Frozen 17" Macbook Pro

hi, yesterday i've just received my brand new 17" MBP, standard configuration. 2.4ghz/2gb RAM/160GB HDD/OS X 10.4. so that rule out any hardware incompatibility as all my hardware is stock.

now i haven't install or put any of my data in it. i'm still playing around with the bundled software. so that rule out software incompatibility.

just few hours ago, my system froze. i was resizing a movie on quicktime. the movie was played from the DVD drive. i can't move the mouse, and all the things in the monitor froze. the quicktime window turns to a blank white space.

so then after trying to force quit and what not and waiting for 32 minutes. i decided to try force shut down instead, so i press and hold the power button to shut it down. the computer was fairly hot at this moment.


so my question is:

is there anyway that i damage the computer hardware by force shut down?
heat not pushed out by the fan, hard disk crash, etc?

is there anyway that i damage my software/data?
i run disk utility (verify disk permissions, verify disk) verify all passed. and i also run techtool deluxe (including surface scan) all is passed

what should i do after force shut down/power failure on mac? is it harmful? (i never experience any of this on mac, as i'm still rather new to the system)

is it common for a mac system to freeze? does it happen to you? i have a macbook for over a year, and this never happened to me!

i haven't install any software update yet. though when i run the software update and see this "About MacBook Pro Software Update 1.2" which supposedly "This update improves graphics stability and is recommended for all MacBook Pro (Mid 2007, 2.4/2.2GHz) computers running Mac OS 10.4 Tiger." could this solve the problem? http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=306708

 

I don't know if this makes sense, but I have a theory in mind. Maybe it was trying too hard during the 32 minutes that it got over heated.

 

It's not common for Macs to freeze.

Did your Mac come with Tiger or Leopard? Where did you get Tiger from? And what version of Tiger is installed? 10.4.X? Did you use the Tiger OS X Install DVDs from your MacBook?

Don't install older versions of Mac OS than what comes with your computer.

Yes, install all Apple Software Updates. What version of QuickTime do you have installed?

 

MYK,

interesting theory, but i don't think this is so, because the fan did blow while the computer is frozen. and the machine is not that hot! that it could be considered overheating.

thanks for trying

Xander,

my computer comes with tiger 10.4.10. although it comes with this CPU-drop in (leopard upgrade only) disk. is it a good idea to install leopard? (i'm trying to avoid it, coz the app i'm using right now still isn't compatible)

quicktime version is 7.2

 

You don't need to install Leopard then. I was just worried you were using an older version of Tiger. That's not the case.

Just install all the Apple Software Updates and see if the problem happens again. I believe QuickTime 7.3 is now available. And what do you mean by "resizing a movie"? Do you have QuickTime Pro? Can you describe the process? What format is the source video? A retail DVD?

 

Might want to go ahead and run fsck to make sure everything is functioning the way it should.

for fsck, reboot your computer and hold command+S when it first turns back on. at the command line prompt type "/sbin/fsck -f" and hit enter. It'll run a check, and tell you if it found any errors. Repeat this until fsck doesn't find any errors then type "reboot" and hit enter.

You may also want to run hardware check. For this put in your install disk and I think you hold H while it boots up(somebody want to clarify?). This will do some tests to make sure all your hardware is working properly.

 

xander = by resizing i mean. resizing the window from large to small, to fullscreen, to small, and enlarge it again, errr.... messing around with the process, just to see how good the scaling power of the 8600M GT is. then it froze when i scale the window from double size to the smallest it can go.

the movie format is .mpg (mpeg)

i have quicktime pro installed.

system_159 = i did that already. all is passed.

 

would this type of force shutdown cause any harm? harddisk crash, etc?

or is it just lost of unsaved data? and in worst cases a simple reformat will fix all problems cause by this forced shutdown...

 

update: i just did the quickly resizing the quicktime movie (.mpg) again.

this is what i do, press and hold the resize portion of the window and quickly enlarge and make the window small in very quick succession and after just around 30 seconds or so, the quicktime frozen, and the mouse starting to not responding, luckily this time around i quickly press quit multiple time, and after 10 seconds later quicktime quit. after that the computer returns to normal.

the problem seems to be related to the use of graphic intensive task.

i tried this on my macbook and it doesn't crash. my macbook doesn't seems to have this bug/issue.

 

You might want to uninstall quicktime and then reinstall it. You may have a corrupted application there.

Also, try VLC and see if you get the same kind of errors.

 

when i force shut down my computer... is it possible that i damage my computer? i'm most worried about the harddrive, as i heard that power failure could result in head crash..

i don't know about notebook harddrive... especially the hitachi drive that came with my MBP (i usually use seagate). but in some modern hard drive, i heard they use some kind of head unload technology, that automatically retract the head in case of power failure, with power or not. do the 2.5" notebook hitachi drive on the macbook pro has this?

is there any other kind of damage that may result from force shut down?

perhaps i should open a new thread for this one...

there: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=2654066#post2654066

 

Did you install the Apple Software Updates yet?

I don't think you can damage the hard drive from a forced shutdown. I think all hard drives will autopark the heads like you described.

MPEG is very vague. Open the movie in QuickTime and choose Window > Show Movie Inspector. What does it say as the Format?

Before you reformat and reinstall OS X, why not make an appointment with an "Apple Genius"? Your Mac freezes everytime you change the size of your video in QuickTime, right? That would be easy to demonstrate.

 

Generally holding down the power button to turn off the computer is a bad idea because you may loose unsaved data and it doesn't give a chance for the OS to do its normal tidying up(nothing that will cause huge failures in the end, unless you do it every time you turn off the computer).

 

yes i will do software update as soon as my internet allowance is renewed again. in my part of the country (AUS); the internet connection is quite fast; but you get limited amout of allowance per month; and after that, you're speed is limited to ridiculuous amount of time. i never heard of "unlimited allowance" that is actually unlimited. i currently used the so call "unlimited pro" plan that is actually limited to 12GB , that is why i haven't install the update yet.

it is the one with the ending .mpg that is causing damage in quicktime pro, try resizing it at quick succession if you've got the 8600m gt and it should freeze/nearly freeze your computer. i'm not sure if the update fix it, on a count that i have't install it yet. finger cross