Crash? Why?

[Starwars5000]

First, I just got my iPad about a week ago. It is a wonderful device... Except it crashed randomly one time. It basically started lagging like crazy and apps were not functioning correctly. And then it just turns off. I attempt to power it on and I see the apple logo but then it simply disappears. It did not power on. I repeat the process multiple times and it still will not turn on. I ended up simply doing a soft reset by pressing the power and home buttons at the same time and it turned on. Anyone else had this happen? Anyone know the cause or any way to prevent it?

 

[Mickeylittle]

It could be any number of things such as a bad app that is installed or maybe going to long between reboots. I believe that as good as IOS is it can work like windows in a way. So there are times that things just need a good cleansing such as the soft reset that you mentioned. Just my opinion.

 

[Starwars5000]

Thank you for the feedback. I will try to reboot it on a daily basis from now on and keep the system clean. (I have only powered off the device twice including the crash.) I don't think it's a bad app. For I was simply surfing the Internet when it happened.

 

[Mickeylittle]

What's interesting is if you double click the home button to pull up the recent open apps list and scroll thru the list. If you're like me sometimes there will be 60-80 apps in that list and those are apps that have been opened but not fully closed. Remnants of those apps are bound to remain floating around somewhere no matter how good Apple claims they've got it under control. Again... just my opinion.

 

[Starwars5000]

So you're basically saying even though you "close" an app, it's remnants will still linger around? That is entirely possible. It has to remember the last session inside that app somehow.

 

[KevinJS]

So you're basically saying even though you "close" an app, it's remnants will still linger around? That is entirely possible. It has to remember the last session inside that app somehow.

That's right, and it remembers where it's supposed to be by using RAM. Memory management should prevent crashes, but in practice, it doesn't always happen. Best to do a bit of spring cleaning every now and then.

 

[Starwars5000]

Huh, that would also explain the extreme lag. The thing that still confuses me still, is why it wouldn't turn on once it had crashed until I did the soft reset.

 

[Mickeylittle]

I really haven't noticed much lag but I guess under the right circumstances you can get it to do so. Any time I am doing something on my iPad and thing aren't going like I expect I just press home and try again because I'm impatient. If it has been a while since I've shut down and restarted, I'll do that, especially if I've been doing a bunch of app downloading or deleting or file transfers, those types of things.

I work my iPad's butt off and I expect it to spit and sputter some, but it doesn't do it much!

 

[Roy Rob]

I have just done a quick experiment. I had 26 apps in the task bar and had 263 mb of free ram. I closed them all and this increased my free ram to 312 mb, 49 mb is almost 10% of my total ram on an iPad 2. I also did a reboot, which you are calling a soft reset, and this did not remove any apps from the task bar. The reboot saves all your current settings the same way that windows does. To clear an app and all remnants from ram you have to close the app on the task bar. Hope this helps.

 

[Mickeylittle]

I have just done a quick experiment. I had 26 apps in the task bar and had 263 mb of free ram. I closed them all and this increased my free ram to 312 mb, 49 mb is almost 10% of my total ram on an iPad 2. I also did a reboot, which you are calling a soft reset, and this did not remove any apps from the task bar. The reboot saves all your current settings the same way that windows does. To clear an app and all remnants from ram you have to close the app on the task bar. Hope this helps.

Just to be sure, are you pressing and holding both the home button and the power button and not letting them go until the iPad shuts off and the Apple appears?

 

[Roy Rob]

Just to be sure, are you pressing and holding both the home button and the power button and not letting them go until the iPad shuts off and the Apple appears?

Correct, a reset is power off and back on, a reboot is as described above.

 

[skimonkey]

Just so we are all on the same page with the actual terms...for restart and reset on an iPad:

iPhone, iPad, iPod touch: Turning off and on (restarting) and resetting

 

[Starwars5000]

Mickeylittle, when I said extreme lag, I meant before the crash.

 

[Roy Rob]

Just so we are all on the same page with the actual terms...for restart and reset on an iPad:

iPhone, iPad, iPod touch: Turning off and on (restarting) and resetting

Thank you ski, finally some clarity in terms. Pity the term reset is also used in Settings for a completely different purpose.

 

[skimonkey]

Thank you ski, finally some clarity in terms. Pity the term reset is also used in Settings for a completely different purpose.

Yes--thought it might be good for all of us to be on the same page with the terms! Yes, the reset means very different things when resetting from the iPad settings and careful thought must be used when pressing the erase all content!