Try running Safari, not Firefox.

Rainbow wheel?  What happened to the bomb?

(my son naively set his iTouch to display the bomb - my husband and I both reset the damn thing before we realized that it had not crashed - this was just a screensaver toy!)

Well, that’s because firefox only saves its tabs when you close it, so that’s probably the last time you closed it…

...Now, a spinning ball of death like that (is it a Pro?  ‘cause an aluminum macbook would be brand new) is usually a sign of heat damage to the mainboard.  Time to clone your drive and take it into the geniuses and see if they can fix it, it won’t get better.

Ways to avoid this are some basic software like Drive Genius or something to run the fans more often.

Dude, it hasn’t been a bomb in like, fifteen years.

For Firefox, you have a “profile folder” somewhere that stores your settings. OSX being based on BSD, it is probably a hidden folder in your home folder. For example on Windows it’s “C:\Documents and Settings\[user]\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\[random].default” and it contains folders like “extensions” and “chrome” and files like “prefs.js” and “sessionstore.js”. If you make a copy of this folder somewhere else (like your desktop), then delete the original, then run Firefox again, that particular problem should be fixed. Someone else can tell you how to restore your bookmarks from the backup copy, I hope.

What have you already tried?  Crashing repeatedly is a big problem but sometimes difficult to pin down, unfortunately, so the best things to do are sweeping fixes like reinstalling.

If it always happens in the same application, you can try finding the preferences files for that application and deleting them or moving them to the desktop and see if that helps the issue.  Those types of files are typically found in /Library/Preferences or /Your Home Folder/Library/Preferences. 

One troubleshooting step we did a lot when I did tech support was making a new user account.  You do this in System Preferences > Accounts.  Try doing some work in there for a while and see if you still have the problem.  If the problem goes away, then it is something in your user-specific settings.  You can mess around with those if you want, or just rebuild everything in your new user account.

If that doesn’t help or the issue seems to be system-wide, try going to Applications/Utility and running Disk Utility.  Click on your hard drive and run “Verify”.  If it finds problems, you can fix them by following the instructions under “Try Disk Utility” on this page.

If all else fails you can do an Archive & Install.  <—this link has instructions on how to do it, but it also has a bunch of stuff about the previous system folder which you can really just ignore.

Wait, wait, I’m sorry…did I just hear someone say their Apple computer crashed?

But…but…but…I thought they never did that.

Unpossible!  I have it on good authority that Apples are never buggy and never break.  :-p

I would make more Apple cracks, but my iPhone is giving me a look.  :-(

Well, it’s not Firefox.  I deleted it from my computer just to make sure, and I’m getting freezes just trying to open up the Applications folder.

I’m trying Verify Disk…and it’s failing every time, freezing and becoming unresponsive.  And I’ve always noticed that this computer runs hot, but it’s apparently much hotter than a normal MacBook.

I run Time Machine, so the computer’s backed up.  Oh, and I’ve tried posting this comment three times, but the computer keeps failing.  Le sigh.  Genius Bar appointment tomorrow morning!

Sounds either like bad RAM or a flaky logic board. If it’s under warranty it won’t cost you anything to fix.

also, if there are independent Apple resellers near you, you will probably get better service from them than you will from the Apple store. I’m biased, though, because I work for one.

Just to concur with other people above: in my experience using Apple laptops for 5 years now, if a Macintosh regularly freezes and requires a reset, then there’s a good chance it’s got some hardware damage.  Liquid damage are one possible cause.  (BTW, never spill liquid on a computer.  Apple’s warranties don’t cover it.)

The Firefox old tabs issue is a false lead; it’s certainly just a design flaw or bug in Firefox itself—not saving its state to disk often enough.  In any case, computers and their operating systems today are all designed so that a buggy, rogue application cannot easily crash the whole computer.

Jesse, please quit referring to your pos Dell as an “aluminum macbook”. Not one piece of Apple hardware has ever failed.  In fact, the micro$soft accounting department still runs on the original Apple Lisas they bought in 1984.  If you really do have an Apple product, just drop by an Apple store and one of the finest computer technology minds in the world will fix it while it boots up.

Get teh “Session Manage” plugin. It saves backups of crashed sessions

”...while it boots up.”

What the hell is that crap?  “while it boots up”? 

Real computers never crash, and they only have to boot once. Once!...

