very strange behaviour

[jeffy.dee-lux]

So I've been using macs pretty much all my life, but something just happened to my girlfriend's laptop that I've never seen before. She's got a 15" Powerbook, the last ones that were made before the MBP's came out.

Here's what happened: we just finished watching a DVD, i turned off the computer, then I realized i left the disk inside, so i started the computer up again. We don't get usual start up chime, instead we hear a simple loud beep, followed by a white screen with some text on it. We kinda panicked, so i don't remember everything it said, but it was asking us to either type 'mac-boot' to start up or type 'shut-down' to turn it off. The fans whirred up real fast too. It kinda reminded me of doing a firmware update or something strange like that, or it made me think that maybe I had held some strange combination of keys down while starting up, but there was nothing near the keyboard when i started up.

Any ideas as to what this was, and whether its something we should be worried about? Either way, she's backing up her important stuff right now.

Her hard drive is pretty full, i dunno if that could cause problems. Something like 10 gigs free out of 80 or something.

Thanks for your help.

 

[Santa Rosa]

Sounds like it tried to boot from the disk that was left in there.

Wouldnt worry about it unless it starts doing it all the time!!

Hope that helps!!

 

[jeffy.dee-lux]

Okay cool, thanks. That sounds reasonable. I forgot to mention that when i was turning the computer off the first time, I clicked shut down, and then closed the lid right away. On my MBP you can do that just fine, it'll shut down a couple seconds after you close the lid, but with this powerbook, if you click shut down then close the lid right away it'll go to sleep before actually shutting down. So I clicked shut down, closed the lid, it went to sleep, then i woke it up again and let it shut down properly. It was after all that that I tried starting it up again and that weird stuff happened.

Thanks for your help.

 

[anothermacaddic]

That happens to me if one of these variables is true, both pertaining to the cd or dvd. First if there is extra content on the dvd or cd made for computers on the disk they will be recognized as bootable on startup. This is just about every dvd out there these days, and many cd's are following the trend. Second, which is more probable in your case as the message you recieved seems to be concurrent of the dvd having security on it to prevent it from being accessed by booting to it to prevent a very easy pirating method.

 

[sr5878]

if you click shut down then close the lid right away it'll go to sleep before actually shutting down.

my mbp does this sometimes too