'Macs don't crash'....mine does.

silvine

My iMac running Snow Leopard has been freezing a lot recently. I'm pretty sure it's not a virus as I've scanned the machine with an up to date copy of ClamX AV. The only two new pieces of software I've installed recently are Wake On Lan, Safari 5, Chrome and DropBox. It generally freezes when I'm messing around in Finder.

I restored the machine to an earlier date with Time Machine but that didn't work; the computer just froze on boot. I then reinstalled Snow Leopard, using my CD, and the Mac booted fine. When it loaded, I was surprised to find that all my files and applications were still there. I thought it'd be a completely fresh install?

However, the machine crashed again this morning. Is there anyway of finding out what's causing the problem? I notice it generates a report that I can send to Apple but it looks pretty indecipherable...

Sad Professor

To do a clean install using the SL disc you have to go through Disk Utility, otherwise it will just do an archive and install.

Anyway it sounds hardware related. Boot from the install disc holding d and run a hardware test. Did you install any RAM recently?

Might also be your hard drive failing. Verify disk using Disk Utility and check the SMART status.

conor.hogan.2

I noticed my macbook crashed for the first time the other day.

It may have to do with me having about 40 tabs open across three browsing while watching several livestreams and blogs about wwdc tho....

Sad Professor

Failed hard drive and bad RAM aside, I can honestly say that I don't recall having a single OS crash since 10.2. And I almost never restart. OS X is incredibly stable.

holystungun9

Me too. In the last month my macbbook pro has frozen about thirty times. This morning safari has quit three times( quit when I went to add a tab or look at the gallery of past websites. But it is not just safari. I tunes has frozen many times, beach balls of death on a never ending cycle. Actually in Safari, I have gotten the beachball just for scrolling down the screen. I went away hoping it would unfreeze but it didn't so I had to force a shutdown. I have to say in the last two weeks I have forced it to shut down maybe ten, twelve times. I don't want to do this but i have let it running many times and it will not snap out of it. I have resorted to using my netbook for internet but I am trying again this morning to see if I can see and record when it freezes. It is really bothering me now. I am oversees but I do have the three year apple care so I think that at this stage I will have to go to them. They are a reseller but when I bought in the states the guy told me that they would honor any claims. I sure hoe so and i am not looking froward to the conversation as my spanish will be stretched. I have super duper s if by anychance I get the disk wiped or get new machine, this is meant to transfer all my stuff I hope. Any other advice before I hand my machine over the counter to who I hope are professionals ? What reliable downloadable sftware is there to run a scan and see if it is something simple before I hand it over? thanks guys

Sad Professor

holystungun9:

Did you verify the hard disk using Disk Utility?

chicken_food

Iv had some major Itunes crashing issues in the past month or so. It will work for about 2 mins and then as if its searching for something will just become non responsive.
Tried reinstalling itunes twice, it fixed it once but then hardrive failed (6years old) and now its back to annoying the hell out of me.

holystungun9

Sad Professor wrote: »

holystungun9:

Did you verify the hard disk using Disk Utility?

No I will try that later. Im on my netbook now. I had to force shutdown again after I tryed to open Itunes. Being mac newb, I presume the disk utility is a utility already on my macbook and I just open it up.

Sad Professor

Yeah, you'll find it in Applications > Utilities.

silvine

I've verified the hard disk and SMART status. I also used Onyx to run maintenance scripts. I installed RAM but that was about six months ago. I noticed one day the Mac was running at 70C so I turned up the fans.

Perhaps something melted?! Is there any other way I can find out what hardware is causing the problem?

It's a 2008 iMac btw.

EDIT: Just saw that about holding D, trying it now.

ZENER

There was an issue with Macs of that era. A graphics card problem cause it to freeze with some visual artifacts on screen as the problem got worse.

Sent a 24" model to be repaired recently to Mactivate.

Ken

silvine

Ran the hardware test. It said there are no problems.

So does that mean it must be a software issue?