Crashes, disappearing files...

[Nermal]

OK, something has gone screwy in my system. A few days ago I thought my desktop looked emptier than usual, and indeed, some icons had disappeared. A few hours later, they were back again.

World of Warcraft has crashed 3 times in 2 days, but other than that I can't think of the last time it crashed. Adium seems to be quitting on its own accord.

I've rebooted, repaired permissions, and verified the drive. I have not made any hardware changes; I've never even had the memory door open (I'm on an Intel iMac and am using Apple memory).

I don't recall doing any major changes on the software side, I installed 10.4.7a but that was well before these problems started occurring. It is of course difficult to troubleshoot these things online, but any suggestions?

Thanks

Edit: Oh, VLC completely locked the system (had to hold the power button) when I tried to go into fullscreen a little while ago. I've never had that happen before, and it worked fine when I tried again.

 

[mad jew]

You running low on free hard drive space? Does Activity Monitor tell you anything?

 

[Nermal]

Heaps of space free (more than 50 gigs). Is there anything in particular I should watch out for in AM? I don't see anything out of place.

Edit: I'll run AHT and Memtest86 once I've finished this WoW run

Edit 2: AHT didn't find anything wrong. I'll leave Memtest running while I'm at work tomorrow.

Edit 3: Hmm, Memtest doesn't want to run. I wonder whether it has something to do with EFI.

 

[mad jew]

I don't have an Intel Mac so can't help with info re Memtest, but use Activity Monitor to see whether there's anything taking up lots of CPU cycles or lots of RAM.

Do you have other memory your could try with this? I reckon it'll either be the memory or the hard disk at this stage (despite the tests not confirming this). Of course, I could be wrong though.

 

[Mac Rules]

And theres me being led by Apple to believe that Macs are infallible.....lol

Sorry that this post was of no help at all.....

Cheers

 

[Nermal]

I don't have an Intel Mac so can't help with info re Memtest, but use Activity Monitor to see whether there's anything taking up lots of CPU cycles or lots of RAM.

Do you have other memory your could try with this? I reckon it'll either be the memory or the hard disk at this stage (despite the tests not confirming this). Of course, I could be wrong though.

I don't see anything unusual in AM. I don't have any spare memory but I'm using two sticks so I could take one out if I have to. I was also going to try a new user account but never got around to it

The system was crashing and misbehaving all weekend, but I didn't have a single problem yesterday. I'll see what happens today.

 

[mad jew]

Weirdness. Just remember too keep everything backed up well.

 

[Nermal]

Yeah, I try to keep all the important stuff backed up regardless of whether I think something's wrong or not. I haven't had any trouble so far today.

 

[mad jew]

Coolness. Hopefully one of the restarts fixed it.

 

[Nermal]

Still no more problems, so I'm prepared to drop it and just blame the position of the sun or something

 

[IJ Reilly]

Because of your "disappearing files" issue, I'm going to suspect you have a hard drive issue of some sort. I'd keep a sharp eye on that one, even if everything seems to be going well.

 

[mad jew]

I agree. Disappearing files can also be related to the RAM though.

 

[Nermal]

It's been a week, but WoW just crashed again

If it means anything to anyone:

Exception Raised!

 App:         /Applications/World of Warcraft/World of Warcraft.app
 Exception:   SIGSEGV
 Error Code:  0x85100086
 Time:        2006-07-22 13.50.28 NZST

 Error:       

---------------------------------------------------------

 

[mad jew]

SIGSEGV means it's memory related.

 

[Nermal]

One of the guys at work suggested reseating the memory, so I've done that. I also downloaded Rember, which I'll leave running while at work tomorrow.

 

[Nermal]

OK, I ran Rember overnight, and it didn't have a big red "FAIL" up on the screen this morning, but it didn't say it was successful either. How are you supposed to tell?

 

[mad jew]

I've never used Rember so I'm not sure of the specifics. However, it's very common for software-based tests to not find errors in failing hardware. The error you gave before is synonymous with bad memory. I think you should probably get it replaced before it does anything permanently damaging.

As always, I'm sure you're keeping everything backed up.