Someone please tell me what happened and that it will be ok.....

[emmadoggy]

I had a VERY strange occurence last night. I have an iMac G5 PowerPC, OS 10.4.11.

Last night I was working on some stuff - had Quicken, Safari, iTunes and Yahoo IM open. I was on a website in Safari. I logged out of my account on the website and did a cmd-Q to quit. Safari froze. No spinning beachball, no mouse movement, nothing. I tried the forcequit keystroke a few times. No response (that has never happened to me on this computer before). Then I tried to just turn it off.

Ok, then the really freaky part happened. All of a sudden the computer kicked into this...well, the fan went into HIGH gear (literally spewing a bunch of dust out from somewhere, like volcanic ash. I just dusted off and cleaned the computer a couple days ago, so it wasn't dirty at all.) and it was doing this high-pitched sort of whine. It sounded like it was going to blow up - no kidding. I stood there in shock for a moment or two, tried frantically to turn it off another time or two and then hurriedly reached down and unplugged it. It was FREAKY.

I waited a couple minutes and then turned it back on. Everything seems to be ok and working, but I'm wondering what the heck happened and if there's something I should do??? Any clues??

[Poiuyt]

1. It's probably OK

I would run "Repair Permissions" from the Disk Utility application to make sure.

In the future, if you have a system crash, hold down the power key for 5 seconds and the computer will shut down. Much better than unplugging it.

[emmadoggy]

2. Gah!

Oh, I know I should have held down the power button - I was just in such a panic, I wasn't thinking. After the fact, I asked myself if I had held the button down or just pushed it, and I'm pretty sure I was just pushing it. That probably would have done it.

It was just such a shock to see this poof of dust come flying out and hear the machine go into hyper-drive, loud, "I'm gonna blow"-mode! Freaked me out! My biggest concern was just that something internally could have gotten smoked, but everything seems to be running ok today. :shrug:

Phew. I just hope it doesn't happen again! :scared:

[Lydia Leftcoast]

3. You might want to take it into your Apple Store to have it checked out

My former iBook had a few temper tantrums before the hard drive died.

[emmadoggy]

4. Thanks, Lydia.

I did think of that too. Unfortunately, the nearest Apple store is 50 miles away. I wouldn't be able to get it there for at least a couple weeks. However, it might be worth a call to them, just to see what their recommendations or thoughts are. If they think I should bring it in, I would, but it wouldn't be right away, I'm afraid. Thank goodness it's working ok for now.

Geez, I hope my poor baby's ok, lol. Seriously, I LOVE my iMac and living without it for even a short time would be awful (not to mention I don't even want to think about repair costs! Ugh.)

Thanks again!

[alfredo]

5. Have you run disc utility lately. Verify your hard drive to see if there

are any problems. Repair permissions while you are there.

Some people have reported some problems with 10.4.11