OS X crashing, but recovers when Airport is switched off

[Heb1228]

Ok guys, this is a weird one, I know. I've never heard of anything like it. Here's what's going on...

I will be doing something normal, most often surfing the net in Safari, when Safari will stop responding to anything. All I get is beachball. Then slowly, one by one, the other apps open will stop responding to anything, including Finder. Also, new programs will not launch, so I can't open up Terminal (or anything else). When an app tries to start, the icon just bounces forever in the dock. About 15 or 20 seconds after it starts having this problem, the Apple in the menu bar won't respond either so I can't open up the force quit box. It gets to the point where no program will do anything but beachball and I have to do a hard restart.

Yesterday, I figured out how to stop this whole thing. When I notice it starting, I go up to the Airport icon in the menu bar and turn airport off. Everything comes right back online like nothing ever happened. The I turn airport back on and keep going.

Does anybody have any idea what is going on?

 

[mad jew]

That's weird. Have you tried deleting the AirPort preferences?

 

[Heb1228]

That's weird. Have you tried deleting the AirPort preferences?

I'll try it and see if it helps.

Any ideas on what could be causing this though? The only thing I've installed lately was the Java update, and I don't know if the problem started at the same time or not. For awhile, I thought it was my iDisk trying to Autosync, but I turned my iDisk off completely and am still having the problems.

 

[mad jew]

I can't think why it's happening. Is it the same across all accounts?

 

[Heb1228]

Good question, I haven't tried creating a new account yet, this is the only one I ever use.

One other thing I forgot to mention... It always seems to start right after I click on a link or bookmark. It just hangs at that point and never leaves the current page for the new one. Its happened a few other ways as well, but it always seem to be when something is trying to access the internet for something.

Its kind of like its requesting information that it never gets, and it just decides to crap out until it gets it. But then when you turn off Airport and it knows there is NO internet connection and no chance of getting the data, it just forgets about it an goes back to normal.

I'll try creating a new user account tomorrow, i think i'm off to bed.

 

[Fukui]

Does anybody have any idea what is going on?

Bad airport card? Maybe not pushed in all the way? I had a similar problem...

 

[Applespider]

This happens to me occasionally but only since 10.4.2 and particularly since the last build of Safari came out.

It seems to happen when you've had lots of tabs open or where you click on a page which has lots of javascript or flash going on. Exactly the same thing happens. Those pages work perfectly in Firefox - although it's usually when Firefox is also open that this happens

At first I thought it was the extra RAM although that's been in for a year without problems. But I've run that through memtest a few times and it's passes each time.

I'll try your solution. When I see it start happening, Safari tends to do minor beachballs just beforehand, I quit Safari which seems to stave it off.

 

[Heb1228]

Bad airport card? Maybe not pushed in all the way? I had a similar problem...

Well the airport card was preinstalled and has worked fine for two years with no problems. Like the above poster, its only been a recent thing and with so many bugs being fixed in 10.4.3, I'm hoping its a problem with the software and not bad airport or memory.

 

[Heb1228]

This happens to me occasionally but only since 10.4.2 and particularly since the last build of Safari came out.

It seems to happen when you've had lots of tabs open or where you click on a page which has lots of javascript or flash going on. Exactly the same thing happens. Those pages work perfectly in Firefox - although it's usually when Firefox is also open that this happens

At first I thought it was the extra RAM although that's been in for a year without problems. But I've run that through memtest a few times and it's passes each time.

I'll try your solution. When I see it start happening, Safari tends to do minor beachballs just beforehand, I quit Safari which seems to stave it off.

YES! YES! Exactly!!! Everything you mention is exactly the same. That makes me feel better that its probably not a hardware problem. Where O Where is 10.4.3?