Panther not as 'stable' as I first thought

[john_satc]

Ok here's the thing, a lot of people go on about how OS X is very stable and will very rarley crash etc. Well, unless I am doing something wrong, I have to disagree. On average, a programme crashes and I have to close it every 2days.
On saturday my iBook completly crashed and woudln't do anything, nothing would respond. I called Apple and they talked me through force restart etc.
Also, the 'Help' option within finder would not work at all - it would open and the close itself. (this was before the crash)
Yesterday, i opened mail and every 30 seconds mail would ask me to enter my password to my .mac account - i would and still it would ask again. I realised that it was yesterday that my .mac account trial ran out. After around 15mins I worked out how to delete my .mac account from mail, and the annnoying messages stopped. Seemed fine.
I then tried sending a mesage from my hotmail account from mail, and mail completly crashed! I couldnt close the window and how to do another force quit - it seems daily i am doin these.
Today, mail crashed on me again! I couldnt close the window - the traffic light things at the top left wouldnt even come up. I tried force quit, but the button on my mouse wouldnt work (the mouse would click on my wireless mouse and on the trackpad but no response). I had to shut down after working out how to quit all the applications without using the mouse.

Now, I have had my iBook for around 2months and do love it - really! But I was just not expecting these problems - I was hoping to go at least a week at a time before having a programme crash! ahhhhh!

What exactly can I do on a weekly/monthly etc. basis to minimise these problems - and it simple person speak - please!

 

[Sky Blue]

You had to call Apple to do a forced restart??

 

[Alte22a]

Did you unpgrade the RAM? Might be faulty RAM. Usually is, you should have a Hardware disk that came with your ibook. Use that to see whats wrong with your mac. Hopefully its just faulty ram other wise the worse is a faulty logicboard.

Good luck

 

[john_satc]

You had to call Apple to do a forced restart??

I know I realised afterwards what a prat i had sounded but I panicked! now i know what to do
the guy did actually tell me to do something when it restarted, like pressing a button and wait to hear the sounds 3 times or somethin....dunno why

 

[john_satc]

Did you unpgrade the RAM? Might be faulty RAM. Usually is, you should have a Hardware disk that came with your ibook. Use that to see whats wrong with your mac. Hopefully its just faulty ram other wise the worse is a faulty logicboard.

Good luck

I did buy more RAM i am at 512 now, I will do that disk thing. I hope its not faulty RAM - i got it from KRCS an apple centre in Birmingham

 

[Blue Velvet]

There's something wrong with your setup.

6 installations at work & 1 at home: all rock-solid.

 

[Alte22a]

I did buy more RAM i am at 512 now, I will do that disk thing. I hope its not faulty RAM - i got it from KRCS an apple centre in Birmingham

Well the hopefully it is just faulty RAM, make sure its crucial or kingston RAM, saves you a bunch of hassel. You can sort that out your self anything else you will need to send your mac away.

 

[link92]

I then tried sending a mesage from my hotmail account from mail, and mail completly crashed! I couldnt close the window and how to do another force quit - it seems daily i am doin these.
Today, mail crashed on me again! I couldnt close the window - the traffic light things at the top left wouldnt even come up. I tried force quit, but the button on my mouse wouldnt work (the mouse would click on my wireless mouse and on the trackpad but no response). I had to shut down after working out how to quit all the applications without using the mouse.

You've got to remember that hotmail is only a plugin, so...

 

[Lacero]

Some people have bad static electricity. It may sound weird but I've noticed it's always a few individuals who have constant problems. It's something to do with the electrical impulses their bodies give off that affects electronic devices.

 

[Applespider]

Definitely sounds like a problem with the system. Panther is a lot more stable than that.

Try taking the RAM out and using Mail/Help etc and see if it's OK. If all is OK, it's probably the RAM that is faulty so take it back to KRCS and they should exchange it for you. If not, then more investigation might be needed.

You could try setting up another 'test' user with another account and trying Help/Mail from that account. If that's all OK, then it's something in your user account causing the problem. If not, then it something in the system as a whole.

Do you have any odd USB devices connected to your system? Some USB drivers can cause havoc - I had a USB modem which didn't play nicely at all with my Mac.

Try repairing your permissions from Disk Utility - just in case. And if you don't leave your Mac awake, download Macjanitor or Cocktail and run the cron jobs that otherwise would run overnight.

 

[john_satc]

Just ran the hardware test, it said everything is fine.
The only usb port in use if for my D-Link Bluetooth thing, which I installed last week.

Try repairing your permissions from Disk Utility - just in case. And if you don't leave your Mac awake, download Macjanitor or Cocktail and run the cron jobs that otherwise would run overnight.

I run disk utility. Does my ibook download them if it is put to sleep everynight - I just make it sleep not shut it down.

I might try takin the RAM out, but it was such problems putting it in (tried myself and couldnt so had to take it to the KCRS place for them to put in - I know it is the simplist thing to do but I still coudln't do it)

 

[Sutekidane]

I had many issues using hotmail through apple mail. I had random crashes and unresponsiveness in general. Then I switched to gmail and everything seems to work well now. The only thing is it does ask me for my password from time to time, but it's no big deal.

 

[yellow]

Test your RAM with Memtest. Give it at least 2 passes.

 

[ZaniCWB]

Rock-solid for sure!

