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OT: Apple Mac user – BSOD often?
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chewkwFree Member
I know there are many Mac users on STW so my question is how often do you get Blue Screen of Death? i.e. system crash.
I want to know just for a basic comparison as I am getting really cheese off with my pooter at the moment. I spent so much on it only for it to give me mega headache.
I have endured with it for a while now and it’s Win 7 64bits but I get BSOD almost daily. Even with new HDD installed recently I still get BSOD. On top of that the two security software I installed are not liking each other as well i.e. Microsoft Security Essential and Malwarebyte Anti-malware (real-time or on-demand).
I am planning to invest in an Mac Mini in one or two weeks time. arrghhh … could have saved me a forture had I gone for Mac Mini in the first instance …
😡
footflapsFull MemberNever had BSOD on my MBP nor on my work W7 machine. Have to say W7 is way more stable than OSX. I regularly have to reboot my MBP but very rarely reboot the W7 machine (which gets used far more).
chewkwFree Memberfootflaps – Member
Never had BSOD on my MBP nor on my work W7 machine. Have to say W7 is way more stable than OSX. I regularly have to reboot my MBP but very rarely reboot the W7 machine (which gets used far more).
Weird … what W7 machine do you have?
😯
Fresh Goods Friday 696: The Middling Edition
Latest Singletrack VideosFresh Goods Friday 696: The Middlin...CougarFull MemberBSOD will be malware,, an errant third-party driver, hardware, or a corrupt system file, in arguably that order of likelyhood. Analysing the minidump will usually tell you.
MBAM and MSE play well together too. Not quite sure where you’re getting that from.
MrSmithFree Memberonce or twice (in 15 years) a dodgy external HD borked mine once, you get a grey screen and some text in several languages instead of a blue screen. had to force quit a few apps now and again but that doesn’t crash the OS.
i find applejack and onyx keep things running smoothlyduntstickFree MemberJust re-install it. Make sure that everything is really well re-seated, ram, graphics card etc.
I had similar problems, no more though
MBAM and MSE perfect here too, W7 64 bitratherbeintobagoFull MemberBSOD is a Windows phenomenon. Mac equivalent is kernel panic which is what Mr Smith describes. It’s as rare as hen’s teeth (have never seen in 7 years of using OS X) but then on a malware-free Windows system with the right hardware drivers, BSODs aren’t nearly as common as billed either.
chewkwFree MemberMy pooter has just came back from repair last Friday(£66 for reinstall, change of Graphic card and make everything work but they refused to install antivirus or antimalware for me – had to do that myself) … the HDD is new out of box and everything totally reinstall from start. Graphic card changed to a newer one etc …
Scanned the system so many times with anti-rootkit, anti-malware and anti-virus all came up clean. Did the Checksum (whatever that is called), SfC /Scannow, repair boot-disc all said fine …
Still get BSOD so when checked on “View reliability history” the system usually show either MBAM or MSE as the fault … to start with then other things start to collapse left right and centre … I mean the list is so long it does not fit in a 23 inches monitor page.
😯
prettygreenparrotFull Memberas ratherbeintobago says, BSOD is a windows thing. However, I’ve had a kernel panic on my old 2.16GHz C2D MBP with OS X Snow Leopard recently with minecraft 1.6.2 every time when I try to make minecraft run in full screen. Aside from that, had a kernel panic 3 or 4 times in 7 years of macs. Not had a kernel panic on my new 15″ rMBP but I’ve only had it since December.
Properly set up machines with regular software running don’t really get BSODs or kernel panics. The OS tries its best to avoid that sort of thing.
CougarFull Memberon a malware-free Windows system with the right hardware drivers, BSODs aren’t nearly as common as billed either.
TBH, in a lot of cases NT6-based systems (Vista forwards) are still being tarred with the same brush as XP and earlier. Most people who use hilarious terms like “Windoze” are making statements that haven’t really been true for half a decade.
Dorset_KnobFree MemberOnly seen one proper kernel panic as described above in nearly 20 years’ Mac ownership and usage.
I have to restart apps fairly regularly, but that’s easy.
somafunkFull MemberI’ve got a 2008 intel core 2 macbook (first of the unibody aluminium ones) , 2.4ghz/4gb ram/500gb hard drive and it’s not once spat the dummy out despite being carted about in a bag a lot of the time, still on the original battery which admittingly only lasts for an hrs full use these days – one of my best ever purchases.
prettygreenparrotFull Member@chewkw sounds like a drivers problem or some corrupted piece of OS software. 2 ways to deal with it: start over (again) or ditch bitlocker and other pieces until it becomes stable. I wont suggest you change to OS X as you’ll have good reasons to use windows.
I would be inclined to take it back as £66 to do NTN and return a PC that falls over seems a bit peculiar.
plyphonFree MemberI’ve had about 5 kernal panics in the past few months.
