Daily-ish Freezes on 15" AlBook (1.25)

First off, I'm running 10.3.3 with all the most recent software updates.

I've actually been having this problem over the past 2 or 3 weeks: my PB will freeze randomly once a day or so and force me to hit the power button. No kernel panics or error messages of any sort... my desktop will simply freeze. The mouse cursor is usually responsive for a few seconds before it, too, freezes on me. The only constant I've noticed throughout these random lockups is that I'm running iTunes, although this may just be because I'm constantly running iTunes. When I experience these lockups, the current song in iTunes will usually continue to play for a little while, and then cut in and out intermittently until it stops altogether. I'm running iTunes 4.5 now, but I was still having problems prior to the new version. Rebuilding the iTunes.plist file doesn't seem to have any effect.

I've tried to isolate the problem by switching apps on and off (Synergy, Quicksilver, and iChatStatus to name a few), but the problem remains. I've run the Disk Repair utility (booting off the Panther CD) as well repaired the disk permissions. I've also run the Extended Test on the Apple Hardware Test, which passed without a hitch.

I'm going to try resetting the PMU and then swapping out my RAM, but beyond that, I'm kind of running out of options. I'd like to avoid reinstalling the OS if at all possible. Funny thing is I have a friend who just bought a new 12" PB (1.33), and he's having the exact same problem. Anyhow, I'm at a bit of a loss, so I was curious if anyone else here had been experiencing the same problem.

Thanks.

I hardly every use Airport (the wireless signal strength is pretty weak in my room), although BT is contantly switched on for my Apple Wireless Keyboard.

As for what programs I'm running at startup, there aren't many outside of what I've already mentioned: Quicksilver, Synergy, iChatStatus, Apache and PostgreSQL for work, and a couple mouse daemons for my Logitech MX300 and the Wireless Kensington mouse I use occasionally. Westside guy, does anything in there look particularly suspicious to you?

Also, thanks for the quote, Frisco: if this PMU reset doesn't resolve the problem, I'll try disabling CrashReporter as well as defragging the drive. The VM problem is definitely suspect: I have noticed that most (all?) of my crashes have occurred when I have several apps running, some with quite a few windows open (roughly 20-30 windows total, on average). This may also explain why the crashes happen roughly every day, since it takes me a little while to accumulate all those open windows.

Just wanted to provide a quick clarification: I have a first generation 15" Albook from when they were first released last fall, so I don't think it's necessarily a hardware issue with the new Powerbooks.

Also a quick update regarding my situation: resetting the PMU didn't solve the problem. I've now disabled CrashReporter, and I'll be looking into defragging my hard drive with SpeedDisk or DiskWarrior.

Ran SpeedDisk last Thursday... haven't had any freezes since, so those of you who are having the same problems might want to give it a whirl. The program only reported moderate fragmentation for my system drive, but apparently it was enough to throw OS X's VM management out of whack.

Cross your fingers.

Does resetting the PMU have any adverse effects other than resetting the system clock and wiping out RAM disks (the latter of which is not applicable to me)? The Apple documentation online also suggested it as a last resort, though the concern seemed to stem mainly from the unlikeliness of it as a solution rather than any damage it might cause.

And yes, running the AHT was one of the first things I did, since I initially suspected a RAM issue. Defragmenting the drive seems to have done the trick, though, as I haven't had any lockups in the past 4 days.

Yeah, to be honest with you, it all seems it a little odd to me as well. I don't know if this is an issue that was introduced with 10.3.3, or if it didn't show up until two weeks ago simply because my HD wasn't fragmented enough up until that point. Either way, it seems like an issue with the OS and the way it handles paging since it appears to be so prevalent on other users' machines.