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System locking up...?

F

Flux Harmonic

macrumors member
Original poster
May 10, 2005
66
0
Canada
I'm a new mac user, having switched from windows about two months ago. I've noticed that in Tiger, my apps freeze up a lot more than they did in windows. And when they do, it seems these days that a force quit can't resolve the issue. Once one program is locked up, it's just a matter of time (and a short one at that) before the rest of my programs lock up, and eventually the system. I'm having to force-reboot my mac (a SP Powermac G5 circa May 2005) something like 5-6 times a day. This is in addition to my box frequently being unable to come out of sleep and/or screensaver properly.

Is this -normal-? When I got my mac in the mail, it came installed with Panther and a Tiger upgrade dvd, so I assumed I had to do an upgrade or archive install, when I would have preferred to have just done a wipe and reinstall. Could this be affecting my system performance? Is it maybe my 512 mb of ram? I'm just amazed that this could be happening in a 64 bit system, when all I'm running are apps like firefox, adium, ical and textedit. And occasionally Office 2004.
 
The Single Processor 1.8 GHz Macs are kinda finky. Set your Processor speed to Highest, and the Sleep option to "Never Sleep" which should help.

Also when you were upgrading from Panther->Tiger there were options in the bottom left of that Installer screen that said "Customize" or "Options" which you could have used to Erase Install, or choose what components you wanted to install, etc.
 
Also try running hardware test to see if there is any problem with it. This sounds like it could be RAM but I believe your came with stock so I am not sure of that. A clean install would alse help eliminating any problems with OS.
 
Mechcozmo said:
The Single Processor 1.8 GHz Macs are kinda finky. Set your Processor speed to Highest, and the Sleep option to "Never Sleep" which should help.
Click to expand...

kinda finky is no excuse - somethings definitly wrong with that machine. That is not the way macs are to act - sounds like the drive may be bad? Maybe the ram?
Nick
 
Very odd. Try resetting RAM maybe?

If I were you, I'd do a clean install of Tiger. Before you do though, make a full backup of everything, including your Classic system folder (since Tiger doesn't have one).
 
Fresh install, eh?

I'll have to go buy a second hard drive first to back up all my stuff...Can't easily burn 12 gigs worth of AACs onto dvds.

My next question is...what internal hard drives are compatible with a powermac g5? I've been browsing the stores online, and it seems that the standard hard drives available at say...best buy...don't have the same dimensions as the ones specified in my g5 manual (even the supposedly mac compatible ones). Can you use a standard PC hard drive?
 
I'm a student...I can't afford applecare.

I did a repair permissions and reset the ram, and everything seems to be going smoothly. I'm going to try reinstalling Tiger once I get a second HD in there, and get back to y'all.

Thanks for the help.
 
Flux Harmonic said:
I'm a student...I can't afford applecare.
Click to expand...

You might not have AppleCare, but the warranty lasts a year. Are you near an Apple Store? Take it to the Genius Bar and if there's something wrong with it, they'll fix it for free.
 
Flux Harmonic said:
I'm a student...I can't afford applecare.

I did a repair permissions and reset the ram, and everything seems to be going smoothly. I'm going to try reinstalling Tiger once I get a second HD in there, and get back to y'all.

Thanks for the help.
Click to expand...

AppleCare is actually 1 year hardware with 90 days of phone support, and you can upgrade it to 3 years of each when you buy it.
 
Glad to hear you didn't fall for the clean install "solution." This is almost never necessary on a Mac.

Another day, another recommendation of AppleJack. Run this every month or so and you will have virtually no problems.
 
Flux Harmonic said:
So I ran a repair disk permissions, and now my box runs smooth as a baby's bottom. Thanks guys!
Click to expand...

Good to hear, but the SP G5s are more finky than the other G5s, and your symptoms were exactly the same...
 
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