(Back here in the real world, apparently no one has ever built a “real” computer because they are all subject to software and hardware bugs/failures/incompatibilities/etc.  If only I had a buck for every time I’ve crashed and/or rebooted during my career in IT.

Sorry man, hope it gets fixed soon…)

Well, that’s because firefox only saves its tabs when you close it, so that’s probably the last time you closed it…

Crissa on 07/16 at 01:19 PM

Actually, I find that when I shut down Firefox “properly,” that is by going to the Firefox menu and choosing “Quit Firefox,” first of all it takes quite a while to shut down—presumably archiving all the tabs—and then when I restart it, it recreates the pages and tabs _exactly_ as they were—if I want to update a tab, I have to go to each one and refresh it separately.

Whereas, if I use “Force-Quit” to terminate Firefox, and then restart it, of course first of all it shuts down instantly, and then when it restarts it asks if I want to try to restore my previous session. Which has always worked so far (since early January on this, my new laptop I got then) and as a bonus, each page is refreshed from the Internet as it is now. This takes a while—five minutes (in my case but see below about my slovenly browser habits) and you’d better have a good Internet connection at that time. But it doesn’t seem much slower than Firefox restoring now-obsolete pages from its own archive!

Perhaps, Jesse, you have the option to be prompted if you want to try to restore your prior session turned off? Since it seems you aren’t getting that prompt.

Or maybe your machine has serious problems and these help explain why Firefox doesn’t restore properly. If you do a normal shutdown you should at least get back what you had before, and recovering from a crash is as I say in my experience actually an improvement.

To be sure, I too get slowdowns and the Rainbow Wheel (which I think of as the “Spinning Beach Ball of Death” if it goes on too long—I suppose it would be really really bad news if the ball stopped spinning) fairly often.

But then I keep open like a hundred tabs, some going back to January. Actually I did a bit of housekeeping and deleted most of them recently, but I have already accumulated four Pandagon windows each with dozens of posts in open tabs, because I never can keep up and I keep meaning to someday read them all. Don’t even ask how crowded the Slacktivist window is, considering that I totally missed, then opened with a tab for each page, their “civil discussion of abortion” which goes on like twenty Typepad pages, and I also have my open pages for three or four webcomics there too.

Anyway when I ruthlessly deleted a hundred or so _other_ tabs, Firefox takes way longer to get to the stagnation point, and when I force quit and restart, it behaves very nicely for a week or more before getting all confused again.

Now if you are keeping your windows lean and mean, leaving open only what you need at the moment, and still getting beachballed, I’m afraid your machine is probably to blame.

I think everyone is trolling him, Mike, because they want to get back at Mac users who descend upon every report of a PC failing with “get a Mac they’re awesome!”  Cute, I guess.

Just wanted to say that on my white Intel iMac, Firefox 3.5 is extremely stable; unlike previous versions of Firefox it has yet to freeze or crash on me even once.

As with every computer, it helps to repair the disk and permissions every once in a while…doing this will helpfully speed your system up and return your stability. I suggest downloading a free program called “Applejack” (just google it) and running though the process to see if it helps. And, as with all things, backup your data just in case!

I have to reboot my heavily used laptop running XP maybe once a month. My most awesome iPhone crashes more often.

Apple is not nearly as good to their employees as MSFT. I think getting an XP machine is demonstrating progressive values.

Disk Utilities -> Repair Permissions is always a good place to start. Do it a few times just to be sure.

And quitting your browser occasionally helps too.

BTW, for what it’s worth, Linux (Ubuntu is what I’ve used) is pretty stable.  I’ve had applications fail on multiple occasions (software being software), but Linux itself has only flaked on me once in the last 2-years. 

There are still necessary reboots, but only in response to certain system software patches (not very often).  I have occasional power problems at home, so I’ve had many more boots because the power went out than because I installed a patch to Linux.

OTOH, the best application software is still on the Mac and Windows platforms…

Oh well…

What?  Macs are perfect in every way, shape, and form.  They are the pinnacle of mankind’s search for knowledge, and nothing better shall ever be made.  If there is a flaw to be found, it is in the user.

I wouldn’t complain too loudly about Mac, you don’t want to make THEM mad.

I wouldn’t complain too loudly about Mac, you don’t want to make THEM mad.

I think you guys have made your point.

