PPC iMac (iSight) freezes with fans blaring!

[native00]

I know that the new iMacs may have a freezing problem, but mine is one of the older ones - bought it a few months before the Intels came out.

It's gotten alot of use, only about 20GB of memory left...but I've never had a problem like this with any of my macs.

Computer will just freeze up on it's own and the fans will just be going! I mean it's asleep and it'll freeze. What gives?

 

[mad jew]

Check your crash logs in Console to see if they caught anything. What sort of apps are you running and what peripherals are plugged in or connected? Do you have any third party RAM installed?

 

[native00]

Here's a look at my crash log...

It's mostly used for internet (Safari), tons of photos in iPhoto, and some torrents.

 

[mad jew]

I can't see anything looking particularly guilty there. My first guess would be torrents, so see how it goes without torrent apps running for a while.

 

[native00]

Another thing I forgot to mention...sometimes when I restart, it doesn't make the signature "bwong" noise, its makes this very simplistic "booooooooop" sound.

Sorry for the anamonopia.

Also, no third party ram installed.

Thanks for the insight, jew.

 

[mad jew]

Okay, well take out one stick of RAM at a time to see if that makes things normal. I think the noise you're describing at startup could be indicating bad RAM, poorly fitted RAM (less likely), or a bad RAM slot. If you have the Apple Hardware Test that came with your iMac, maybe boot from that and run the extended diagnostics.