What do you do when your SL mac crashes? (Spinning wheel)

[cmagic]

Hi Folks,

Since I've setup my SL hackintosh I have had a couple of bad crashes.
Very often it is the finder not responding after I drag'n dropped files and/or aliases. Anyway it's not clear what blocked the finder but the results was always that damned multicolored spinning wheel of death!
And, whatever I tried, long wait, any key stroke, any command, nothing mattered and I always ended up pressing the reset button of my case (at least I have a reset button).

I don't have a lot of crashes on the mac or hackintosh but when I do have one, I find myself much more miserable than when I have a crash on Windows or Linux, do you feel the same ?
Is there any equivalent on macos of the single-user mode/command line of Linux ? Or even a kind of ctl+alt+del?

Seasoned mac-users, would you say that the SL finder is more prone to crashes than the older versions?

Thanks for any help on this,

Cheers

Chris

 

[MacMan]

I've used OS X since 10.0 and have only had the Finder crash 1 or 2 times.

Here are a couple of recommend things to do.

1) After installing any Apple software updates, run Repair Permissions.

2) It's a good idea to run a system maintenance program ever month or so. I use Maintenance http://www.titanium.free.fr/index_us.html. I run it with the following options:

Maintenance: All options
Cleaning: All options
Rebuild: dyld's shared cache

 

[cmagic]

My rig crashed again, while using the finder....

From the feedback it seems that there is nothing much to do when the spinning wheels appears other than pressing reset or the power off button.
I thought that macos beeing built upon unix would offer at least an escape to single user run level (without graphics) but... no luck.

I'm starting to wonder :?

 

[cmagic]

Yeah, if it wasn't for photoshop, iphoto, steam(coming next month) and itunes I would be running Debian insted macOS.

I wonder if there is a way to kill the graphical system like you can with *nix (Ctrl+alt+backspace).
After unplugging my Window$ hard drives and removing the disabler.kext I've had no crashes except for when I shutdown some times

Thanks sam,
I'll try what you did: removing the windows drive, I'm on a dual hard drive setup (1 mac/ 1 win) but I don't really use the win drive so I will see...

 

[adamsmasher]

It's really unusual that you guys are having so many crashes. If you're using the vanilla kernel and have your extensions/dsdt/smbios chosen and installed properly, then you should have a really stable system.

 

[tonymacx86]

It's really unusual that you guys are having so many crashes. If you're using the vanilla kernel and have your extensions/dsdt/smbios chosen and installed properly, then you should have a really stable system.

word

 

[tonymacx86]

How about I send you my ASUS / AMIBIOS dsdt and you edit it because it seems no one else knows much about them

I really don't think that the DSDT edits are your problem. It really won't make your system any more/less stable not using one. I don't know much about Asus boards, so as much as I'd like to help, I'm not going to go there. I don't want to contribute to the problem- maybe try to search out one that's edited, and compare with yours? It's worth a shot- that's how I learned- from looking at P45 DSDT edits. Check out the tonymacx86 Search Engine or Google for any ASUS DSDTs that are already edited- doesn't have to be P55- you can just use it for reference.

Good luck my friend.

 

[miK.]

Surprising that no one has mentioned force-quitting yet.

Apple Menu-> Force Quit... brings up a dialog box to choose whatever app isn't responding.
Option-Cmd-Escape does the same thing.

You can also toggle the force-quit to your current app by clicking on the
Apple Menu (hold it) and pressing the Shift key.

You can also force-quit the Finder if it is not responding (during a disk action, etc).
This is time saving compared to resetting/restarting in cases where the machine is
not totally frozen up, but just beachballing.

 

[miK.]

Surprising that no one has mentioned force-quitting yet.

The crashes I was getting would kill almost everything, the graphical system simply became non-responsive, no chance of clicking on anything.

Oh ok... I was referring more to the OP's topic of spinning beachball 'crashes', as
many of these can be cleared with a force-quit.

 

[ne0shell]

That's the best thing to do, open console and check the log files. It's the nature of the beast in running a hacked OSX machine that you can't always get the right driver for a device and may actually be better off switching hardware.

I'd check the SATA cable, make sure it's snug on both ends or even switch it out for a new cable. I've run into bad cable crashes over the years that drove me insane trying to troubleshoot.

I haven't had any major crashes on my hack, a few application hangs I fixed with force quit but to be honest my MacBook crashes and has more problems than my hack machine. After a couple of years of running hacked OSX machines I can't even tell you how happy I am to have one running so stable, fast and solid.

It's my opinion that geniune apple hardware tends to be more problematic due to various reasons, I'll take my hand built "hack pro" over an apple factory one without hesitation. The Gigabyte mobo is massivly better in terms of build quality and components and I can upgrade or switch out anything I want whenever I want.

As for the problem listed:
1. Check cable connections and try switching to new ones
2. Check for a firmware update for the SATA device having problems
3. If all else fails, try a different Sata burner.

Also - do you have Toast or any other burner apps installed?