[lisseelou]

I purchased a new iMac G5 from that Apple Store in October. The only hardward upgrade that purchased was an airport extreme card.

Over the past couple of months my computer has started to freeze. I listen to iTunes a lot and I first noticed that my music would stop playing, and occasionally it would then come back on.

It now doesn't come back on, and freezes on my more frequently. Sometimes it freezes when I try to login, or 3+ hours of use. It is sporatic, the only consistant thing is that once it freezes, as soon as I click on something I get a pin wheel. I cannot force quit anything. I have to hold the button down in the back to turn it off.

One time when restarting I got the folder with a question mark blinking. Fortunately my data was all still there.

Things I have done.

-Repaired my permissions many times, not always is something found to fix.

-Taken it to the Apple Store, the genius wasn't as helpful as the one at the Tyson's Corner VA store. He just successfully made it freeze, and then suggested I erase everything and reinstall. I asked him to run a hardware check, nothing wrong was found.

-I ran the hardware check myself a couple weeks later, with the CD that came with the computer, no problems came up.

-I reinstalled the OSX system.

While running the tests and re installing the system my computer repeatedly froze, and I had to restart.

It has been 3 days since I reinstalled the OS, and it just froze on me again.

Any thoughts?

[lisseelou]

I forgot to mention, that usually before my machine freezes, I hear a click.

[discotronic]

Try re-seating the Airport card. Sometime this can be the cause if not plugged in correctly. It doesn't sound like you are having a kernal panic. When you reinstalled OSX did you completely erase the hard drive and reinstall?

I think you should call the Apple Store back and have them take it in for repair. Sounds like you have a hardware issue of some kind. If you already did a format and install there is a good chance that software wasn't the issue.

[lisseelou]

I re-seated the Airport card, and checked the memory stick.

I did not completely erase the computer and re-install, I have to wait until tomorrow, a friend is going to lend me a back-up drive. So instead I re-installed the OS over the old OS.

Since rechecking the airport card etc, my computer has continued to freeze, and I have had it start up again with the folder with the blinking question mark.

I read on another Mac site that someone had a similar problem, they thought the click before the machine freezes was indicative of a hard drive failure. What do you think?

[tntracy]

Originally posted by lisseelou:
<snip>
indicative of a hard drive failure. What do you think?

Do you have DiskWarrior by Alsoft? If so, if I were you I would boot from the CD then first run hardware diagnostics on the drive. Then, assuming it checks out, try to repair & replace the directories. (As an aside, you'll need the very latest & greatest version of DiskWarrior, v3.0.2, in order to boot your iMac from the CD - this is really a OS 10.3.x issue IIRC, but, if you have a new iMac G5, you have 10.3.x... Check Alsoft's Web site for details on getting the upgrade).

Otherwise, you can boot from the Apple Hardware Test CD that came with you iMac, and run diagnostics on the HDD from it. No directory repair / replace, tho'.

If you do not have DiskWarrior, I highly recommend it to any one who owns a Mac...

Tom