3 on one evening – trying to attached a photo in gmail while using firefox caused a kernel panic.
The last one happened when I was DJing – luckily just at home. I had firefox open again in the background.
I’ve heard firefox doesnt sit well with OSX so I have uninstalled and I’m closely/nervously watching it. Didn’t have any hiccups last time I DJed.
fubarFree MemberI’ve had my MacBook Pro ‘Panic’ crash 2 or 3 times in 2 years (and subsequent reformat and re install software)…can’t remember the last time I had a windows total crash (never on windows 7…probably 2 or 3 years ago on vista and XP but still very rare). I’ve been disappointed with my Mac reliability (luckily bought on education store so 3 years warranty) as I’ve also had the power supply fail but it looks and feels nice and is excellent at battery saving during sleep and very fast wake-up.
nickjbFree MemberNever had a BSOD, spinning beach ball of doom loads of time. When we were using Macs for CAD it was probably a weekly occurrence. That was a few years ago, Windows 7 on a PC now, much happier.
grumFree MemberIf you look at reliability stats (rather than subjective experience) Apple always rank very highly if not highest.
andytherocketeerFull MemberProbably about 3 complete kernel panics with Tiger (cba to upgrade). Surprised that W7 is fewer but I wouldn’t say that makes it more reliable.
0 with Linux in the last 10 years, so that must be the most reliable 🙂 (edit: and any I had was due to kernel hacking anyway, not bugs in released kernel)chipsngravyFree MemberIn the last 15 years my company has probably had over 100 Macs. Only one BSOD in that time. No big deal as the faulty Mac was backed up.
To this day none of those Macs are ‘dead’. The older ones are more obsolete.
CaptainSlowFull MemberMy MBP freezes rarely. My W7 home build PC doesn’t BSOD. neither system is problematic from an admin perspective.
I wouldn’t suggest buying a mac as a solution to a PC problem unless there is some specific app you need.. For the x times the price a mac is no better, just x times different.
footflapsFull MemberNever had a BSOD, spinning beach ball of doom loads of time.
That seems to be OSX’s response to anything and everything. When I can find the time to buy a copy of W7, I’m going to install it over OSX and abandon Apple OSs. Much as I hate to say it, Windows 7 is far superior in stability and has a decent file explorer rather than the 1970s remedial thing which Apple seem to stick with.
SandwichFull MemberMy 2002 vintage G5 has just been condemned to the WEEE recycling. Towards the end it was panicking every couple of months. The logic board has dodgy soldering around the RAM slots that causes the problem, temporary fix is to run a hairdryer inside the machine pointing at the RAM to reflow the solder!!
Never seen a panic on the core duo macbook pro which has been a workhorse carted around town and building sites.llamaFull MemberWin7: no bsod ever in 3 years of my work desktop, it’s on 24/7, and only been rebooted maybe 10 times for sw installs. I’m very careful with what sw goes on it being my main tool.
Win7: No bsod ever in 4 years of my home desktop but its not used much nowadays. Lots of crap on it. Only got mse for anti-virus on it only I know the admin password.
Vista: laptop used by no1 llama. Installs everything, clicks yes to anything, downloads from anywhere. Result: Very unreliable, horrid, dirty thing.
Ubuntu: don’t know version, big d##k donkey or something silly. Freezes frequently – its something odd about the display driver (old laptop)
grumFree MemberThat seems to be OSX’s response to anything and everything. When I can find the time to buy a copy of W7, I’m going to install it over OSX and abandon Apple OSs. Much as I hate to say it, Windows 7 is far superior in stability and has a decent file explorer rather than the 1970s remedial thing which Apple seem to stick with.
Sounds like there’s a problem with your system. I very rarely get the spinning beachball.
danielgrovesFree MemberI have a 2008 MacBook and a 2012 Mac Mini. Never had a system crash on either.
CountZeroFull MemberUsed to get crashes all the time with OS9, until the RAM was upped from 256 to 1Gb, running Photoshop. 😉
I used to get spinning beachballs on my 2003 G3 PowerBook from time to time, again with 1Gb of RAM, again running Photoshop, and my Mini, which has 4Gb sometimes has an app hang up, usually iTunes, but it’s left running 24/7, neither of which has happened often enough to bother me.
A suggestion, which might give the best of both worlds, get the Mini, which is a delightful little machine, get Parallels or whatever the other virtual machine (can’t for the life of me remember the name) installed, install your copy of Windows 8 on it, then you can have both open at the same time, and enjoy the benefits of being able to use ‘ware you’re already comfortable with, while getting the free stuff that Apple supply, like GarageBand, iMovie, etc.IanWFree MemberWent mac with the first Intels 2006? Never had a problem with software, couple of ps issues on he first machine but the next two have been faultless on permanently and used daily.
chewkwFree MemberCougar – Moderator
Email me the minidump.
