[jon l. dawson]

Hi,
has anyone experienced this, where the video will completely freeze during a game, but the computer is still responsive? I thought this was a bug of Halo but I am trying out another 3d game now and it just did the same exact thing. I was playing a game, not doing anything out of the ordinary, and the display froze. If I moved my mouse around you could tell that it was still going, and I was able to ssh into the system to cleanly restart it, meaning that it didn't crash, only the display stopped updating. I have a dual 1.8 Ghz machine with all the most recent Panther updates.

[Detrius]

If you are in a full screen game, force-quit will usually either kill the game or drop you out of the game with a force-quit window.

And if you are ssh'ing in, try killing the game first instead of just rebooting the system.

[jon l. dawson]

I've noticed that when I do a shutdown, the display never comes back until the computer has already reset, so I'm not sure I will be able to recover a session without rebooting. I'll still try.

Like I said I don't think the game is crashing, this seems to be some issue with the video card (Nvidia 5200 ?) or the drivers. Any suggestions ?

[Detrius]

Originally posted by jon l. dawson:
I've noticed that when I do a shutdown, the display never comes back until the computer has already reset, so I'm not sure I will be able to recover a session without rebooting. I'll still try.

When normal non-crashed applications are open and you tell the system to shutdown/reboot from the command line, the applications are not quit. So, the game staying in the foreground would actually be expected.

[jon l. dawson]

Updated to 10.3.4. Problem persists. This latest time, instead of rebooting right away I ssh'd into the system and killed the game process. The display did not come back. I then ran the top command and noticed that around 50% of the total CPU (or one of the processors) was being utilized by "system" and there was no process to account for it. When I issued the shutdown command, even though it went through the motions, booted me off and disabled all services, it never restarted and I had to manually power it off.

Does anyone have any thoughts on this? Something seems really wrong. Help !

[bleuvixen]

Perhaps bad display card? I would send it in for service, sucks I know but this might be the only way to not get stuck with a faulty computer :-(

[Bi@tch]

I've had the same problem since I received my computer in December. I was also experiencing interface freezes and a very noisy PSU fan. I sent it back and they seemed to have fixed the fan noise, but the freezing persists! It crashes especially in Warcraft III.

When the computer is crashed I can most of the time access it from SSH. From there I cannot quit any process. I can restart the machine.

I'm thinking of sending it back for repair once again this summer.

[jon l. dawson]

I wish there were cheap alternative video cards for the G5. I'd like to buy a Radeon 9600 but the Mac version is way too expensive. I was planning on replacing the NVidia card eventually.

The last thing I want to do is send this back for repair. Is anyone else experiencing this? I couldn't find anything when searching forums and usenet.

How long did it take for you to get your computer back when you sent it in?

[jon l. dawson]

Reproduced it again. Same exact thing. I ssh'd in, killed the process and the display didn't return. I then was unable to get it to shut down. "system" was using around 50% total cpu. I seem to have better luck restarting the computer if I don't try and kill the game process.

Wonder if re-seating the video card might help. Doubt it. Worth a try.

[Cadaver]

Which games are doing this? Any 3D game or only certain ones?
May not be a hardware issue; may just be a software bug.

[jon l. dawson]

I haven't had it happen in anything but 3D games: Raven Shield, Halo & Command and Conquer: Generals.

[Detrius]

Originally posted by jon l. dawson:
How long did it take for you to get your computer back when you sent it in?

This isn't a G5 specific question. How long it takes depends on how long it takes to figure out what is causing the problem, how many techs there are at the repair center, and how quickly machines came in before you. If there is a backlog, it will take longer. This is a question you should ask the place you are going to take the machine. Parts are overnighted from Apple, so it is theoretically possible for you to bring the machine in one day and get it back the next. There are more issues than just that, though.

[Detrius]

Originally posted by jon l. dawson:
I haven't had it happen in anything but 3D games: Raven Shield, Halo & Command and Conquer: Generals.

Apple gives us techs more sophisticated utilities than the Apple Hardware Test. We actually have tests that boot into OS X and test the 3D capabilities of the graphics card. It would probably be a good idea to bring it in... unless...

Have you tried reinstalling the OS?

[jon l. dawson]

No, I haven't recently re-installed the OS. I did since purchasing the computer in February, using the installation media that it came with.

I want to re-install about as much as I want to bring it to the Apple store for repair. Which is to say, barely at all. Maybe it would be best though to just back up to DVD, re-install, reproduce the problem and then bring it in. They could at least replace my power supply while they're at it (a conclusion I came to with Applecare over the noise my computer makes-- I have a call reference #). First I'll try re-seating the video card.

[Groovy]

Originally posted by jon l. dawson:
No, I haven't recently re-installed the OS. I did since purchasing the computer in February, using the installation media that it came with.

I want to re-install about as much as I want to bring it to the Apple store for repair. Which is to say, barely at all. Maybe it would be best though to just back up to DVD, re-install, reproduce the problem and then bring it in. They could at least replace my power supply while they're at it (a conclusion I came to with Applecare over the noise my computer makes-- I have a call reference #). First I'll try re-seating the video card.

do the logs show anything? crash log and/or normal logs?

if you have dev tools installed you can run a number a apps to see what exactly
is eating up that %50 like thread viewer

heck you could even try spin control or rezwac or OpenGL Driver Monitor
or shark etc.... which can log a profile and what it sees and when you do get
back in take a look.

i feel it is a software problem because of the high CPU %. If it was a hardware
problem like say video card. The CPU usage should not be 50%

but who knows for sure until you do some detective work

[jon l. dawson]

Keep in mind that I can only run command-line apps from remote when a game locks. That rules out Thread Viewer and Spin Control.

I opened up the case and re-seated the video card. In the process I managed to cut myself and bleed all over the place before I even realized it. I've never cut myself that badly on a case. The G5 and me, we've bonded now.

Not that it's helped. Two consecutive tries after had it locking up within seconds. Now that I have a console ready and monitoring processes, I haven't been able to get it to happen in an hour of trying. Not that I'm entirely complaining, but it's not bringing me any closer to figuring out what's wrong. After all these crashes I kind of feel like reinstalling the OS anyway, redo the filesystem because I don't have any program to do it.

Maybe it's a combined hardware and software bug. You know, the video card locks up because of a defect, and then the OS doesn't know how to handle it.

Is there any command line tool to show what's using up "sys" cpu?

[jon l. dawson]

ok. I ran the hardware test and everything passed. Then I rebooted and started up a game and it locked up within a few seconds. Again only the display locked up, the audio kept going and if I moved the mouse around I could fire the weapon and such.

ssh'd in, and killed the game process. The game stopped. The mouse icon for the desktop appeared and then nothing. Just left with the still image from the game and a mouse icon on top of it.

Looked at top, and there is a stuck process and 50% (100% of one cpu) showing up as sys:
Load Avg: 1.00, 0.93, 0.61 CPU usage: 0.5% user, 53.2% sys, 46.3% idle

The stuck process:
jldawson 176 0.0 3.0 179600 15916 ?? Us 4:21PM 0:04.33 /System/Library/Frameworks/ApplicationServices.framework/Frameworks/CoreGraphics.framework/Resources/WindowServer -daemon

It's in the state "U" which according to a usenet post is uninterruptable. I am unable to kill the process as you might expect.

[jon l. dawson]

http://discussions.info.apple.com/We....4@.68922e2e/0