Wincent Colaiuta's weblog: Involuntary Reboot Log #16

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September 24, 2007

Involuntary Reboot Log #16

Very similar to the problem I saw back at the start of this month: after installing a preview release of a certain operating system the DVD appeared as being mounted on the Desktop but both the Finder and the Terminal reported it to have no contents at all. I didn't try ejecting the disk but instead went straight to the System Profiler application, which beachballed for a long time before telling me that no optical drives were connected to the machine. The putatively non-existent disk burner then spat out the disc without being asked to, accompanied by a horrible screeching sound.

By this time other apps had started to beachball or become intolerably slow. No apps would finish launching, so I tried to restart and became stuck looking at an empty desktop for 10 or 15 minutes. Resignedly performed the one-finger salute (hard reset with power switch).

I did the usual Disk First Aid drill on my other (production volume). Won't bother doing it on this (development) one as I suspect this won't be a very long-lived install. Will see if the burner comes back to life when running the production OS.

Involuntary reboot stats to date

Operating system version: Look, I'm Zippy Longstocking
Kernel panics: 6
Hard resets: 10
Total failures: 16
Start of recording keeping: 21 May 2006
Total days to date: 491 days
Average time between failures: 31 days
Uptime at moment of failure(s): about 30 minutes