[Ti] Delayed + Unknown Problem

[Dennis Fazio]

On Dec 29, 2005, at 2:18 PM, Da Pen wrote:

> Also, last night my wife had a strange, unknown &
> unheard of to us, crash error.
[...]
>
> Problem:  "I was online while writing an email in Mail
> program, and I also have about 2 windows open in
> Safari.  All of a sudden, a black film descended on
> the computer screen starting from the top.  Then a
> square box in the middle said I must turn off the
> computer immediately and hold the start key for 3
> seconds."
>

That's a kernel panic, usually caused by something severely wrong in  
the system or a hardware glitch. You might be able to discern come  
clues from the crash logs, system logs or console logs if you know  
how to read them, but they often don't tell you anything useful in  
these situations.

Reboot in safe mode and it will do a disk directory check and  
repair.  (boot and hold the shift key down).
After the system comes up (at the login window), reboot again, log  
in, and run a permissions check. If it continues to occur, there may  
be a corrupted system file someplace or a hardware intermittancy.

If it's OS related, it will go away when you do your Tiger upgrade.  
If it's hardware related, it won't.
-- 
Dennis Fazio
dfz at mac.com