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My mac crashes..... alot. please help me :(

T

thedommer

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jan 13, 2008
178
4
Hi! having tons of issues saddly. for one I seem to have to reboot all the time. Ive posted before about one issue. when im trasfering throug the network a whole pile of files if I do ANYTHING else everything starts freezing up and I cant forcequit anything or shut down OSX.

Now im noticing it in other areas. for one sometimes it sees using itunes causes the same thing. basically these crashes are always a chain reaction. on program freezes. then if I try to close any other programs they freeze to. then OSX wont shut down.

Ive attached a picture of something that looks strange too.

Im at a loss here. I came from a terrible PC and I really hope I havent hit bad luck again. I spent way to much on this machine because its supposed to be my savior....but now its crashing as bad as my PC...is not worse :(
 

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I did repair disk permissions and it seems there were a few issues.

I keep getting this when I click repair disk permissions:

ACL found but not expected on "Applications/Utilities".
ACL found but not expected on "Application".
ACL found but not expected on "Library".

hopefully the repair disk permission helped. we shall see in due time....
 
I had the same issues with my new Mac Pro.

In fact... it kernel panic'd on me in the middle of a fresh OS install.

Turns out, after much hair pulling... the RAM was bad from Apple.

D'oh!

Run the hardware test (boot off of boot cd... holding down the d key)... and see how your memory tests out!

Mine failed each time!

New memory... MAN it's a PERFECT machine... hasn't crashed ONCE since! :)

Good Luck!
 
did the hardware test. all hardware is fine.

Im still getting so much freezing and crashing. its as bad as vista.

right now my mail is frozen. I have to restart to get it back as force quit isnt doing anything.

still wondering what this means:

I keep getting this when I click repair disk permissions:

ACL found but not expected on "Applications/Utilities".
ACL found but not expected on "Application".
ACL found but not expected on "Library".

any help is GREATLY appreciated. I guess Ill call up apple tomorrow and try to figure out what the hell is wrong.

I find a lot of stuff goes wonky whenever time machine is doing its thing in the background. although it seems like everything goes wonky at random times.....
 
First thing I would try is removing everything third party except monitor, keyboard and mouse ... Then reset SMC, PRAM, and do a fresh partition / new install of 10.5 plus all the updates.

See if the problem exists.

Then install iLife and all the updates.

See if the problem exists.

Keep doing this and testing the machine out until you discover the culprit... Most likely a rogue piece of software or hardware causing all your problems!

Good Luck!!!
 
how do Ireset SMC, PRAM?

whats the combo updated.

does that mean I have to reinstall all my programs from scratch? :(

took me a whole weekend to set this thing up. Time is not something I have a lot of.....thats why I got a mac...
 
To reset the SMC, simply unplug EVERY CABLE for about 5 minutes.

To reset the PRAM, hold down the Apple key + the Option key + the P key + the R key at the same time... immediately after you hear the startup chime. Keep holding it down as the machine continues to restart and chime... keep holding it down until it restarts and re-chimes about 4 times.

If that doesn't fix it... then... you're only choice if you want to find out what's causing it is to do that.

Macs are wonderful things... but they are still susceptible to ill-written programs or incompatible third party hardware devices screwing things up!
 
i had ram failing but it showed not up as bad in the hardware test (at first). my mac got gradually worse, i lost an entire HD because the mac would write garbage to the HD, the geniuses at apple thought it was the HD. Only after i ran the hardware test repeatedly the ram showed as faulty. it got worse and eventually always showed a bad ram stick. exchanged the ram and no problems since then.

take the ram out and put it in different slots.

in older macs a airport card that wasn't plugged in fully caused random crashes.

same is true for HD cables.
 
Ignore ACL

thedommer, those ACL remarks in disk utility can safely be ignored.
 
trying the PRAM thing now.

On thing I noticed about program crashes on this computer is that they NEVER are just a program crash or freeze. each crash I have a program freeze I cant force quit it. I have to turn the computer off and on using the power button.

between yesterday and today I only had one freeze. so things are a bit better. but are obviously not solved.

thanks for all your help guys.

tried the pram thing. after the firstchime I held it down and the machine restarted and chimed again....but then it went into OSX. I only got 2 chimes altogether. tried it again and no luck. Maybe im doing something wrong....
 
make sure you are holding down all 4 keys together... and DO NOT LET THEM GO BETWEEN CHIMES!!!!!
 
You have to hold down the PRAM key combo, until you computer cycles on and off three times. If it wont let you do this, then you should take you mac in to have it looked at.
Can you try a third party memory checker like memtest ?
It sure sound like a bad stick of ram
You can try a complete erase and install
 
alright!

so we are making progress.

