Mac got very sick for a day and then got better

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Prime Mover
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Mac got very sick for a day and then got better

Post by Prime Mover »

I had a very scary thing happen the other day. Suddenly, my MacBook began acting extremely strangely. It would beachball on about every click. Every Finder action or menubar operation would literally stall the computer for about 30 seconds a stretch. Then I tried restarting and it just would sit at the gray screen for about 20 minutes. I booted to an OS DVD, and ran disk utility... everything checked out, drive was okay, permissions were largely intact, no problems accessing the drive. I opened the computer and reseated the cables. Flashed PRAM, booted into Safe mode which trashes a bunch of temp and cache files. Little by little, the computer started coming to life. When I restarted to normal mode it took a while but got there, then it worked okay. Putting to sleep was deadly though, after waking up it would go back to being a beachball paradise for a while, but then eventually, all that went away and it's been chugging along ever since.

No idea what caused it or what action actually fixed it. Scary thing is, I haven't done anything between the last time it acted strangely and finally got better. I guess I assume that it was maybe rebuilding some library behind the scenes (not spotlight, I checked) and eventually finished. No sign of drive access failure, no sign of a virus, no corrupted documents.

The next day I worked on it for about 8 hours straight with no problems, did some heavy lifting too, so I know it's okay.

One of the things that's scary (and sort of comforting) about modern computers is that they're so ungodly complicated that they actually expect to have some faults and errors and know how to deal with them. A while back I was having some problems after migrating to a new drive (computer didn't like it at first and was freaking out), and I looked at the console to see what was going on. I realized that there were lots of little errors all over the place and the computer just kept on going. Little permissions errors, system files being slightly corrupted (as they always get), but it understood that these were inconsequential and just ignored them. This would have been unheard of 15 years ago. I remember when the slightest problem would completely bring down the entire OS. Program had trouble reading a font file? Infinite stall. Modern computers don't work that way anymore; each thread knows when it's taking too long or having trouble with a minor unnecessary operation (checking to see all print drivers are functioning even when you're not printing).
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mikehalloran
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Re: Mac got very sick for a day and then got better

Post by mikehalloran »

About two years ago, I installed something innocuous that hosed my system without crashing. I opened up Console to see that it was a Finale 2006 Help file gumming up the works. What the...? Since I was using Finale 2011 at the time, I trashed all the old versions, did a Safe Boot cleanout and everything was great.

Console is often your friend when these things happen.
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David Polich
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Re: Mac got very sick for a day and then got better

Post by David Polich »

I am convinced that computers have "bad days" just like people. In fact last week I had
a whole day of DP continually locking up (on my Mac Pro). Did the same ol' same ol' - trashed
prefs, repaired permissions, etc. The next day, same project, smooth sailing.

An errant bit of code, a plug-in that "decided" to go south for the day...a driver that
wanted to take the day off...who knows.
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bayswater
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Re: Mac got very sick for a day and then got better

Post by bayswater »

I've had a few incidents like this recently. FWIW, NASA shows we're at a peak for sunspots.
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philbrown
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Re: Mac got very sick for a day and then got better

Post by philbrown »

Ditto to the above experiences.
Also - how about that certain someone, who whenever they come to the studio seems to cause any number of unexplainable computer wierdnesses by their mere presence.
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Shooshie
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Re: Mac got very sick for a day and then got better

Post by Shooshie »

philbrown wrote:Ditto to the above experiences.
Also - how about that certain someone, who whenever they come to the studio seems to cause any number of unexplainable computer wierdnesses by their mere presence.
It always happened to my clients after I left. I'd fly home and get a call from 1500 miles away. Over the next 2 hours I'd walk them through all the steps, and they'd swear it still didn't work.

I'd fly back out. Fire up the computer. Do the "thing" that it wouldn't do. "There. What was so hard about that?"

They'd swear they did it just that way, but it didn't work. And you know what? I just simply didn't believe them. And still don't. I think they just wanted to pay me more money. :lol:

Shoosh
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philbrown
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Re: Mac got very sick for a day and then got better

Post by philbrown »

Shooshie wrote:
philbrown wrote:Ditto to the above experiences.
Also - how about that certain someone, who whenever they come to the studio seems to cause any number of unexplainable computer wierdnesses by their mere presence.
It always happened to my clients after I left. I'd fly home and get a call from 1500 miles away. Over the next 2 hours I'd walk them through all the steps, and they'd swear it still didn't work.

I'd fly back out. Fire up the computer. Do the "thing" that it wouldn't do. "There. What was so hard about that?"

They'd swear they did it just that way, but it didn't work. And you know what? I just simply didn't believe them. And still don't. I think they just wanted to pay me more money. :lol:

Shoosh
Actually I'm the guy on the other end of that story when it comes to cars, the cable company, the telephone company... :oops:
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