Minidump is empty … d’oh!
😕
My system:
Asus P7P-55M
New HD: Samsung 840 pro 256GB SSD
Graphic card: Nvidia GeForce GT240
OS: Win 7 Home Premium 64bits SP1
Security: Windows firewall, MSE and MBAM.
Application: Microsoft Office.
Browser: Firefox 22.0 and IE 10
CoreTemp: Just to monitor temperature.
PDF: PDF-Xchange Viewer
😐p/s: the next time it crashes I will try to see if something is recorded in the minidump.
pp/s: arrghhh … CCleaner cleaned the minidump out and now that I have unchecked it hopefully I shall have some information the next time it goes BSOD.
AdamWFree MemberI have only had about 3 panics in 10 years of mac usage. I found that one was due to faulty memory – as the machine heated up with stress the chips malfunctioned and caused crashes. Replacing the DIMM fixed the issue.
Check the ‘console’ (in the utilities folder) and it will have the system logs there, which may give you more info.
tonydFull Member2007 MacBook Pro here and have had a a handful of panics in that time, rare enough to disregard altogether. Had a few on earlier models/MacOS releases but nothing to write home about. Mid-2010 Mac Mini in the house too and I can’t remember a panic on there. I love Macs.
However, I’ve been using a Windows 7 PC at work for about a year now and it’s not blue screened on me yet. I don’t do anything particularly heavyweight on it though as most of my work is done on Linux VMs.
As above, fix the problem rather than spend money on new kit!
rossateaseFree MemberWe’ve run macs at work for ever, never had that, we can get spinning beach ball, usually if we’ve upgraded the OS without adding ram, but other than that, nothing much really, had to send a refurb back to be er refurbed, Macs are reliable, always have been. We’re running mac mini’s even have a mac mini server to replace a couple of ageing Xserves, thoroughly reliable.
BigEaredBikerFree MemberOSX Snow Leopard on MBP, Mountain Lion on Mac Mini, Win 7 Home Premium on gaming PC, Win 7 Pro on work laptop, Windows 8 & Server 2012 on virtual lab kit.
Mountain Lion has been the most problematic and most of that was having to use Terminal to kill one or two applications but has generally been much better since the MIni was upgraded to 16GB and a couple of open source apps uninstalled.
I used to run OSX Leopard on my old G5 Power Mac and Vista Home Premium 32bit on my old Dell XPS and both were rock solid with only the odd driver issue to solve.
Windows hasn’t been a total pile of crap since Millennium Edition. The only BSOD I have had recently have been on the gaming machine when over-clocking and getting the memory settings wrong. Every time I have dealt with a server at work with a Kernel panic or BSOD it has been memory related – either the installation engineer not understanding NUMA ram allocations or dodgy chips (thanks IBM).
As far as mates machines go it has always inevitably been user error that has caused problems – often from going to web sites they shouldn’t or from using peer-to-peer networks.
Russell96Full MemberNext time you have a BSOD take a look out for a something .sys file make a note of the name and do a Google on it chances are lots of people will have had the same issue and found an answer. Common causes are Graphics card drivers, but saying that as above only time I’ve had them on my Win7 desktop is by tinkering with memory settings.
chewkwFree MemberRussell96 – Member
Next time you have a BSOD take a look out for a something .sys file make a note of the name and do a Google on it chances are lots of people will have had the same issue and found an answer. Common causes are Graphics card drivers, but saying that as above only time I’ve had them on my Win7 desktop is by tinkering with memory settings.
I just checked the virtual memory where I found out it was set below the recommended setting so I just changed it to ‘System managed Size’ … let’s see if that works.
molgripsFree MemberWindows is fine, save your money. Your problems are specific to your machine by the sound of it. Get it fixed.
chewkwFree Membermolgrips – Member
Windows is fine, save your money. Your problems are specific to your machine by the sound of it. Get it fixed.
I just got it back from the computer repair shop so in a way I got it “fixed” but then it started to go crazy again. Put it this way before I got it back it was worst as the system was practically unusable … easily 10 BSOD per day … 😯
I have never checked the virtual memory and only found it just now it was lower than the recommended ones. Set it to System Manage now to see if it works.
Yes, I really find it weird that I did the same thing as everyone but I got all problems with BSOD while others never. I guess obviously I did not do things right … arrghhh … 😡
If I can save some cash I would but I really need a backup system soon.
Judging from the everyone’s response Apple seems to do a good job.
Put it this way I use my computer for:
1. Surfing the net.
2. Watch Yutube movies.
3. Microsoft Office.
4. Solitaire game. (wish I have PacMan)
5. Check email.That’s it … nothing else.
🙁
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