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jasonsRX7 · Oct 23, 2003, 06:40 PM

I'm having a big problem with my G5 beachballing all the time. I can be using it normally (Safari surfing, iTunes playing, proteus chatting) and sooner or later I'll get a beach ball and Finder will quit responding.

Sometimes I am able to relaunch finder and it will start working properly again, but sometimes it is totally unresponsive and it won't shut down. Then, one by one, my running applications will start to lock up until I eventually have to force a power off.

I had removed the factory 256mb and installed two 512mb Crucial DDR333 modules. I've run the Apple hardware test on them and they test ok. The only other nonapple hardware in here is a Canopus ADVC-1394 card, which never caused any problems in my G4, and which I'm not using at the time when the beach ball happens.

Any suggestions?

ourisman · Oct 23, 2003, 06:45 PM

Why remove the 512 MB of Apple memory? It can only run better with 1.5 GB.

jasonsRX7 · Oct 23, 2003, 06:59 PM

It was only 256mb (2x128mb) total Apple memory, and I took the 1gb Crucial out of my PC and put the 256mb Apple (micron) back in the PC.

Basically I just swapped the ram in my G5 and PC, since I already had good Crucial ram in my PC.

I feel like the ram isn't the problem since it has been running properly in the PC for nearly a year, and the Apple hardware test doesn't find anything wrong with it.

Boochie · Oct 23, 2003, 07:09 PM

Try restoring the machine to its "out of the box" condition (i.e., original RAM, no 1394 card) and report back what happens. Less/more/same amount of beachballing? If the situation has improved, it would suggest something to do with your hardware.

You might also try creating a new user account and see what happens when you log in as that user.

jasonsRX7 · Oct 23, 2003, 07:23 PM

Thanks, Boochie I'll try it. That was going to be my next COA if there were no indications of a known problem.

I'm going to see if I can find any way to make it a consistantly reproducable problem and then try the hardware swap and see if still happens.

Boochie · Oct 23, 2003, 08:50 PM

Also repair permissions using the Disk Utility program. Strange things can happen when the permissions (by means magical) get corrupted.

reader50 · Oct 23, 2003, 11:21 PM

Try leaving Process Viewer or 'top' running. What you describe can be caused by an application or utility that has a bad memory leak, or that spawns endless null threads.

Either bug will hammer your VM and eventually drag the box down. The OS would not actually crash, but all applications presently become so unresponsive as to be useless, requiring a reboot before you can do anything again.

You would need to catch which process is suddenly glomming all the RAM, or hogging the CPU. Quit the problem process quickly, and your system would recover right away. Then email the developer of that app with a bug report.

khufuu · Oct 24, 2003, 12:22 AM

Originally posted by jasonsRX7:
I'm having a big problem with my G5 beachballing all the time. I can be using it normally (Safari surfing, iTunes playing, proteus chatting) and sooner or later I'll get a beach ball and Finder will quit responding.

Sometimes I am able to relaunch finder and it will start working properly again, but sometimes it is totally unresponsive and it won't shut down. Then, one by one, my running applications will start to lock up until I eventually have to force a power off.

I had removed the factory 256mb and installed two 512mb Crucial DDR333 modules. I've run the Apple hardware test on them and they test ok. The only other nonapple hardware in here is a Canopus ADVC-1394 card, which never caused any problems in my G4, and which I'm not using at the time when the beach ball happens.

Any suggestions?

Do you hear the disk drive tick-tick-ticking while the beach ball is going? If you do, it may be a bad spot on your hard drive that is causing the problem.

jasonsRX7 · Oct 24, 2003, 10:41 PM

no, khufuu i haven't heard any sounds from the drive that would indicate that it was going bad.

i decided to wait until today when i got panther before doing any hardware swapping (didn't feel like crawling under the desk just yet). installed panther as soon as i got home from work and have been using it all night without any beachballs at all.

we'll see how it does over the weekend.