So I have this PowerBook G4 15" (1.6GHz DLSD "Hi Res" with Airport Extreme, running 10.5.8). She's served me well. But recently, I've really started to notice something extremely annoying with it. This problem has been there for a long time but as the computer is now my main computer after the untimely death of my PC earlier in the year I've done pretty much all my web surfing on this machine alone, and this problem pertains to web surfing and good grief has it become glaringly obvious.
Right so, sometimes I'll try to load a website and Safari will "get stuck". No two ways about it, it will start to load a site but appear not to get beyond the DNS lookup (as if I have no Internet connection, which I do), it'll sit there with no activity for a good 30 odd seconds if not longer until it eventually times out and craps out a "server not found" error. However this just isn't true; the server is there and working fine because I can access it on my mobile phone at the exact same time (using the same wireless network). Not only that but it can happen to sites I've been surfing at the time, I may go to load a page on the site and it'll do this nonsence completely (it seems) at random. It doesn't do it all the time. I can surf sometimes for hours with no issue, other times I can'[t go five minutes without it doing it to me. As is sod's law too it's usually when I'm trying to access something important that it does it to me (when time is of the essence also seems to be a catalyst though this all might just be a big fat coincidence it's still bloody irritating).
It gets weirder though. I figured out quite early on that I can "unstick" Safari by opening a new tab and loading a different website! It doesn't always work but when it does all other "stuck" websites suddenly begin to load as if there was never a problem. E.g. say I've got three tabs all with this brick wall problem happening, if I open a fourth tab and load facebook and it works then all of a sudden all three of the other tabs will load the site like they should have done in the first place.
If facebook doesn't work to unstick it, usually some other random site I type in will.
I had for a very long time suspected my wireless router, a billion 7800N, but the other day the wifi card in the router burnt out (apparently a common issue for them), so I've have to revert back to my old 3com router and the problem still persists.
Since I can load sites that are apparently non existent on the Mac perfectly fine at the same time on my mobile (running Android) while connected to the same wifi, that leads me to suspect the Mac is the harborer of the fault here and nothing else. What I don't know is if it's actually Safari or if it's instead the Airport software, or the card. Or perhaps something else?
Any insights? Anything I can perhaps do to try and track down the problem?
Right so, sometimes I'll try to load a website and Safari will "get stuck". No two ways about it, it will start to load a site but appear not to get beyond the DNS lookup (as if I have no Internet connection, which I do), it'll sit there with no activity for a good 30 odd seconds if not longer until it eventually times out and craps out a "server not found" error. However this just isn't true; the server is there and working fine because I can access it on my mobile phone at the exact same time (using the same wireless network). Not only that but it can happen to sites I've been surfing at the time, I may go to load a page on the site and it'll do this nonsence completely (it seems) at random. It doesn't do it all the time. I can surf sometimes for hours with no issue, other times I can'[t go five minutes without it doing it to me. As is sod's law too it's usually when I'm trying to access something important that it does it to me (when time is of the essence also seems to be a catalyst though this all might just be a big fat coincidence it's still bloody irritating).
It gets weirder though. I figured out quite early on that I can "unstick" Safari by opening a new tab and loading a different website! It doesn't always work but when it does all other "stuck" websites suddenly begin to load as if there was never a problem. E.g. say I've got three tabs all with this brick wall problem happening, if I open a fourth tab and load facebook and it works then all of a sudden all three of the other tabs will load the site like they should have done in the first place.
If facebook doesn't work to unstick it, usually some other random site I type in will.
I had for a very long time suspected my wireless router, a billion 7800N, but the other day the wifi card in the router burnt out (apparently a common issue for them), so I've have to revert back to my old 3com router and the problem still persists.
Since I can load sites that are apparently non existent on the Mac perfectly fine at the same time on my mobile (running Android) while connected to the same wifi, that leads me to suspect the Mac is the harborer of the fault here and nothing else. What I don't know is if it's actually Safari or if it's instead the Airport software, or the card. Or perhaps something else?
Any insights? Anything I can perhaps do to try and track down the problem?
