[wily]

Help.

With increasing frequency, I've been walking into my office in the morning to
find the monitor screens frozen and my dual G5's fans at full blast.

I restart, things are fine.

Oh - having periodic application "suddenly quits." No pattern that I can detect yet.

Vital stats:

Mac: Dual 2.0 G5
OS: 10.3.5
RAM: 2.5 gig
Dual monitors, 128meg ATI card

What gives?

[Big Mac]

Your G5 is crashing for some reason. When the G5 crashes the OS no longer controls the fans, so they automatically run at full speed. There was a specific problem with some early G5s, which exhibited this problem with great frequency. You should try fsck -y -f in single user mode (hold command+s at startup to enter the CLI). If the problem persists you'll next want to do an Archive and Install using the System discs. You may also want to run the Hardware Test CD.

[wily]

Thanks.

Will try.

[van rijn]

what does:

fsck -y -f

do?

i have the same prob sometimes.. the os just hangs up, but still able to stream music. odd

[slyder]

I had the same problem a couple months ago. It was rather infrequent at first, but it continued getting worse. It finally got to the point that the computer would crash before it could even completely start up (either with a kernel dump with code down the screen or a "You Must Restart Your Computer" message in a few different languages).

I went through all of the steps Big Mac suggested, but to no avail. Finally I gave in and bought the 3 year AppleCare Plan (I had my G5 for 9 months when this happened) and then brought it into the shop. Two weeks later they figured out it was the LOGIC BOARD. After they replaced the board, everything started working perfectly once again.

[drdocument]

Originally posted by van rijn:
what does:

fsck -y -f

do?

i have the same prob sometimes.. the os just hangs up, but still able to stream music. odd

fsck is File System Consistency Check and basically does the same thing as if you booted from a CD or external drive and ran Disk Utility's "Repair Disk" function, only you don't need to boot from an external drive or CD to do it.

-y tells the fsck utility to automatically answer "yes" to optinos which are presented during execution. I've never run fsck without the "-y" parameter so I don't know the specific options to which it provides the affirmative response.

-f tells fsck utility to go ahead and run even though the volume is Journaled. (Journaling helps maintain file system consistency so if your volume is journaled you're much less likely to have any file system errors.)

If your OS is hanging up, also try running Disk Utility/Repair Permissions while booted from the drive. If problems persist, try booting from Install CD, run Disk Utility from Install menu, repair permissions, then reboot from your normal boot HD and repair permissions again.

[young1]

This happened to me too... I think it is related to the 10.3.5 update as it never happened before I updated... When I put my Dual 1.8 G5 to sleep, I came back down to it in the AM & the screen was black and I couldnt wake it & the fans were really "givin" it...

[saudio]

Originally posted by young1:
This happened to me too... I think it is related to the 10.3.5 update as it never happened before I updated... When I put my Dual 1.8 G5 to sleep, I came back down to it in the AM & the screen was black and I couldnt wake it & the fans were really "givin" it...

I've done an FSCK -FY on a weekly basis (or run Cocktail) just to keep our 10-G5s clean and healthy, and we STILL have this issue and have had it for the last several months. I've had my G5 do this in the middle of the day! I don't think it has anything to do with 10.3.5!

Any other ideas?

[brassguy73]

I had the same problems with my new dual 2.0 G5. It began freezing with in a few days after I received it. I would find it in the morning, frozen, with the fans going full speed (apparently G5 fans will go on when there is a crash as a failsafe). Within two weeks the machine was virtually inoperable except in FW disk mode. The Apple Store technicians determined that one of the processors was bad, and I'm still waiting to get it back.

A tell tale sign was that when I tried to run the Photoshop7 G5 updater, the application gave me an "unsupported machine" error.

If you G5 is freezing, I recommend taking it in and having a tech test the processor(s).

Originally posted by wily:
Help.

With increasing frequency, I've been walking into my office in the morning to
find the monitor screens frozen and my dual G5's fans at full blast.

I restart, things are fine.

