major 10.3.2 weirdness -- hardware or software??

[f-matic]

hello all,

i've been running along fine with panther so far on a pismo powerbook g3 500, and just updated my system with all these recent apple updates. since moving to 10.3.2, however, my system has become really unstable... i had four crashes in two days, all in pretty much the same way, in which one application would become unresponsive, and then if i tried to move to another application using the dock the system would freeze entirely (spinning beachball) and need to be powered down manually.

after the fourth crash, OS X got stuck in the initial gray boot-up screen for about 30 minutes before finally giving me the "You need to power down your computer" panic message. I restarted about three more times, each with the same message, but on the fourth the system managed to boot up after about 10 minutes. after boot up, i repaired disk permissions (nothing much came up) and rebooted, and this reboot came up a lot quicker, about 2 minutes.

unfortunately the problems don't end there -- since then all sorts of strange things happen, like if i copy songs to my ipod from itunes, the mouse slows down massively, windows pop up all over the place, and occasionally there's a blast of weird static through the speakers! and files would suddenly disappear on the finder while trying to browse files on a DVD-R?!

i'm running a pretty clean system -- the only external i've added is an ichathelper preference pane -- and haven't added any new hardware or software in the last week or so. RAM is 512mb from crucial, apple-verified, and the hard drive is a year old 40gb. and like i said, 10.3.0 and 10.3.1 handled really well on the same setup. is anyone else experiencing anything similar on 10.3.2? or am i seeing the results of some kind of hardware failure?

thanks for any help,

nick

 

[Stevp1]

same here

I've got a 2 week old PB17" with the same issues. I have random freezes and lockups. Mine froze on that grey splash screen and a call to Apple tech got merely a "reformat your hard drive" answer. I'm getting tired of it. What's going on? I just came back to the Mac after a 10 year bout with windows and this is what I come back to?

 

[f-matic]

thanks for the response

are you running 10.3.2? last i checked my computer got stuck on the gray splash screen for four hours and counting... something screwy is going on! and i have no interest in reformatting my drive -- i had to reformat two weeks ago to put panther on in the first place! did you have any problems before 10.3.2?

let me know if you have any luck sorting it out.. i'm going to take closer look at the problem today and will let you know if i find anything.

best.
nick

 

[Stevp1]

10.3.2

Yes, it's 3.2 that I had the issue with. So far, it's been ok since the re-format (ok with the usual kernel panics and freezes).

 

[twelve]

same problems. panther was running fine until i made the recent updates and programs now crash and hang all the time until i have to reboot. have done ten reboots in two days. does anyone know what is going on here?

 

[Abstract]

Sorry, I haven't had any problems.

Can't you consider the possibility of reformatting? It may save yourself hours upon hours of down time, and may end your headaches.

 

[emdezet]

Hi all!

I agree whole-heartedly with the critics of 10.3.2. My G5 1,8S has shown the same stability issues that strike out of nowhere. I blame Apple for releasing beta-grade updates (OS, Firmware, don´t know which) through their Software Update.

My G5 has been giving me nothing but crap lately: Finder, iApps, Safari, you name it! Ironically third-party software has proven the most stable.

I for one am going back to 10.3.1 TONITE by either clean or custom installation from the retail cds.

 

[tjwett]

I've been having some very strange full-on lockups myself. I was a bit concerned that it may be the Airport Extreme card I just installed but maybe not. 12" PowerBook 867.

 

[f-matic]

follow up....

after the week of 10.3.2 hell, i decided to unplug all external equipment (mainly firewire hard drives and my ipod), unplug my expansion bay CD drive (this is a pb g3 500) and let the machine sit for a while to see what happens. so far, it's been stable, although not without weirdness -- my itunes / ipod transferring is still really screwy, with the mouse becoming really laggy, itunes moving all over the screen, and all sorts of weird **** happening! and occasionally the internal hard drive starts clicking as if it can't read data -- but this is a newish hard drive, less than a year old, so i doubt the drive is dying.

so i still have no idea what the underlying problem is. and to answer the question of why i won't reformat and reinstall, i use several pieces of software that depend on authorization for a particular drive, and i'd really rather not deal with the hassle of having to e-mail all my authorizations out again and wait for the response. besides, don't we make fun of windows for the constant need for reformatting and reinstalling? i really shouldn't have to go through all that hassle just to update my system....

best,
np

 

[f-matic]

posted two soon!

oh, the irony.. i finish posting this, went to unmount my ipod after transferring tracks, and had the usual system lock up -- three-fingered salute brought me to a grey screen, eventually fixed by powering off and powering on again.

guess my 3.2 issues aren't fixed yet!

 

[yamabushi]

Just to be safe, why not perform a virus scan?