I think my Mac just crashed...

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I was attempting to compress a project through Final Cut Pro. It stopped at 79% and I stopped it and re-tried to compress again. Same result only this time it wouldn't shut down.

This happened once before and what I did to reboot it was to remove the battery and replace the battery, which is what I did this time.

I turned back on the computer and the "apple" and the circular 'wait' comes back up, (not the rainbow one)
However, after the 'apple' goes away, I am not given my prompt for my password.

I would really like to take my computer with me to Chicago this weekend.

Anyone know or has anyone seen this problem? I am a PC person more than a MAC person, so I don't have any idea and I have some important stuff on here. The computer isn't a year old....

It is a Powerbook G4.... HELP!:huh: :no:

--spinner :cool:
 
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In order to shut down the computer when it "freezes up" hold down the power key for 5-10 seconds...it should power down for you...pulling out the battery is mean to your system.

How much free space do you have on your hard drive?
 
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before you get to that point though...if you are at the point where an app is locked and the computer won't let you do stuff, you can hit command (apple), option and escape to bring up the equivalent of the task manager. This will allow you to force quit applications that are not responding. If you still have my # spinner, give a call later tonight and I'll talk you through troubleshooting to get it up and running. If you don't still have my #, PM me and I'll cough it up again.
 
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Boot from your Mac OS CD by holding down the "C" key while your PowerBook starts up. Then open disk utility. There, select your PowerBook's HD and Repair Disk Permissions and Repair the disk. That should fix the missing password promt and other OS mishaps.

As for the export, make sure you have enough free hard drive space. You may also want to go into the energy settings under System Preferences and temporarily turn off all energy saving settings.
 
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DirectorX said:
Boot from your Mac OS CD by holding down the "C" key while your PowerBook starts up. Then open disk utility. There, select your PowerBook's HD and Repair Disk Permissions and Repair the disk. That should fix the missing password promt and other OS mishaps.

As for the export, make sure you have enough free hard drive space. You may also want to go into the energy settings under System Preferences and temporarily turn off all energy saving settings.
Click to expand...

...I have alot of space... I'll attempt to re-start it.....

--spinner :cool:

....not working.....uh, wait....do I have to re-install everything??? At work: Me CDs: Home....
 
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Let's try to avoid the hard restarts as much as possible, I have some specific things for you to try...I left you a voice mail. The mroe you hard restart a computer, the more chance of damaging the directory structure.
 
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On a normal restart, the system writes a file that lets the computer know when it restarts that it had done so cleanly. When we force the restart, the file is not written...on boot, the OS comes up, looks for the file and upon not finding it, forces fsck (FileSystemChecK - like disk first aid) to run and repair any damage done to the hard drive by rebooting forcefully. Waiting on that screen is generally waiting for FSCK to finish its run. When you restart while it's trying to do that, you can POTENTIALLY damage the directory on the disk making it harder to fix later.

To verify taht this is where it's stalling and dying, if you restart with the command (apple) - v, you will be able to see what is actually happening behind the grey screen. It's very ugly and unixy, but you'll be able to see it asking about directory stuff and b-tree leaves and that sort of thing. Or if not, it'll let you see where it's stuck. The last message will be the last thing it's seeing before it dies. Then we can step forward from there.
 
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If my Mac (or PC for that matter) ever start acting up and not working like I think they're suppose to I generally shut down the system and let it sit for 15 minutes. This seems to fix most problems for me.
 
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knightly said:
To verify taht this is where it's stalling and dying, if you restart with the command (apple) - v, you will be able to see what is actually happening behind the grey screen. It's very ugly and unixy, but you'll be able to see it asking about directory stuff and b-tree leaves and that sort of thing. Or if not, it'll let you see where it's stuck. The last message will be the last thing it's seeing before it dies. Then we can step forward from there.
Click to expand...

...must be nice to speak computer-ese...

well, I saw all the unix-ey stuff and it went by so fast that I couldn't really read it. What should I be looking for? Is there a way to get the unix page to stay up longer so I can read it? ...this sucks...:grumpy:

--spinner :cool:
 
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if it gets all the way through that, try booting with the shift key down...this will bypass all the extra stuff the system is trying to load. More than likely, it's just a corrupt preference file (common). If it gets through that, let me know and we'll move on to the next step.
 
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knightly said:
if it gets all the way through that, try booting with the shift key down...this will bypass all the extra stuff the system is trying to load. More than likely, it's just a corrupt preference file (common). If it gets through that, let me know and we'll move on to the next step.
Click to expand...

...should I do this in addition to the 'command v' or instead of? I am trying to avoid shutting it down so much...

--spinner :cool:
 
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log in...give a call to me on my cell if you like, I'll talk you through deleting your finder preferences (/Users/<username>/Library/Preferences/Finder.plist). I would move it out to your desktop first, so you're not actually deleting it for now. Restart after doing that and the file will recreate itself afresh!
 
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