Oh - having periodic application "suddenly quits." No pattern that I can detect yet.

Vital stats:

Mac: Dual 2.0 G5
OS: 10.3.5
RAM: 2.5 gig
Dual monitors, 128meg ATI card

What gives?

[Swift]

I bought a Dual 2.0 G5, a refurbished model, and for the first month, it was nothing but hassles. I had unexpected quits, kernel panics, and I couldn't ever leave it running overnight or while I was at work. I'd come in, find the mouse and keyboard acting as though they were dipped in molasses, and the fan sounding like a 747.

I had one shop change a processor. Didn't work, much. No more kernel panics, but the unexpected quits made the machine unusable.

What solved it was this: I had installed a gig of extra RAM, bought from OWC. Good company, never had a problem. When I took this RAM out, it worked like a charm. After hemming and hawing, I bit the bullet and bought Apple RAM for $100 more. It worked perfectly.

I never tried Mushkin RAM, or Corsair, or other forms of premium RAM. I bought Apple RAM because it, too, is under warranty, so if thee Mac didn't work with Apple RAM, they'd fix it. I'm not sure why, but that's what solved my problems.

Now, I just turn it off during days when the temp nears 100 outside, and I want to turn down the air conditioning while I'm at work.

[Detrius]

Bad RAM is *VERY* common on the G5s. It's the only machine on the market that can actually push the RAM to its full potential. Therefore, RAM that passes other companies tests may very well fail in a G5.

Unfortunately, though, bad processors are about as common, and bad logic boards seem to be more common. In all cases, though, it *appears* as if it's bad RAM.

Here's what to do: if you have third party (non-Apple RAM), pull it out. If the state of the machine gets any better, you may have found the problem. Keep in mind that if you did a reinstall, having all good hardware will not fix your problems after removing bad RAM. You will need to do another reinstall (possibly a format and reinstall). It would help if you could boot the machine from a known-good OS. If you have all Apple hardware in the machine and it still crashes, send it in for repair. There is no easy way to tell a user how to figure out what causes the problem due to thermal recalibrations that are done at the service center.

[Detrius]

Originally posted by young1:
This happened to me too... I think it is related to the 10.3.5 update as it never happened before I updated... When I put my Dual 1.8 G5 to sleep, I came back down to it in the AM & the screen was black and I couldnt wake it & the fans were really "givin" it...

Just because it's new with 10.3.5 doesn't mean 10.3.5 is faulty. If your RAM went bad after you updated to 10.3.4 but before 10.3.5, then the *act* of performing the 10.3.5 update very well could have corrupted the OS on your drive, causing spontaneous crashes. Also, if the OS on your drive is corrupt, pulling bad RAM won't make the problem go away.

[booskaboo]

I'm a BIG supporter of apple and everything mac. I'm in the film industry and most of us use macs, and those that don't, i have convinced most 2 switch. BUT NOW I'M TROUBLED!
Besides the fact that it took 2 months for my g5 to ship after ordering (that took a few calls to get it), and, almost missing a promotion that made this afordable, I immediately started having problems.
-From it freezing during imovie, or idvd (after hours of work)
-To, finally re-installing the entire os (after intalling all my other software). still froze up
-After insatlling os again, it froze on me for the first operation I tried (yeah, something really complicated like "adjusting the dock magnification size" (.ooooh, tough proccessing)
-To having it freeze while trying to run apple hardware test disk,
-To calling multiple times with my apple support (of course only during MY work hours)
-To Dropping it off for service (was told 2-3 days and it took 5)
-To Picking it up + having faith in my MAC PEEPS, only to have it CRASH AGAIN AFTER 30 MIN OF SIMPLE IMOVIE use.
NOW I"M MAD
1 of the crashes is the screen going black as if asleep, and won't let me wake it up. Then, the fans start to spin as if my computer is going to launch off into outer space.
So.. here I sit, 9:45 pm, the time that I USE my computer the most, with NO SUPPORT, NO WAY TO EASILY CONTACT APPLE.

