User:Mattderojas/Scary stuff

Kernel panics and other scary computer stuff

As you'll see in the examples in the above article, kernel panics are totally scary. As hell. You don't ever want to see this. But it will happen, especially if you have a G3 running Tiger. (I should know, I used to be in this situation too before I got my new G4 laptop. I sometimes use many memory-crunching apps such as Adobe Photoshop, iMovie, and Firefox (yes, web browsers can really take its toll).

Real-World Situation: The Big Project

WARNING: If you cannot handle information about system crashes and kernel panics, DO NOT READ THIS SECTION. If you ignore this message and read on, and then panic because you don't know what will happen if you do something stupid and you DO get into a crash or kernel panic, don't say we didn't warn ya.
Note: It is possible for the situation described below to actually happen in real life; however, the author may have additional comments on this work. See User:Mattderojas/Comments on warnings.

Let's say you've been working on a large project that determines whether you live or die--and it's due tomorrow! You make sure to save often. You FINALLY finish it...but as soon as you hit save, your hard drive spins longer than normal. Then the spinning icon apppears. You move the mouse about the screen frantically, not knowing what to do. You try going to the Dock and force quitting the application, but soon the Dock crashes, too (the transparent background suddenly turns white). Then the screen turns dark (wipe-down effect) and you get the dialog above.

So you turn off your computer, then turn it back on again. The fans start blowing, but your computer starts up normally. You push away a dialog box that gives you an option to send a report to Apple, because you obviously don't have the time. You go to your finished report, only to find the following message:

"Sorry, the document could not be loaded. An unknown error has occurred. The file may be damaged." (Note: this is just a made-up box)

Oh, God... you think. You think of screaming: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And immediately, you know you're going to die. Tonight.

However this situation is partially fictitious, because Microsoft Word and TextEdit (Apple's built-in rich text and plain text editor) don't scramble files when you get a kernel panic. However there are some situations where files CAN get damaged if you don't exit them when you do panic. I should know, it happened to me once. My iTunes library got damaged too many times, that I take precautions by keeping a backup copy of the "iTunes Library" and "iTunes Music Library.xml" files. At least this will save me a lot of trouble when I go back to rebuild my library. If I ever have to.

Similarly, I have also lost iMovie projects to the dreaded panics. You may have, too. Now let's say you're almost done working on a great video, when it suddenly crashes. There goes all your hard-spent time (and money).

That's why I don't open some memory-crunching apps often. In fact I like to keep them closed. I keep iTunes usually closed for a reason (the one stated above).

In summary, kernel panics are bad. They're worse than blue screens of death and even black ones or red ones (such as those in Windows Vista. They are BAD!!! (Really, really bad...)