Yesterday I had my MBA attached to backup devices (never had a problem with them before) and went to work in the garden some hours.
I usually put it to sleep before leaving it unattended but might have left it on this time. I think it was over 50% charged.
Anyway when I ret’d it would not respond. Plugged into electric and booted, it sat at 1%, charging for a good 10 minutes til increasing to 5% and I noticed the time had reset to sometime in the 1970s. There was also a notice about a crash and option to ignore or get report. I clicked to get a report but cannot find one.
About the only thing different from usual usage scenarios was that Launch Control app was running so that I could try to find out why Safari keeps launching itself.
How can I find out what caused the glitch? Where would the Report be saved?
In case it was something to do with 15.6, I updated to 15.6.1 and went thru all the System Settings as is my habit and found a handful of settings had changed.
Shut it down end of day and left on charger overnight. This morning seems pretty much back to normal but I haven’t checked everything.
Haven’t seen anything this disturbing with my Macs in many years.
1Jan 1970 is the base date for Unix and some other computer systems+. It is the default date if the computer boots without knowing the date. The issue with PCs used to be because a small onboard battery had gone flat. Not sure what it means for a MBA.
This is weird when you also have the Safari problem but I don’t see how they could be related.
Others might be able advise if it could be a sign of a hacked system.
On 18.01.2038 Unix systems with 32-bit dates might reset to zero (ie 1.1.1970) unless there is a patch or OS update.
The date I don’t recall precisely, I was so alarmed that I was not properly taking notes but I’m sure I saw “Apr” and “197x” (not “x” but some ending number in the 1970s) when I went to update the time and date.
I don’t suppose the Safari thing is related either, was meant as add’l info as to what was out of my normal computing routine, that running Lauch Control app was the only out of ordinary thing and I have no experience with the app and had recently installed it.
My Battery Settings were also unchanged, I had nothing set to keep running until the battery dies as far as I know.
Generally speaking after a crash that resets the clock like this, is it a good idea to run any particular diagnostics or use and startup key commands for (don’t know if is sitll applicable on an M2 MBA) resetting PRAM etc?
So did you find any odd-looking processes displayed in Launch Control? If you can post a screen shot of the list from LC (I’d start with just first three Service Types selected in the first column to show the most meaningful), someone here might be able to help you identify a suspect.
Thanks @fischej, over the weekend I had launched LC but found it way over my head. All I could do was check all the boxes along the left side to get stuff to display in the other columns (default settings showed very little).
Then I searched for ‘Safari’ and got 5 or 6 results, one showing ‘OK’ and the others ‘Running’, which I found odd as Safari was not running at the time. Anyway, over my head.
I think I left LC running and did other stuff til the crash and haven’t launched it since. I am not even sure how to use it to find historical activity yet.
Got to rush away now but will aim to post the screen shot later, thanks again for the suggestion!
Yeah, as far as I know Launch Control has no analytical capabilities. When it’s running, it’s just sitting there (like Preview, or Microsoft Word), not doing anything in the background.
Searching for “Safari” was a good idea. Would be interesting to see those results too.
Then, if you find anything, it will probably be way over our heads, but copying it and giving it to an AI might get you an answer. The same goes for info in the Launch Control app.