My Question? Well, Does anyone know what the CORP. email address is for apple. I need to deal with this by getting someones attention, not by waiting till tomorrow morning, to sit on hold, pressing button 1, then 3, then 2 then wait, them have some tech person say... "ok, what we need to do is re-install your os..." or "After selecting restart, hold doen the "whatever" and "whatever" keys while the computer restarts"

Someone PLEASE HELP TO TELL ME WHAT TO DO NEXT, so I can get some real help.
Thanks ( I still love these computers, but, I'm slipping away fast due this)

I hope my computer won't crash before I can post this:brick:

[Big Mac]

boos, you have a hardware problem of some sort. Disconnect all third-party devices and remove any third-party internal items - particularly third-party RAM. If you don't wish to do all of this, take your Mac in - you should not be experiencing this behavior at all.

To others who are experiencing occasional sleep freeze issues, the same advice applies. As I said before, I read that there was a problem with a number of early G5s that would cause this sleep-fan blast-freeze. Unfortunately, I cannot find the informative page I originally saw on the subject. This problem actually happened to my DP 2.0 once, but it thankfully has not happened since. In addition to searching the independent Mac forums, go to apple.com/support/ and search the G5 discussions for the subject. I don't have the time to do that right now for all of us.

If your new professional Mac is freezing, don't give up on the platform but demand satisfaction as well. Mac OS X was designed to be very stable and for most all of us it is. If it is freezing and/or experiencing kernel panics, either diagnose it yourself or take it to an authorized dealer. I'm sorry you new users have had such poor experiences with the best OS on the planet.

[Detrius]

Originally posted by booskaboo:
...

Someone PLEASE HELP TO TELL ME WHAT TO DO NEXT, so I can get some real help.
Thanks ( I still love these computers, but, I'm slipping away fast due this)

I hope my computer won't crash before I can post this

What did they find wrong with it? There may not be a hardware problem anymore. If the OS did not get reinstalled, then the OS on your hard drive may be corrupt. It's possible that you really do just need an OS reinstall. Note that this may require reinstalling all of your applications as well.

I try to give people a heads up after things that could create corrupt data and software on the hard drive such that they know to try reinstalling things if they still crash. Not everyone thinks to do that.

[bojangles]

Originally posted by booskaboo:
My Question? Well, Does anyone know what the CORP. email address is for apple. I need to deal with this by getting someones attention, not by waiting till tomorrow morning, to sit on hold, pressing button 1, then 3, then 2 then wait, them have some tech person say... "ok, what we need to do is re-install your os..." or "After selecting restart, hold doen the "whatever" and "whatever" keys while the computer restarts"

Believe it or not, I�ve heard of people getting results with SJobs[at]apple.com or iCEO[at]apple.com (both addresses coded to avoid harvesting). However, to anyone else that�s considering doing this, please use this e-mail sparingly�i.e. only if you have a darned good reason. Otherwise, your e-mail (and probably many others like it) will get �Steved.�

(Remember, of course, that Steve Jobs is still recovering from cancer right now, so even if you do hear back from him, it might be a little while. I�d recommend the iCEO address, at the moment, since Steve might have Tim Cook checking that one in his absence.)


On a related note, my dual-2GHz G5 was having the same problems mentioned�crashing while I was away, occasionally even while I was working; probably 4-5� total, in three months�and upgrading to 10.3.5 made it completely unusable. I repaired permissions, repaired the disk, no change. Finally I just Archived and Installed 10.3.2, downloaded the 10.3.5 Combined Updater, and upgraded directly. She�s been solid as a rock ever since (although I have had to reinstall a few app�s, to get them to work again).

Just as an aside, if anyone�s G5 fans ever start running at top speed 24/7, there�s an extremely simple fix for that one.

[xe0]

I've been dealing with this problem for quite some time now.
Im not exactly sure what causes my G5 to **** it self and rev up full speed- but I can attest it has been happening to me since around 10.3.2 and its been a constant problem.

