Sometimes I Hate....

[pyrate83]

Sometimes computers just suck!!! Actually, I sometimes hate Microsoft. I was burning onto a DVD+RW backing up my files as I usually do when my computer just crashed and restarted on it's own. First time I have had this happen. They had a link so I could get the patch to correct it but I still hate them! Right before the crash I was playing Vice City and the game froze...actually the computer froze completely and I had to shut it down manually. Everything seems fine now but does anybody have suggestions as to why Vice City would have stopped responding after I played it for almost 2 hours without any problems????

Share your opinions about Microsoft and system crashes too...it would be interesting to hear it.

[tgpo]

Share your opinions about Microsoft and system crashes too...it would be interesting to hear it.

Ditch the PC and get a mac. I've never had my system crash in the 3 years I've had my Mac.

I bet none of ya'll saw that coming, right??

[galactica]

I agree!

Ive had my Mac since Sepetember of 2002. I turned it on the day I got it and never once have I had it crash! I have only had to "restart" because of installations. I never shut it down, it stays on all the time and have yet to have any problem with it.

I love my computer, (apparently a little too much - so my wife says )


oh Microsoft -- hate them. Try to make it so i dont have a single software from them on my mac (yet I find it next to impossible to toss Office.) sadly

[SLK001]

I love my "mac" too - it really keeps my boat from moving down stream in heavy currents!

I wouldn't blame MS for your problem, but probably your Vice City. It probably tried to execute an illegal operation that the OS couldn't handle - and, you were burning at the same time. Burning software will sometimes set itself as highest priority, and the game will try this too. The results is a battle of mis-behaving programs, then the ol' Blue Screen of Death.

As for Macs never crashing, it's because there are only about 20 programs that will run on them. Compare that to the 10,000+ that will run on the PC.

Yep... I love my mac!

[SLK001]

Oops, sorry... Did I start a "flame war"?

[Solarjetman]

ACK!!! Mac lovers all around me. Please be a dream, please be a dream...

In all seriousness, a spontaneous reboot is more likly a hardware overheating issue, or a lack of available power from the power supply. Windows will give error messages before rebooting.

And the GTA:Vice city may be your video card. I had problems with it and it was the video card, not Windows.

[rvl123]

Share your opinions about Microsoft and system crashes too...it would be interesting to hear it.

Ditch the PC and get a mac. I've never had my system crash in the 3 years I've had my Mac.

I bet none of ya'll saw that coming, right??

It's funny, my G4 450 MHZ is always freezing. Is it cuz I have OS 9?

[cplevel42]

Macs are great but.................

limited software
cost too much
they look gay.....JOKE. OK, they look pretty cool, but still a bit too styled out for my taste.

[pyrate83]

Well to clarify for SLK...what I meant was that Vice City stopped first and after I shut down and rebooted manually I decided to take a break from the game and burn some files to DVD. It was then the spontaneous crash occurred...it was also the only thing I was doing on the computer. I would have to agree that it was my graphics card's fault for the game stopping but what caused the other crash was apparently the CD Burning Engine I was using(according to Microsoft). They gave me a link to the fix and we'll see if anything else happens in the future.

I had a Mac once...long time ago but even then I have to say it did me well!!!

[housepig]

Ditch the PC and get a mac. I've never had my system crash in the 3 years I've had my Mac.

my question to Mac users - do you have a different meaning to "crash" than pc users do?

I had to learn to work on Macs for the graphic design elements of my job, and boy, was I surprised when I sat down at the G-4 and the machine froze on me. And then froze again... and again... and again. Total lockups, requiring a hard reboot.

My crime? I started Pagemaker, and tried to open a document.

After 7 reboots in 1 hour, I took the disc, took it to the pc across the room, copied the file, renamed it with a Pagemaker extension, and opened it on that machine. No problems.

Then I found that it wasn't just Pagemaker, and it wasn't just the G4, the G3 we had on the other desk was just as prone to freezing up at random. I learned to save early, and often.

So I ask.. is that technically not a "crash", since the computer is still on... it's just frozen stiff?

[galactica]

It's funny, my G4 450 MHZ is always freezing. Is it cuz I have OS 9?

Yep. use to have a G4 450 with 9 on it. froze left and right.
tossed it (well sold it) and got my current dual 1.25 with 10.2.6. not a problem to date

[galactica]

my question to Mac users - do you have a different meaning to "crash" than pc users do?

I had to learn to work on Macs for the graphic design elements of my job, and boy, was I surprised when I sat down at the G-4 and the machine froze on me. And then froze again... and again... and again. Total lockups, requiring a hard reboot.

My crime? I started Pagemaker, and tried to open a document.

After 7 reboots in 1 hour, I took the disc, took it to the pc across the room, copied the file, renamed it with a Pagemaker extension, and opened it on that machine. No problems.

Then I found that it wasn't just Pagemaker, and it wasn't just the G4, the G3 we had on the other desk was just as prone to freezing up at random. I learned to save early, and often.

So I ask.. is that technically not a "crash", since the computer is still on... it's just frozen stiff?

Per your experience I cant say much other than its probably running OS9. That system literally BLOWS! It wasnt until OSX came out that I didnt have a mac that froze up all the time (ever try force quitting an app in os9, forget it! might as well restart)

So to say that it froze a lot with that program if its in OS9 is not such an issue. The only way to get around that would be to totally "clean" the hd and ensure there are no major fragments or other fork damages.

