SEATTLE - The New Year's Eve celebration in Seattle got off to a less than spectacular start last night.

There was a technical problem with in the fireworks at the "New Year's at the Needle Show."

Just after the stroke of midnight, the "Star Wars" theme song played in the background, but the fireworks mysteriously stopped.

"What happened to the fireworks?" said KING 5 anchor Joyce Taylor.

Less than a minute later, a few bursts lit up the air, but it stopped again.

Finally, six minutes after midnight, the fireworks began in earnest, but appeared to only shoot out on the west side of the Needle.

Apparently the computer reboot didn't work, so technicians had to fire each firework sequence manually.

The eight-minute show ended up being about 12 minutes long, and outlasted the music.

"It was disappointment and panic but everybody, without a doubt, said let's get this together and make sure it goes off … and it did. It just went off in numerical sequence and not synchronized with the music," said Mary Bacarella, director of communications at the Space Needle.

Bacarella said a corrupted computer file caused the problems.

She said there was no indication prior to the show that there was a problem with the computer system. "They went through a run-through on that computer and it went off flawlessly," she said.

People who posted comments about the mishap on BloggerKING speculated on what operating system was used on the computer.

"Hey, is that Vista on that fireworks laptop?" said Chang.

"Powered by Windows 3.1," said "The Dude."

And finally, Chris had this comment: "In the land of Bill Gates, computers and high-tech savvy, we had to reboot 2008 because of a computer glitch. We'll be remembered for sure!"