Ok here's the thing, a lot of people go on about how OS X is very stable and will very rarley crash etc. Well, unless I am doing something wrong, I have to disagree. On average, a programme crashes and I have to close it every 2days.
On saturday my iBook completly crashed and woudln't do anything, nothing would respond. I called Apple and they talked me through force restart etc.
Also, the 'Help' option within finder would not work at all - it would open and the close itself. (this was before the crash)
Yesterday, i opened mail and every 30 seconds mail would ask me to enter my password to my .mac account - i would and still it would ask again. I realised that it was yesterday that my .mac account trial ran out. After around 15mins I worked out how to delete my .mac account from mail, and the annnoying messages stopped. Seemed fine.
I then tried sending a mesage from my hotmail account from mail, and mail completly crashed! I couldnt close the window and how to do another force quit - it seems daily i am doin these.
Today, mail crashed on me again! I couldnt close the window - the traffic light things at the top left wouldnt even come up. I tried force quit, but the button on my mouse wouldnt work (the mouse would click on my wireless mouse and on the trackpad but no response). I had to shut down after working out how to quit all the applications without using the mouse.

Now, I have had my iBook for around 2months and do love it - really! But I was just not expecting these problems - I was hoping to go at least a week at a time before having a programme crash! ahhhhh!

What exactly can I do on a weekly/monthly etc. basis to minimise these problems - and it simple person speak - please!

Well, my PowerBook 12" 1.33 (10.3.8) is running since August/04 and I had no Kernel Panic, no crashes. So, yes, it is rock-solid!

 

[Applespider]

I run disk utility. Does my ibook download them if it is put to sleep everynight - I just make it sleep not shut it down.

If you sleep your iBook, then the cron jobs aren't running - it has to be awake at 3am for OS X to automatically run them.

It might also be worthwhile taking out the Bluetooth dongle and seeing if you get crashes. If you added the dongle and the RAM at the same time, and now you're having problems that you didn't have before, chances are that one/other/both are causing the problem.

 

[john_satc]

If you sleep your iBook, then the cron jobs aren't running - it has to be awake at 3am for OS X to automatically run them.

It might also be worthwhile taking out the Bluetooth dongle and seeing if you get crashes. If you added the dongle and the RAM at the same time, and now you're having problems that you didn't have before, chances are that one/other/both are causing the problem.

OK . well i am running that memtest programme at the moment.

I got the RAM over a month ago, and the bluetooth less than a week ago. So I don't know if they will be connected.

I will run the 'cron' thing when the memtest is done.

Thanks for everyone's quick help !

OH and P.S. I kind of overreacted with the title. I do trust MAC OS X to be stable, but for me its playing up. I hope to fix this so i can experience a crash free OS - its partly why I fled windows

 

[wrldwzrd89]

Mail does some optimizing of its databases when you quit. This process can take a while. If you interrupt it by force-quitting Mail, Mail might stop working normally. This can show up as application freezes, the "bounce & quit" syndrome (the application bounces once in the dock then unexpectedly quits), and various other ways. I wonder if this has anything to do with the issues you're having.

 

[john_satc]

Mail does some optimizing of its databases when you quit. This process can take a while. If you interrupt it by force-quitting Mail, Mail might stop working normally. This can show up as application freezes, the "bounce & quit" syndrome (the application bounces once in the dock then unexpectedly quits), and various other ways. I wonder if this has anything to do with the issues you're having.

Hi yeah i noticed that mail does take a while to quit normally - I just presumed this was normal and so i let it get on with that.

*running second mem test*

 

[yellow]

To run it 2 times in sucession, just do:

memtest all 2

 

[rickvanr]

Test your RAM with Memtest. Give it at least 2 passes.

Is there a more user friendly version of this software?

 

[john_satc]

Is there a more user friendly version of this software?

really it is easy to use - i have never used terminal before - i dont actually know what it is, but i just copied what the read me said to put, pressed enter and it started working away.

I didn't know to put 'memtest 2 all' so just went it finished the first time, set it to go again

 

[john_satc]

well here is an update on my situation - if anyone still cares

ran that memtest and it said my RAM is fine twice. also the harware cd test thing from Apple themselves said my harware was fine. so now i am sure what to do.

i am not in the mood to do anything tonight I just want to go to bed (some guy just tried to mug me ) so i will look at any other advice 2morrow.
thanks, jon

 

[gopher]

A memory test saying all is fine is not necessarily a sign that memory is fine. A memory test saying there is a failure though is not a good sign and a signal to replace the memory.

Here's the reason why:

256 MB of RAM has 1 billion individual on/off circuits.

In order to find the exact sequence of circuits that went bad when you had a crash or freeze, you'd have to reproduce the exact sequence of circuits being on/off at the time of the freeze. A test that would reveal such a fault would have to test every one of a possible set of on/off circuits within those billion circuits. How many possible sequences are there? 1 billion factorial! So the number of tests that would have to be done is greater than the number of atoms in the universe, and assuming each test was even done in a nanosecond, it would still exceed the age of the universe to complete the whole series of tests.

 

[Dalriada]

When I hear about Mac OS X not being rock solid I wonder what number of third party app's/freeware/etc have been installed on top which is probably more the root of the problem. When you have such a great OS it amazes me how much additional freeware stuff people must use to personalize their OS at the risk of corrupting things. Maybe I'm wrong but I'm darn careful what 3rd party app's I take in and everything's running smooth on my PB (I use OnyX as a maintenance app, can't get a simpler sleek interface)

- Dal