Macbook crashing

[jezbangor]

So, recently my Macbook has taken to crashing. It happens when I have a few programs running, but nothing more than the triumvirate of Chrome, TweetDeck and iTunes usually. Tonight though as it crashed, instead of just freezing it went to an orange/peach screen.

It's just over two years old, so shouldn't be that messed up.

Do I need to start worrying?

 

[r0k]

So, recently my Macbook has taken to crashing. It happens when I have a few programs running, but nothing more than the triumvirate of Chrome, TweetDeck and iTunes usually. Tonight though as it crashed, instead of just freezing it went to an orange/peach screen.

It's just over two years old, so shouldn't be that messed up.

Do I need to start worrying?

Do you have flash disabled in Chrome? If you have 20 or 30 tabs open averaging 5 to 10 instances of flash per tab, since Chrome likes to put each instance of flash in its own "sandbox", that's a huge amount of memory.

Itunes is a pig anyway so running anything plus iTunes is like throwing a wet blanket on the processor. Is there a reason you leave iTunes running? I mean you have to have it open to back up or update your iPhone OS and you need it open to buy music or videos on your Mac but when you're done you can close it and get some serious cpu back.

You mention tweetdeck and that doesn't strike me as a memory/cpu hog.

I have a 3+ year old Macbook and I find that when it gets slow, it's most often because I left a browser memory leaking for days and come back to a nearly frozen machine. Chrome is fast and relatively clean but it needs to be shut down from time to time. I use FF 4 and I stopped using Chrome because FF 4 works well enough for me but I also use flashblock because FF 4 is like Chrome in that it sandboxes all instances of flash.

Lastly, there is the possibility you have a hardware problem that is uncovered by putting a lot of load on the CPU or a lot of stuff in memory. There are utilities that can run basic tests on your Mac. One set used to come free with MobileMe and was called techtooldeluxe. I seem to remember it's also available as shareware without MobileMe. There is also an Apple hardware test that came on your install disks (if you can find them).

 

[jezbangor]

Do you have flash disabled in Chrome? If you have 20 or 30 tabs open averaging 5 to 10 instances of flash per tab, since Chrome likes to put each instance of flash in its own "sandbox", that's a huge amount of memory.

I rarely have more than 3 or 4 tabs open at a time

Itunes is a pig anyway so running anything plus iTunes is like throwing a wet blanket on the processor. Is there a reason you leave iTunes running? I mean you have to have it open to back up or update your iPhone OS and you need it open to buy music or videos on your Mac but when you're done you can close it and get some serious cpu back.

I didn't realise it was such a hog. I shall be more careful with it in future.

Lastly, there is the possibility you have a hardware problem that is uncovered by putting a lot of load on the CPU or a lot of stuff in memory. There are utilities that can run basic tests on your Mac. One set used to come free with MobileMe and was called techtooldeluxe. I seem to remember it's also available as shareware without MobileMe. There is also an Apple hardware test that came on your install disks (if you can find them).

I shall try and dig it out when I get home.





Many thanks for this. Have you ever heard of it going to a peach/orange background though?