Need help diagnosing G5 problem

Discussion in 'PowerPC Macs' started by rumorsdan, Apr 2, 2009.

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  1. rumorsdan, Apr 2, 2009

    rumorsdan macrumors regular

    Joined:
    Mar 1, 2009
    #1
    My powermac G5 is getting a lot of screen freezes and it's hard to diagnose the cause. Sometimes the screen is just frozen (no mouse movement, no caps lock light on keyboard) and other times it freezes then I get a 50% black tint all over the screen which swipes from top to bottom and a black box in the middle of the screen with white type that says you need to restart.

    I can get anywhere from 2 mins of use to 2 hours before I get a crash. I've tested different drives and different systems (10.4 and 10.11). It's not system related and not the hard drive. I'm also fairly certain it's not ram. I've run the apple hardware test and it found not faults.

    I've taken the machine to two different apple tech's and neither could diagnose the problem.

    Has anyone experienced anything like this or can offer some advice on what to check or do?

    It's very frustrating! :(
     
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  2. edesignuk, Apr 2, 2009

    edesignuk Moderator emeritus

    edesignuk

    Joined:
    Mar 25, 2002
    Location:
    London, England
    #2
    You're getting what's called Kernel Panics.

    Could be bad memory. Do you have enough memory DIMMS that you can remove some for a while, and keep swapping them round to see if the problem goes away?
     
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  3. cal6n, Apr 2, 2009

    cal6n macrumors 68000

    cal6n

    Joined:
    Jul 25, 2004
    Location:
    Gloucester, UK
    #3
    I'm not saying this is the cause, but it was on my old MDD G4 and it took me weeks to diagnose. :mad:

    It wasn't a problem with the RAM, but it was a problem with the RAM slots. They had become tarnished and so, when the hardware test app "pinged" the registers everything seemed OK, but when the machine was expected to actually store and retrieve data, it all came tumbling down, so to speak.

    The answer was to buy some electronic cleaning solvent (I used Servisol Aero Kleene 50) and spray the RAM slots liberally (when powered-down, of course) and then re-seat the RAM a few times with some enthusiasm. After that, I had no further problems, and the machine is still in use in a friend's home-studio.
     
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