is download memtest and boot to single user mode and leave it running overnight. (After getting the UPS) I work at a large company with about 100 G4s & G5s and I've seen employees power off machines by unplugging them on numerous occasions. (Of course I always berate them for this, but it does no good) The point is that I've never experienced the behavior you've experienced. I have had a few of them not boot from the internal HD and for some reason boot off the network netboot volume I have set up for imaging the machines, but I usually just reboot holding down option and choose the drive. It has never failed.

Out of around 150 Macs I would guess that 10 have failed. All but one failure was bad RAM. The last failure was one of our employees forcing something into a USB slot and shorting out the motherboard.

If its not bad RAM the next thing I would try is NOT RAIDing any drives. I have noticed some more errors when running fsck on mirrored RAIDs (I've never used striped RAID)

If that doesn't help then I would take the computer to the nearest Apple Store and demand a refund as your experience is NOT acceptable.

[flabasha]

Thanks for the memtest thought, yeah, I tried that, too. All hardware (on both systems) checks out great. It's definitely an OS thing. I'll try going through some of the more baroque solutions page for this problem posted on the Apple KnowledgeBase site, utilizing Console. For others that may search by "blue screen" in the future and get this thread, here's the page...

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.h...m=106464#symp1

Budster, you're probably right about the percentage of complaints. Still, in a couple of years when we all have the inevitable "Which OS was most/least reliable" poll, I think the early versions of Tiger may not fare well. But I could be totally wrong...


"I've seen a lot of stupidity on the forums, but at least as far as computer subjects go this thread may be the very dumbest. Congratulations"

YOU, sir, are the winner. Of all my years reading MacNN, this may be the most unmotivated, idiotic, and flat out incorrect response ever (outside of the PL). There's been a lot of helpful advice put forth, not just for me, but any others with this problem (see above). Thanks for all your responses, even the retarded ones.

[Big Mac]

You notice your computer is going down because of black outs - which is funny in and of itself since I haven't heard of or experienced more than one blackout in California this summer - yet you fail to take any proactive measure to prevent data loss. (Here's a clue, Watson, UPSes are very inexpensive.) Then you have the temerity to post an absolutely idiotic thread with an outlandishly juvenile subject line in which you blame the OS for not protecting you from your stupidity. You automatically presume that the issue you're experiencing is a problem for everyone else. You are indeed the poster boy for why computing remains an inappropriate endeavor for the grossly ignorant.

[porieux]

...

[flabasha]

You must be on glue. Okay, let me talk you down.

To repeat. The post is NOT about blackouts. It's not even about sudden power loss. I have NOT lost data. I HAVE the hard drive cloned anyway.

The original post IS about two completely distinct ways that Tiger has stopped booting. If you had clicked on any links (though you probably lack opposable thumbs to operate a mouse), you would see that others have such problems.

Restarting a computer after installing an update to Quicktime should not bring about a constant blue screen. Then again, you probably spend most of your time staring at a white wall, so this wouldn't occur to you as odd.

Please, find a bone to chew on and leave this thread alone.

[jay3ld]

i have only had one time were i had the blue screen hang on startup.
we blew a fuse and were down in the garage flipping them (couldnt find it oddly) and we hit the one for the computer room...
the computers turned off then auto booted and hung in startup forever. never moving. kinda like the beach ball but instead that spinning deal (what ever its called). scary thing..
i just held the power button and let it shutdown then started it back up and it was up.
this was in panther not tiger.

This isnt a System related thing i think. just like they have said that the computer hasnt prepared itself for the shutdown so the startup it is doing all it should of done during the shutdown...

Id suggest getting a backup system that will allow you to quickly save everything and shutdown instead of insatiately losing power.

[Barry]

can you boot from an external firewire drive??? or hooked up to another mac in target disk mode???

<< I live in California, and what with rolling blackouts, I discovered that Tiger (at least for me) will hang on a blue screen at startup after an unexpected power cut>>

This can sometimes do imperceptible damage to components

[Big Mac]

Originally Posted by flabasha

You must be on glue. Okay, let me talk you down.

You're backing off I see? You attacked me in your previous post. Since you're backtracking why not just admit you created an asinine thread?

To repeat. The post is NOT about blackouts. It's not even about sudden power loss. I have NOT lost data. I HAVE the hard drive cloned anyway.

Hmmm, that's very interesting assertion. It appears to me that you don't have your story straight. Why don't you take a look at your first post (with added emphasis):

I bought a dual 2.0 PM two months ago, and have a 1ghz TiBook, both with Tiger on them. I live in California, and what with rolling blackouts, I discovered that Tiger (at least for me) will hang on a blue screen at startup after an unexpected power cut, (i.e. if it was not shut down "properly"). After numerous Diskwarriorings, etc. I just reinstalled both systems. Happened again, reinstalled again. Finally I figured out I had to safe boot to get Tiger to reboot after an unexpected shutdown.

You claim your rant has little to do with blackouts, but you explicitly refer to rolling blackouts and unexpected power cuts in your original post. When you write the sentence fragment "happened again," the only thing to infer is that you had another power interruption that damaged OS components. Aside from the ambiguous side comment that you reinstalled multiple times just to get back to the desktop, that post contains nothing that suggests your problems were not the result of continual power failures. But you assume people will intuitively understand your barely coherent, ridiculous drivel. You're a moronic reject, and as the messenger I can only expect to be weakly assailed for telling you so.