The PC I’m typing this on crashes approximately every 6 hours.  I can avert this problem by rebooting it after 4-5 hours.  By now I’ve gotten used to constant rebooting, but it’s still annoying.

This is why I just put down $1000 for a refurbished MacBook Air today.

On the Mac vs. PC debate: I’ve had four Macs and three PCs since 1996.

The only PC that wasn’t a brick after six months was the one I built and kept upgraded myself.  The other two were dead before I could say “This one has a lot of RAM”, with terrible or nonexistent customer service to accompany them. 

The first Mac I had was a blue gumdrop iMac, which survived being dropped by a professor with nary a hiccup.  The second was an iBook G3 which survived having 44 ounces of Sprite dumped on it during John Kerry’s nomination acceptance speech.  The third (a MacBook) has been gifted over, but has had two technical problems in its life both repaired for free under warranty and in-person by Apple.  This one, I’m pretty sure, will also be taken care of for free at the Apple Store, and has otherwise been error-free, surviving the rigors of 1L with aplomb.

I’m not saying that all PCs are bad, all Macs or great, or that overzealous Mac advocates aren’t goofy.  But really, given that all computers are prone to breaking, Applecare is to most PC warranties as Rachel Maddow is to Rush Limbaugh’s sex tape.

I do my writing offline on a separate machine, and then only port things to the internet on a thumbdrive when I need to.

Never fails.

Try Command-Period or Command-Option-Escape.  It sounds like you’re endless looping rather than crashing.

Jesse, get this plugin
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2324

It saves the tabs every 10 minutes or so, without you doing anything, no need to open / close firefox. You can also save your own favorite set of tabs as a “session” and always go back to that.

I have been using it for 2 years and never had a lost tab

You may also want to check the rear vents of your macbook to make sure there are no dust bunnies clogging them as excessive heat can cause beachballs, slowdowns, freezes, and even sudden shutdowns.  Saw a lot of cases of freezing machines being caused by obstructed vents or excessive dust. 

If you live in a dusty area, you may need to use a handheld vacuum to vacuum the accumulated dust from those vents every 6 months to a year to avoid this issue. 

Also, avoid placing the notebook on cloth or other insulating materials or in close proximity to objects which may interfere with the cooling fans/vents’ efforts to keep the macbook at a reasonable temperature.

I wouldn’t complain too loudly about Mac, you don’t want to make THEM mad.

No, you don’t.

*polishes horns and hooves*

There are reported cases of MacBooks failing like this due to overheating; my old 17” MBP had to have the motherboard replaced twice. First time i got graphic glitches, 2nd time the display just wouldn’t light up at all, but all during that time I’d get random beachball activity.

I *strongly* suggest cleaning out the vents / blowers with some compressed air as exholt notes, and invest in a laptop cooling pad with fans. Don’t let your cats (if any) sleep on your computer. If you run it with an external monitor, keep the laptop open for better heat dispersal.

Also, check using Process Viewer (in Applications/Utilities) to see if there are any strange background tasks running that could be using up CPU and memory. I found that there were some Dashboard processes and some 3rd-party add-ons that had terrible memory leak issues.

Yeah, I’ve been having troubles which might be due to temperature.

I’ve installed an app that lets me run the fans at higher minimum speeds, and that seems to cooled off my computer.  We’ll see if it fixes my frequent hangs that started in the past month or so…

The program is smcFanControl at http://homepage.mac.com/holtmann/eidac/

All these suggestions have been helpful to me. My iBook tends to freeze or just shut down the program I am working in.  I see now it may be that I’m running 2 versions of Adobe Elements and one Photoshop.  I’ll bet the preferences are different on the three.

This is my 3rd apple laptop.  The Orange Lollipop’s screen quit working, I sold the rest to a local mac repair shop. The white $800 iMac was OK, but for some reason the mouse pad-cursor didn’t work well.  Slow and spotty as Johah Goldberg would say. In a frustrated moment I dashed out an bought a PowerBookG4, and only have the problems mentioned above.

I am told by “experts” that Apple is very jealous of there OS and reluctant to assist some applications people in developing software.  Maybe that’s just rumor.

BTW I have the white mac laptop, if anyone would like it.  My daughter played computer games on it for a few months, then switched to her Dad’s cast-off VIAO. So the Mac has been sitting on my dresser for almost a year.  And, yes, I do dust it from time-to-time.  I suspect there may be crumbs or perhaps a drop of liquid under the mouse-pad, but I really don’t know.  Also, I can’t locate the power cord & adapter.

