Tiger FUSsy Freezes

[Makosuke]

I'm having an issue where, relatively repeatably (though not every time, so it's hard to test) Tiger will freeze when switching users with Fast User Switching (sorry about the lame pun in the title--couldn't resist). Basically, about 5 or 10 seconds after the user switch completes, you suddenly can't click on anything on the screen with the mouse (though the pointer will still move), then a little later it will freeze completely. It's not likely application-related, as it happens even with almost nothing running.

So far I haven't found anything interesting at all in the logs--no panic is logged, and there's really nothing at all logged as going on at the time of the freeze. These seem to (almost?) always occur right after the computer has been woken up, but I *think* that's just because the way my computer gets used my wife or I usually wake it up after the other has put it to sleep then switch to our own account. It happens going both ways, so I don't think it's specific to one user.

Stranger still, it started happening on at least a daily basis (sometimes more) last week after over 20 days of uneventful uptime with 10.4.2, and I hadn't changed *anything* when it started. I even removed unnecessary USB devices after it started acting up, but no love.

I've tried everything I can think of: PRAM and NVRAM reset, permissions repair, all the latest OS updates, disk check, run the hardware test CD (no problems), and even the "deep cleaning" option in Tiger Cache Cleaner (as well as all the other maintenance stuff).

One suspect I had was the ATI Displays Control software, which was nice but occasionally crashed (with no apparent ill effect other than the dialogue) after switching users. I disabled that but it hasn't helped.

Anybody ever seen such a situation? This is a pretty much clean Tiger install with only a few add-ons, so I'm kind of baffled and really don't want to reinstall. I just did the latest security patch, so who knows, maybe that'll help.

 

[varmit]

I'm having an issue where, relatively repeatably (though not every time, so it's hard to test) Tiger will freeze when switching users with Fast User Switching (sorry about the lame pun in the title--couldn't resist). Basically, about 5 or 10 seconds after the user switch completes, you suddenly can't click on anything on the screen with the mouse (though the pointer will still move), then a little later it will freeze completely. It's not likely application-related, as it happens even with almost nothing running.

So far I haven't found anything interesting at all in the logs--no panic is logged, and there's really nothing at all logged as going on at the time of the freeze. These seem to (almost?) always occur right after the computer has been woken up, but I *think* that's just because the way my computer gets used my wife or I usually wake it up after the other has put it to sleep then switch to our own account. It happens going both ways, so I don't think it's specific to one user.

Stranger still, it started happening on at least a daily basis (sometimes more) last week after over 20 days of uneventful uptime with 10.4.2, and I hadn't changed *anything* when it started. I even removed unnecessary USB devices after it started acting up, but no love.

I've tried everything I can think of: PRAM and NVRAM reset, permissions repair, all the latest OS updates, disk check, run the hardware test CD (no problems), and even the "deep cleaning" option in Tiger Cache Cleaner (as well as all the other maintenance stuff).

One suspect I had was the ATI Displays Control software, which was nice but occasionally crashed (with no apparent ill effect other than the dialogue) after switching users. I disabled that but it hasn't helped.

Anybody ever seen such a situation? This is a pretty much clean Tiger install with only a few add-ons, so I'm kind of baffled and really don't want to reinstall. I just did the latest security patch, so who knows, maybe that'll help.

I see you have a G5 2.0Ghz and a G4 1Ghz, which system are we dealing with here? What was the last thing that got installed before you started to see these problems, and if you did install something, remove it. Have you also let your cron jobs work over night on the system, or used MacJanitor to run them? It could also be a hardware problem, if the system is the G4, it should have come with a hardware test CD, as for the G5, I don't believe it came with one and you should look though the Apple support area for the same issues you are having.

 

[Makosuke]

I see you have a G5 2.0Ghz and a G4 1Ghz, which system are we dealing with here? What was the last thing that got installed before you started to see these problems, and if you did install something, remove it. Have you also let your cron jobs work over night on the system, or used MacJanitor to run them? It could also be a hardware problem, if the system is the G4, it should have come with a hardware test CD, as for the G5, I don't believe it came with one and you should look though the Apple support area for the same issues you are having.

Thanks for the suggestions. The system is the G5, and though the cron jobs do get to run periodically, I also ran them manually, which didn't help. I already ran the hardware test CD, which showed no issues, as I said.

The last significant thing I installed that I can think of was probably a VNC server and client, but that was almost two weeks before the issue started and neither is running anyway. Before that, the most recent install was Tiger itself (or rather 10.4.2), which had led to three weeks straight of uninterupted uptime, until the computer froze waking from sleep (which it used to do once a month or so under Panther as well, and may or may not be related to, or the same as, this FUS freeze).