The original post IS about two completely distinct ways that Tiger has stopped booting. If you had clicked on any links (though you probably lack opposable thumbs to operate a mouse), you would see that others have such problems.

Then you may want to attempt a middle school equivalency writing class, because the way you expressed yourself in that original post did not convey the sentiment you claim it did. The fault is entirely yours that multiple people made the same inferences concerning your irrational rant.

Restarting a computer after installing an update to Quicktime should not bring about a constant blue screen. Then again, you probably spend most of your time staring at a white wall, so this wouldn't occur to you as odd. Please, find a bone to chew on and leave this thread alone.

Restarting your computer should not cause it to fail, but for you it does. It does not happen to me. It does not happen to the Macs I administer. And if it were a significant issue it would have been reported by more than a few random individuals. The fact you lack the proficiency and sense to solve your own problem without squealing here like a stuck pig says volumes. Anyway, you have me in stitches, ROFLMAO. It truly is entertaining to me to get into pissing matches with the town dunce. Any other bright remarks, you mental midget?

[osxisfun]

Freaking cheese pizzas keep on showing up on my screen whenever I hit the "Force QUit" button!

[flabasha]

"It truly is entertaining to me to get into pissing matches". Troll alert. Let's move on...

Barry, yeah, I can get the PM booted into target disk mode from my powerbook. Again, hard drive shows up fine, all hardware diagnostics check out. Some users have reported that they let the system hang on the blue screen for an hour or more, and it finally advanced to a login window. The hard drive does sound like it's accessing, so I'll give that a shot...

[Brass]

Originally Posted by flabasha

It's definitely an OS thing.

Wrong. I understand you are frustrated because something is clearly very wrong. However it is clearly NOT just an OS problem.

If it was simply an OS problem it would be happening to everybody with the same model Macs that you are using. But that is clearly not happening, so it is clearly not simply and OS problem.

It may be a combination of the OS and something else (RAM, software, USB device, etc), but it not the OS alone.

How can you be sure it is not bad RAM? Just because it happens on 2 machines, doesn't make it impossible. You should not rule out any options.

As somebody else posted, the machines are clearly faulty, so take them back to the shop. If the shop can make them run nicely, then your problems are over, if they cannot, then ask for your money back.

It's really not that hard.

[flabasha]

"Clearly an OS thing" meaning, the OS is failing to boot either because of damaged system files, or because of a bad interaction with whatever software is installed.

As for bad RAM, I would assume running memtest three times (as commonly suggested) would turn such a thing up, but I suppose it's possible that it won't. Would seem to be a pretty huge coincidence to happen to both machines at the same time, but who knows.

What I'm thinking most likely explains the similar behavior on both systems is that I (possibly unwisely) used Migration Assistant to get files from my Powerbook to the Dual. I know some people think using Migration Assistant is just asking for problems, and it may have burned me. But we shall see...

[Randman]

The fact that you have the same problems on two machines and that the specific problem seems isolated leads one to think that the problem is with something you did during the original installation and then the problem was duplicated during the cloning.

Perhaps you should try again. Do a clean install on one machine and see if the problem persists. If it doesn't, you can do the second Mac.

If it does, you can rule out the OS being a problem and explore mechanical reasons for your problems.

[Barry]

Try running Aple Hardware Test (on a CD that came with the computer) in loop mode overnight...

if that comes out OK, Since you have backups, i would erase and wipe the HD clean and start afresh, apply the 10.4.2 combo updater from apple, and then dowload the individual updates (not from software update, but use it as a guide for what you can download from apple) and apply them one at a time. If this al all OK, THEN one at a time, install the non apple apps. if all of these work OK, THEN I would copy your data.

[pliny]

i wonder ifthis is a 10.4.2 issue.

I just got a Mini and lo and behold after only a few hours (after a forced shutdown) it hanged at the blue screen before login. Only fix was to reinstall.

So no--this is not a dumb thread by any means.

Never had a blue screen hang on OS X until 10.4.2.

Was having lockup problems with 10.4.2 on another machine as well. Seems pretty unstable update IME.

[koma604]

I had this problem with an iBook G4 loaded with 10.4.2 and little else. Consistently, after the machine is cold-shutdown, it would do the blue screen with the cursor after boot. I looked in the console system log and noticed a funny entry about re-authenticating the auto-login (sorry, don't have it to paste in atm), so I changed the login options from auto-login to give me a login prompt. After a cold-reboot, no expected blue screen, just a login prompt. So I set it back to auto-login, reentered the user password, cold-reboot, no blue screen. The problem seems to be solved.

So, I would check to see if these machines in question are using auto login, and if so I would try what I have done.

[leperkuhn]

My standard procedure is to always reinstall the OS as soon as I get the computer. I've never had any luck with a system out of the box, which is a shame, because most people would be really irritated.

[- - e r i k - -]

I had this problem the other day as well (my older battery died without warning) and got a KP at reboot. I shut it off and it booted just fine 10 seconds afterwards. Minor annoyance, but I was more annoyed with the crap battery than anything else. *shrug*

[SMacTech]

Originally Posted by flabasha

As for bad RAM, I would assume running memtest three times (as commonly suggested) would turn such a thing up, but I suppose it's possible that it won't.

The continued KPs that I had with the bad RAM I replaced, passed memtest twice. My PM wouldn't stay up for more than 3hrs and since replacing the RAM, it has been up for 14 days.