Per the "crash" Id call it a crash anytime you have to totally restart (either by powering down and powering back up again) or if you have to restart because of a mouse freeze.

ive never had to do this with my new one. Sometimes an app will quit unexpectdly but it never "crashes" the machine

To compare, i have a dell gx240 at work that I use. Its a dialy occurance to get Outlook, Netscape, IE, Photoshop etc to just totally up and die with the "blue screen of death" where you push a key and you hear a small TICK and even contol - alt - delete makes teh Ticking noise.

all in all im totally satisfied with my computer, but im not one to say GET A MAC!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! or be one of those who never uses a PC. I actually have a custom built pc at home I use quite often.

[tgpo]

Actually OS 9 only crashed once or twice for me.

Okay, With my Cube I've never had it "Crash" or "Freeze" or "Reboot by itself" or "Not Respond" or "Blue Screen". THe Mac platform has over 5000 programs for it last I saw, but if I remember WWDC correctly isn't more around 8000 now??

Anyway I got my Apple as a graduation present and I'll never buy another PC ever again.

[housepig]

different strokes for different folks... I don't hate Macs, but there are two things I dislike about them:

#1 - during the time I was having all the problems on the work machines, the Mac "Switch" ads were in heavy rotation... Jamie Porche saving Christmas, Q-Bert getting interplanetary, etc... and they all kept saying "my Mac, it doesn't freeze or crash!" And I'd just scream "bullshit!" at the TV and give myself an apoplexy....

#2 - and thankfully I haven't seen this on this board - the people who, with a fundamentalist fervor, insist that you can only do serious graphic, audio or video work on a Mac. I'm sorry, the playing field is a lot more level than it was in 1992. Just because the guy who taught you on a Mac learned on a Mac from someone who learned on a Mac back in the days when only a Mac could do that stuff, does not mean that Wintel and Linux boxes haven't taken drastic leaps forward, and can now run the same apps and do the same stuff.

And again, I haven't caught that attitude from anyone on this board, and it's refreshing as hell... I tend to catch that on music boards much more often, and with graphics people I just have to agree to disagree... although it was nice to have them bring me client discs to open and work with stuff on the PC while their G-4 was rebooting...

(and yeah, I think it was OS-9... I don't know if we don't have the dough to upgrade or if it was a case of legacy applications that wouldn't work under OS-X... or it might just be the fact that our IT guy doesn't know his ass from a hole in the ground, and he's too busy pulling down Christian rock from KaZaa and watching LOTR on his desktop to do any work... oh, did I say that out loud??)

[Will Hay]

Computer restarting for no reason

Might help.
Will

[bugster]

Okay, With my Cube

So you were the person who bought the Apple Cube, I knew there had to be at least one!

[tgpo]

So you were the person who bought the Apple Cube, I knew there had to be at least one!

Heck yeah man. I got mine 3 months before they were disconntinued.

[tenders]

when i forget to uncheck the box that crops the subtitles out in TMPG ...and i encode the next that dosen't have any subs

[The village idiot]

... insist that you can only do serious graphic, audio or video work on a Mac.

Some would say that you can only do serious graphics work on an SGI box.

Of course they would be wrong. The adoption of Linux has made some limited software into something scalable and great. Case in point, Maya animation software. Now on Linux on x86 boxes and running as PVM (parallel virtual machine). Need more power... load up a few more machines. And a lot cheaper than the SGI way to boot.

[Faustus]

I do mac support (not for apple) and I can toss in my 2 cents about macs crashing.

OS9 and OS8 for that matter both SUCK, they always did, it was just one of those "well at least its not windows" things. Apple was way behind on a next gen os and they knew it. The Extention system that OS9 used was WAY out of date, and streched to its limit. I mean just look at the number of them on the system OUT OF THE BOX. Its no wonder we got and still get so many OS9 callers with crashes, guess what? If you spend the time to track the problem down its I'd say about 95% of the time an extentions problem caused by something a piece of crapy software/driver installed on the box. Also because the systems were so alike in looks you had people using software designed for OS8 or worse OS7.x with OS9 and none the wiser that perhaps there might be a problem using these extentions that are so old its not even funny on their system.

Anyway that usually why macs crash.. then I pick up the phone and get to hear some old lady scream. "MY MAC LOCKED, MAC DONT LOCK I WANT A NEW ONE NOW."

Thankfully by the time 10.1 came out, then 10.2 after it everything is nice and groovy, now if work would just upgrade my iMac DV 500 to something with some juice everything would be grand.

I use both PCs and Mac, and though I would take a Mac anyway in a perfect world the price of them is just to high, so I use PCs usually more then macs. That however doesn't stop me from loving the machines. The first good OS Microsoft ever made was Windows 2000, and Windows XP is slowly shaping up also, but I still hate them both at times. If you've not screamed out a curse to Microsoft at least once its not likely you've been using computers very long.

[hoyboy]

Yeah, the people screaming in your ear scenario. This is the time where you really need those customer service skills that you have built up over time- and not just to tell them to "get F****d".

[galactica]

I do mac support (not for apple) and I can toss in my 2 cents about macs crashing.

The Extention system that OS9 used was WAY out of date, and streched to its limit. I'd say about 95% of the time an extentions problem caused by something a piece of crapy software/driver installed on the box.
.

Id have to agree on this, which is most likely the reason they tossed the "extensions" format and went with the OSX structure.

Back when I ran OS8-9 extensions were always the cause of the problem. Why do you think the Conflict Catcher had so many versions! (was it 9 or 10?!?)

[The village idiot]

and went with the OSX structure.

You mean BSD, with the Aqua windowing system (now also X windowing system). They took a mature OS and added some custom bits to spice it up. And then added back to the BSD community with things like firewire drivers, and better USB support.