My PB is crashing. Why? (Help)

[Astral Cars]

I have a 15" PB 1.5GHz that I got this summer. It's worked spectacularly for me but the last day or two it's frozen up on me a few times. I can still move the mouse but I clicking doesn't do anything and nothing on the keyboard works. It happened twice with dashboard open, but has happened without it open too. Also, I don't know if it's related, but a couple times upon restart the computer is muted and I don't know why. I repaired permissions earlier today and then did it again and it kept fixing stuff and I think it was the same stuff. I must have repaired permissions about 5 times. It's frozen since then though.

I guess I don't know how someone would have a solution for me. But maybe there are common causes for freezes like this. Any help or suggestions would be much obliged.

 

[mad jew]

Could be a few things. Answer a few questions I posted here concerning a similar issue and hopefully we'll be able to narrow it down.

 

[Astral Cars]

No third party RAM, SMART status is verified, no system hacks, no process doing anything unusual, about 25GB of free space, I had an uptime of 19 days and then 10.4.3 came out and I restarted and this started shortly after that, I have now restarted quite a bit, but most of them have been hard resets.

 

[generik]

Did you install cheap ram?

 

[mad jew]

For the sound problem, I recommend resetting the PRAM/NVRAM and then resetting the PMU if that doesn't work. I think the PMU will be more beneficial but is a more drastic measure so do PRAM first. On second thoughts, it doesn't really matter. This may also help your freezing but I'm not sure just yet. What apps do you have open during the freezes?

 

[Astral Cars]

I think the only apps I've had open is like, Mail, Safari, and iChat. Three of the freezes occurred with dashboard open.

Wait a sec, I guess I [accidentally] lied about the RAM, it's from crucial.

 

[FFTT]

Is your system actually crashing or just beach balling?

It could be something as simple as a firewall setting or that you need to clean out your cache's

Tiger Cache Cleaner works wonders.

While you're at it...........

I would shut down and "very carefully" check your second RAM slot.

Of course make sure you follow anti-static procedure.

Some 1.5 GHz 15" PowerBooks have been having a problem with the
2nd RAM slot burning up.

Check the slots and your RAM for any signs of overheating.

There's nothing wrong with using Crucial RAM as long as you ordered
the correct specifications

 

[Linkjeniero]

Also, try running the maintenance scripts. To do so, write the following in the terminal:

sudo periodic daily weekly monthly

Do that once a week or so. (There are graphical apps that do it as well, but why bother, it's only one line).

If that doesn't work: Do you have another computer? If you do, and the Mac hangs, you could try logging in via ssh and see if some process is causing trouble.

 

[mad jew]

There's nothing wrong with using Crucial RAM as long as you ordered the correct specifications

Any RAM can go bad so once you've followed all the advice of FFTT and Linkjeniero, if it still isn't working properly take the RAM out.

 

[Astral Cars]

Is your system actually crashing or just beach balling?

Not a kernel panic, not beach balling. Nothing appears to be wrong, but click does nothing nor does any sort of keyboard command.

 

[Brandhaus]

I just updated to 10.4.3, and i seem to have the same problem sometimes. When I open dashboard, everything freezes, though my itunes music is still playing, and I have to manually restart. This never happend to me until the update.

 

[contoursvt]

In OSX, is there some kind of log that can be looked at to see if there were any warnings or errors by the system, similar to Window NT and up with its event logs? I'm wondering if there might be some clue in there if such a file exists.