A few weeks ago my G5 refused to even boot- I was getting one of these kernel panics at every startup. I couldn't even archive and install as I got an error every time I tried reading something like "we could not complete your request because of an error. Please restart the installer"

I ended up salvaging my files by taking my HDD to the G5 at work- loading my HDD in the extra bay and copying everything over to my External. After that I formated the internal drive with zero's. My G5 has been working fine since then.

I went through many scenarios and tried removing third party ram, running fsck, repairing permissions, etc etc but nothing fixed the problem. The only way I have managed to overcome this apparent G5 / Panther flaw is by doing the above.

[chulitomio]

I'm the Apple tech at an ad agency. Troubleshoot in a logical order. Use your hardware test CD. As has been said, eliminate any third-party hardware that may be interfering. I have found many freeze/fan problems (and an overwhelming number of other problems) to be software related kernel panics that don't look like traditional panics. The fans were designed to go full blast in these kind of situations, to protect from overheat when the system loses control of the fans. fsck is ok to try first but can't fix nor actually uncover all problems DiskWarrior or Norton Utilities can. Strangely, Symantec finally has Norton Utilities working extremely well, so they drop it. Lately, NU has seen and fixed issues DiskWarrior and Tech Tool Pro don't even notice. Next is archive/install, then erase install, the last step being erase, writing zeros to the disk, then install. If you're still having issues, at that point is where I start looking at hardware.

Chulo

[VukOnCrack]

Got a refurb dual-1.8 G5 in the office a few months back. Within a half hour of using it the machine started spontaneously going to sleep and nothing I could do would keep her awake. Rand the hardware test CD which said that there was a logic board error. Brought it down to the local Apple Store and waited. And waited. And waited. They eventually said the processors were toast and replaced them. That didn't fix it. Then they replaced the logic board as well. That didn't fix it. Eventually after three-plus weeks of waiting they tell me that there was a slight warp in the case which changed the airflow to the processors enough for them to overheat and meltdown. So, new case, new logic board, new processors later....

The most frustrating thing about this was that the machine was DOA (and obviously not refurbed very well) and Apple would not replace it. I had to wait cloe to a month to get a functional machine since Apple's policy apparently is that all refurbs must be fixed: no replacements.

About two weeks ago I go into the office and hear the jet engine going and see the black screen of G5 death. This has only happened that one time, but it's not very reassuring.

As one of the poor schmucks who have been waiting in line for the past two months for a new 2.5 I'm not feeling very warm and fuzzy about either Apple's QC or their customer service.

[reader50]

Originally posted by Big Mac:
... You should try fsck -y -f in single user mode (hold command+s at startup to enter the CLI).
...

You might have better luck running fsck_hfs -yf

The standard fsck does not understand HFS/HFS+ partitions. Nor does it automatically call fsck_hfs when it hits an HFS partition, at least under Jaguar.

[Big Mac]

Originally posted by reader50:
You might have better luck running fsck_hfs -yf

The standard fsck does not understand HFS/HFS+ partitions. Nor does it automatically call fsck_hfs when it hits an HFS partition, at least under Jaguar.

Oh, ok. . . Several people on the forum said that the regular fsck does indeed call the HFS version, so that's why that's the command I use.

[wily]

I could be wrong, but...

It's not always hardware and the G5 is not be a troublesome machine at all.

We can't forget that computers run in a human environment and are prone to the complexities and irregularities of such.

Owning my G5 became problematic well after I purchased it. There's just no way to say it became so because of a mechanical or design flaw. To be fair, I could very well take it to a multitude of different Apple shops and get an equal number of different diagnosis. I write this point of view because the same event has personally occurred.

Look at it this way - owners of Porsche 930 Turbos had a high wreck rate. Blame the car? Perhaps - the car was extraordinarily powerful and well, well beyond the limit of most drivers. Blame the driver? Definitely. The car didn't demand it be driven by idiots.

Anyway, after lobotomizing my G5 and reupgrading it to 10.3.5 has been so far, smooth. Adding all of my apps back, but none of the blizzard of shareware titles, has proven successful.

I'll let you know how this continues...