Kathy

PS: I hate dusting with the white-hot passion of a thousand suns.

PPS:  I have the Laidback Laptop adjustable lap desk. cost $100 but very much worth it.

I am told by “experts” that Apple is very jealous of there OS and reluctant to assist some applications people in developing software.  Maybe that’s just rumor.

I’m doubtful of this.  It is not as though developing for the Mac is a super secret process.  They have a developer’s community that a whole portion of the Apple website is devoted to, and you can download their developer’s tools, etc.  I have no idea how this compares to developing on Windows.  Apple has little reason to stop people from developing software because they’re “jealous” of their OS.  Software is what we use while on the computer.  Apple knows that.  On the other hand, platform-partisans have plenty of reasons to malign the competition.  Assuming your “experts” aren’t just lying out of hand, what they probably mean is that Apple “stubbornly” refuses to stop making their OS and just run Windows on Apple hardware.  What they think should happen is that Apple become another PC hardware company like Dell.

I’m an actual IT admin and have experienced this very issue on my own powerbook. Go get Applejack, and run it. Also, with web browsing, Flash is a memory-hogging, CPU-glomming POS bit of software.

Switch to Safari and install ClickToFlash http://github.com/rentzsch/clicktoflash/tree/master and lots of your problems will go away.

If the above steps don’t work, you have to go spelunking into the Console app, and look for errors in the log at the time the SPOD appears.

(Note a SPOD is NOT necessarily a sign of heat damage..it simply means that the computer is saying “Go ‘Way! I’m Busy!”)

Jesse,  if the trouble isn’t hardware related, your mac probably needs some maintenance taken care of. OSX is Unix based, and Unix does its housekeeping at 3-4am every night. If it doesn’t over time the machine will slow down. A lot of new mac owners don’t seem to know that. Since it’s a laptop, I take a guess and bet that it’s behind. There are free software programs that run the scripts at your convenience that keep things tidy.

Onyx is free
http://www.titanium.free.fr/pgs2/english/download.html

Cocktail isn’t, but is very useful; it has trial period; the first 10 or 20 times are free
http://www.maintain.se/cocktail/index.php

You should also boot up from the install disks that came with the mac and use the disk utility to repair the laptops hard disk. when the mac starts up it does an abbreviated scan and repair, but this is much more thorough.

And you know about repairing permissions, right?

So take a half hour and do this.

1) repair permissions
2) start up from the install disk and run the repair hard drive from disk utilities
3) use Onyx or Cocktail to clean up the OS, you may find that you get 3 or 4 hundred MBs of space back if this is the problem

If you can afford it, DiskWarrior is worth the investment
http://www.alsoft.com/DiskWarrior/index.html

I have never had a drive that I got new fail on me, and I give partial credit to DW.

I would get Cocktail and just use up the trial period to start, it has some useful gadgets that can tweak your machine.

Since your doing this blogging thing and not losing your data is probably important, get an external drive to back up to, use Time Machine; or at least get a flash drive to save the critical stuff;

for a laptop you should think about partitioning the hard drive and have a back up there too, use

Carbon Copy Cloner •FREE•
http://www.bombich.com/software/ccc.html

to clone your system so you always have a functioning back up available immediately.

These are the things I do to avoid computer issues when I’m trying to make a deadline

Oh, I loved Firefox but it was getting too damn slow to be worth anything. I’ve started Camino that’s to y’all! I think I’m going to like it. I’m glad to get the recommendation!

“Kwillow: PS: I hate dusting with the white-hot passion of a thousand suns.”

Never thought I’d see a Fairly Oddparents reference on Pandagon. xD.

Anyway, I’ve been using Firefox for years, and haven’t had any problems.

this is from apple and does everything you need concerning my last post

http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/automator/maintenance.html

I think you guys have made your point.

Denise, I would see your point, if there were ever a PC help-me thread that didn’t have comment after comment from Mac users making the reverse point as those being made here, and in as many variations and ad as much nauseum.

SeaMonkey is the open source descendant of Mozilla, and it runs faster than Foxfire on PCs,  you should download the latest built and try it out after you get your Mac back and running.  You can import your bookmarks from Firefox or other browsers.