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Sat 3 Feb, 2007 10:03 am
This started a while ago as a very occasional thing. (I'll estimate 4 months ago, I'm not sure.) The screen would freeze, the mouse would stop working, and all I could do was turn off the power source and turn it back on. Once I turned the computer back on it seemed fine.
As it happened more frequently, I started to pay attention to circumstances. It seemed to often happen when I was minimizing windows. (I usually have 5-10 windows active at a time, with the inactive ones minimized, so there is a lot of maximizing and minimizing as I rotate amongst them.) I had the "genie" effect set, (a twisty animation for min + max) which is kind of complicated so I thought maybe if I changed to something more straightforward that would help. It did, for a while (maybe an illusion). Then I started having problems again anyway.
I changed over to using tabs instead of windows, so I wouldn't have to do all of that maximizing and minimizing. That helped the most of anything.
It still freezes though, usually when I first turn it on or when I'm closing stuff down at the end of the day.
Mail seems to be a big problem too. It froze twice this morning when I first turned it on and tried to open Mail. Not sure where that fits in to everything.
I've done some checking and think it might have something to do with a video card. Have also written to a mac guru I found online. Any ideas or advice here would be most appreciated, though.
"About this mac" details:
Mac OS X
Version 10.3.9
Processor: 1.25 Ghz PowerPC G4
Memory: 512 MB DDR SDRAM
Thanks!
Two more things:
I use AirPort (wireless internet connection). (Internet connection itself is DSL.)
When I was getting the "About This Mac" info I checked for software updates, there was a security update that hadn't been installed yet, installed it.
I had a similar problem when I first got my new mac - it turned out to be related to the jack to phone to modem connection. I took the phone itself off and never had the problem again (I have dsl).
I keep meaning to try adding the phone itself again, but keeping the modem/phone several feet from the computer. I don't know that distance matters any more, but it was a common remedy suggested when my old 1999 imac froze.
You can tell I don't understand what you are saying about wireless + dsl, so not sure you have a phone connection.
I would check in with BigDice. He used to have a Mac thread running around here, somewhere.
I was going to suggest rebuilding your dekstop but I don't think you need to do that any more with OSX.
I did find this though..
http://www.creativetechs.com/tips/quicktips_70-tech.html
Since OSX treats each icon as a window, with only 512 of memory a lot of icons could be hogging it all.
My desktop is really clean, actually. Not many icons.
Just froze again. Sigh. This time, I was organizing my email (via Mail) and was trying to put something in the trash. "Trash" was off-screen -- usually I just drag the item to the top of the screen and the screen moves until I can see what I want, than drop it there. This time it got "stuck" at the top of the screen. The rainbow pinwheel turned for a while and I hoped it might pull through (become un-stuck) but nada.
parados wrote:Since OSX treats each icon as a window
While my desktop is clean, as I mentioned before I used to use scads and scads of windows (now I use tabs). Could the scads of windows have caused this problem? (And if so, how would I fix it? More memory?)
ossobuco wrote:I had a similar problem when I first got my new mac - it turned out to be related to the jack to phone to modem connection. I took the phone itself off and never had the problem again (I have dsl).
I keep meaning to try adding the phone itself again, but keeping the modem/phone several feet from the computer. I don't know that distance matters any more, but it was a common remedy suggested when my old 1999 imac froze.
You can tell I don't understand what you are saying about wireless + dsl, so not sure you have a phone connection.
Sort of, and this could be a good lead, thanks. I have a modem + dsl that are thataway (points right, about 10 feet), and then they are attached to an AirPort device (all within a few feet of each other, the whole caboodle about 10 feet away from the computer). Then I have an AirPort card in the computer. The Airport transmitter thingie (my technological savvy reaches its limits here) then... transmits... to the thingie in my computer. Et voila, wireless internet connection.
Here's some info on where to find the crash logs. They might be helpful to point to which program is causing the crash.
http://www.macfixit.com/article.php?story=20060309075929717
You may have to turn on crash reporting first.
How to can be found here
http://macs.about.com/cs/osx/ht/crash_reporting.htm
You have an old OS X system, sozobe. You should upgrade, and afterwards
your problems should disappear.
It sounds like a memory issue. You could try upgrading and see if that does it for you. How long have you had it?
[Ah, it's about the computer and not that soz' hubby is cold]
:-) Walter...
We bought this computer fall of 2004...
An upgrade is supposedly in the works already, I just emailed E.G. and asked him what the latest was there. Do you guys agree with CJ that it'll help? Maybe that plus more memory, see what happens?
I don't know enough about the versions to know for sure if it would help, but if there is a memory leak that was subsequently fixed in a later version, then it will help. It could also be a hardware problem, which won't be fixed by an upgrade. But it's worth a shot, IMO.
Hardware problem it is.
It has been freezing more and more -- the other day I had to prepare a timesheet in Excel and then send it as an email attachement, and that made it freeze about a dozen times in a row in the space of an hour. Extremely frustrating.
E.G. did a more comprehensive investigation and came up with this:
http://www.apple.com/support/emac/repairextensionprogram/
Here's a discussion about it, with more details:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=431517&tstart=0
Basically, it's a hardware problem with machines sold within the time we bought it and with serial numbers that include ours. It should be a free repair, if that's definitely what it is. E.G. opened up the back of the computer and looked last night, there are symptoms of that problem (some thingies are bulging ominously, though there isn't any leakage yet). So hopefully this will all be fixed soon. (Will bring it in today but not sure how long it will take to have it fixed, if I go bye-bye for a while that's what's up.)
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