OS X unstable - HATE when it crashes!

Hello guys,

It's been a while since I was here (a few months). I was debating on this forum whether to buy a Mac or not (was having trouble with Lenovos t410s etc.) and made that switch. Overall I mus say that my MB Pro is a great machine, really great.
But today I want to tell you that I am also very frustrated with one thing:
It seems to me that OS X 10.6.5. (that I have) is not that stable.
It crashes....it does. I was told it wouldn't compared to Windows....well what's even worse when my system crashes, there's really nothing you can do about it...just hit the power button.
I have to say that in this regards I've been quite disappointed - the crashes I have appear on a fairly regular basis (can't tell you how often but anytime it happens, the feeling is: here it goes again!).

Now here's a PROBLEM I hope someone will help me solve (MAC and Office for Mac 2011):

Just today I was asked to update my Office 2011 - was in the middle of doing something so was postponing closing of all the necessary programs. It crashed suddenly. And I lost my work worth several days (yes I did not save the documents, apparently, because I was too busy thinking about other things and with AutoRecovery set at 10 min. interval I thought I would be okay).

When I opened Microsof Excel 2011 (where all the important data were from the last days), the file was able to recover data (AutoRecovery) from 14 days ago....what? I mean I still worked with this file this morning and again, when the computer crash...the AutoRecovery was set to 10 min. interval.
How is this possible?

I have been trying to search the whole machine to find some file that would help me. Typically the AutorRecover files are in: in the ~/Documents/Microsoft User Data/Office 2011 AutoRecover folder. XL AutoRecover documents are hidden by default.

But there's nothing there that is in any way useful (why? I can't understand it).

So I tried to search various Temporary folders and files on the Mac but was not able to find anything helpful either.

Thus, is there any way in which I can recover the data? I have to say, this has never happened to me in Windows.

Any help will be most appreciated!!!
And your general thoughts on the stability of OS X too!!!

Thank you,

Christina
Mac OS is 10.6.5 and Excel for Mac 2011: 14.0.1.

PS. Please don't tell me that I should have saved my documents on a continuous basis...I know as much myself but sometimes you get so sucked into your work and just simply forget about this.

 

Sorry, I can't help on the OS X questions, but doesn't excel have autosave?

 

What are you doing when it crashes? If it's Office only, then it's the software crashing your system. If so, you have no choice but to use it in Windows (Boot camp, different computer) or use something else like OpenOffice.

 

Have you shutdown your computer in the last two weeks? Only asking because you said you have not automatically saved and said that it recovered from 14 days ago. Also, from my experience, autosave is only fully effective if you manually save sometimes.

Also, I understand where you come from about getting sucked into your work.. If you don't already know about the "save" shortcut: "Command" + "S" then that will save your work. On my previous Macs I had saving problems, so I conditioned myself to always command + s everytime I finish a sentence, thought, piece of work... I use it in everything from office, adobe, maya, etc etc. It's a pain in the butt but once you train your self your golden.

Good luck. Hope I helped a tad.

 

CDCohen
yeah, I do commad+s..usually I do. But this time I must have forgotten about it. The fact is that I must have not restarted the computer in the last 2 weeks - worked with too many documents and felt like not closing and opening any of them. Are you suggesting that the crashes are more likely when one doesn't reboot?
thank you for your reponse though.

Actually it's not jsut that...crashes at various times. I'd say overall it's a matter of system overload...i.e. when too many applications are running. I would not say that it has to do anything with a particular software.

Yeah, it does..they call it AutoRecovery..but it sucks..I had it set up and still could not recover my files..

 

what do the crashes look like? if it grays out the screen and says you need to turn off your machine in several languages, then that is a Kernel Panic. Either yur running some Software with MAJOR issues (not Office 2011, it runs good), or you have some bad hardware, very likely faulty ram in your machine.

 

Can't help you with recovering Excel files, but about those OS X crashes;

Ever tried standard troubleshooting?

- repair Disk Permissions
- clean up the OS using a tool like Onyx
- repair the OS installation using the OS DVD
- check for updates
- completely fresh install

What I find weird is you say everything freezes and the only thing you can do about it is power off your computer. If I ever have a crash in Mac OS, it simply freezes one application which I kill, but everything else just keeps on going.

Do you get a 'kernel panic' by any chance? (see below) Or is there no error message at all?