Came home and my iMac was OFF but was left on

[yaijic]

Total NOOB here. First off.. hello everyone =).

My summary:
I WAS a loyal PC user and switched to a Mac about 4-5 months ago. Overall I have been extremely happy with the switch and my only regret is that I hadn't done it sooner.

The problem I had:
Today I came home to find my iMac off but it was for sure ON before I had left for work. This is the first time this has ever happened. Upon powering my machine back up there was something about how the iMac had shut down due to a problem. It showed me details of the error but I have no idea what to make of it. The machine is running fine now and I'm posting this issue from the iMac right now.

My question is: Should I be concerned? How would you approach this? Is there anyway to see that log again to get a better understanding of what might have happened?

Thank you again for everything =)

 

[dtravis7]

That is pretty rare but it does happen to some. If it ever does it again, can you please make a note of the error and let us know? Sounds like maybe a Kernel Panic.

 

[yaijic]

Is there a log of some sort that I may be able to recover said error from?

 

[bobtomay]

Console, found in Applications / Utitlities

You may be searching for something that was nothing more than a power outage.
We use to have them occasionally at our office. Power would go off for a fraction of a second. You could see the lights flash and all the computers powered off - brief enough outage that not everything was affected by it.

I do not recommend, and I gave up years ago troubleshooting one time occurrences. It's almost always a time waster and you end up no closer to having an answer than before you started.

 

[yaijic]

You may be searching for something that was nothing more than a power outage.
We use to have them occasionally at our office. Power would go off for a fraction of a second. You could see the lights flash and all the computers powered off - brief enough outage that not everything was affected by it.

I do not recommend, and I gave up years ago troubleshooting one time occurrences. It's almost always a time waster and you end up no closer to having an answer than before you started.

I appreciate your input on this. I do have an APC 1000VA that the Mac is plugged in to. I just tested it by unplugging it (the APC) from the wall and left it for over a minute. The Mac did not even lightly dim despite the beeping from the APC.

If there is a way to search in particular in the Counsel let me know. I agree with you and am not going to burn a ton of time on this. I just want to have on record and do a google search on the key points of said log just to see what it is all about.

 

[FatherTime]

Total NOOB here. First off.. hello everyone =).

My summary:
I WAS a loyal PC user and switched to a Mac about 4-5 months ago. Overall I have been extremely happy with the switch and my only regret is that I hadn't done it sooner.

The problem I had:
Today I came home to find my iMac off but it was for sure ON before I had left for work. This is the first time this has ever happened. Upon powering my machine back up there was something about how the iMac had shut down due to a problem. It showed me details of the error but I have no idea what to make of it. The machine is running fine now and I'm posting this issue from the iMac right now.

My question is: Should I be concerned? How would you approach this? Is there anyway to see that log again to get a better understanding of what might have happened?

Thank you again for everything =)

I had this happen recently on a 24" 2008 iMac and after reseating the RAM it settled down.