I downloaded memtest86+ v2.01
its running right now on my mac. yes im back on my PC :(

this is what came up so far in scary red:

Tst Pass Failing Address Good Bad Err-Bits Count
--- ----- ---------------------- ------ ----- ----------- ------
3 0 00000100020 - 1.0MB 80808080 80808000 00000080 1
3 0 000001003d0 - 1.0MB 80808080 800b2e80 008bae00 2
3 0 000001003d0 - 1.0MB 80808080 80808000 008b2e00 3
3 0 00000100020 - 1.0MB 80808080 80808000 00000080 4

Can someone tell me what this means? and which ram slot the damaged ram would be in.

Also in settings it says:
Chipset : Intel 5400B (ECC : Detect / Correct) Scrub+ - FSB : 399MHz
Settings : RAM: 399 MHz (DDR798) / CAS :6-6-6-18 / Dual Channel

does that mean my ram is only running at 399 MHz?????

anyways. im excited its damaged ram. that means I can send it back and them my computer will work great again. YAY!
 
The most common reason for Macs panicking or freezing is bad RAM - particularly if you've installed third party sticks. If you have, then try taking it out, putting the original RAM back in and then trying one of the apps that was making it crash.

There's also a lot of misinformation in this thread.

To do an SMC reset, you need to unplug everything (and by that the power cord from the machine rather than from the wall) and wait 15 seconds (5 minutes is excessive)

And if you do a PRAM reset, it should only chime twice.
 
If you are under apple care warranty, make a genius bar appointment. They are paid to solve these problems.
 
add this to the top ones:

7 0 00000082bc0 - 0.1MB f8b23792 f8b23712 00000080 67
7 0 000000561b0 - 0.3MB 6b848051 6b848051 00000080 68
7 0 0000000d5e0 - 0.8MB 91487c3e 91487c3e 00000080 69

And yes I know I could go to the genious bar. but now that I know it is ram Ill just send it back ifits the 3rd part ram and if its the apple one Ill show up and switch it. If the computer is still wonky after that then I will go to the genious bar. Its actually pretty dificult for me to get there as I work 6 days a week, dont have a car and am pretty far from the nearest apple store.

Im curious if in those numbers I just wrote it tells me which stick(s) is damaged.

thanks for the info on the 2 chimes! because thats all I was getting :)
 
um.... looks like I might have to go to the genious bar afterall......

according to memtest86+ every piece of ram has errors..... that doesnt make sense. is that even possible????

if its showing all ram has having errors is it possible that its the actual mac that has the problems. or is memtest86+ messed up?

2 of these ram sticks are from apple and 2 are from OWC. seems really strange that I would get 4 stciks of defective ram.....
 
Try removing the RAM you added and see what happens. You could also try reseating them but at this point you're better off subtracting this variable entirely.
 
I'd stick with JUST the apple ram for a few days. If it still does it... replace it with JUST the aftermarket ram for a few days.

I had same problems... I initially thought it was my aftermarket (I assumed) ram being bad...

Turns out it was bad APPLE ram.

A trip to the genius bar fixed it... but they were out of REPLACEMENT PART ram... so they opened up a box of RETAIL APPLE RAM... and... to my horror...

Would you believe that the RETAIL APPLE RAM actually even LOOKS DIFFERENT than what they ship standard , at least in my machine?

Whatever it was... cured my problem.

Thats the best way to isolate it, though!

2 gigs will work fine... so try both and see where the culprit is!
 
ok so apparently memtest86+ displays all ram errors and isnt exactly accurate. so forget everything I just said. I dont know if it is the ram :(

running memtestOSX right now hopefully I learn something. if not im off to the apple store. Ill let you know.

thanks for all your help!
 
its fixed.....?

so I used memtestOSX and tested all the ram. it tested fine.

I started my mac again (love that 30 second boot up time) and ran it through some stress tests. I opened:

entire adobe suite/logic/protools/word/safari/mail/itunes/adium/ initiated a time machine backup and started a transfer from another PC of large amounts of data.

and nothing. its 100% stable. WTF. doing that before. or even half that. would crash the machine.

a friend mentioned that maybe OSX initiated a once a week script and fixed the problem.... I dont know. either way its PERFECT right now. hopefully it stays that way.
 
soooooo apparently it wasn't stable. crashes came back...not that long afte rmy last message :( and in a moment of stress I zeroed the drive and reinstalled OSX.

...We are going onto the third day without a single crash. looks like it was just a buggy install. very excited. this thing is finally running like a dream. now I can get down to using it for what I got it for. to be creative!
 
Often, just a fresh wipe and re-install is all that is needed.

It's actually the first thing I recommend doing when you get your new machine.

Glad to hear it's working better!
 
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