Welcome to the MacNN Forums.

HyperX · Oct 26, 2006, 08:30 AM

OK - I have a mac pro with 3 gig Xeons - originally 3 gigs of ram. I added 4 more plus two 750 gig hard drives. I then made one of the 750s the boot drive after using disk utility to copy from the old drive(250 gig). I have a total of 4 drives in there - 250, 500, 750 and 750.

I also upgraded the firefox to version 2.0 and downloaded 4 extensions.

The mac was rock solid, running parrarels (in it was windows xp - need for work vpn) before my upgrades. After all these upgrades, I am getting a continuous spinning disc in Firefox(but not always), and sometimes the menu bar below is EXTREMELY slow. One time the mac just stopped responding.

So I guess I should have added the upgrades one at a time. Something is screwing it up.

Is there a way to look at log files, or some way to determine what it is?

After I rebooted the Mac everything seems fine, but firefox is still acting up. Maybe I will reinstall the firefox.

Any ideas what approach do I take to trouble shoot my issues?

Thanks - and this is a great board! It is helping me with my PC to Mac transition!! Very much appreciate it all.

kick52 · Oct 26, 2006, 08:32 AM

you may have bad ram or a bad hard drive.

try running the apple hardware test.

mac128k-1984 · Oct 26, 2006, 08:41 AM

Start with the ram, as Kick52 mentioned, also pull the new stuff and see of the stability returns, if not swap the new and old ram and restest. Then move on to the hard drive.

The important thing is to test in an orderly manner to help isolate the failure

HyperX · Oct 26, 2006, 08:44 AM

Originally Posted by kick52

you may have bad ram or a bad hard drive.

try running the apple hardware test.

Kick52 - is this apple hardware test tool something I download, or something part of OSX.

Thanks for the suggestion!!

Big Mac · Oct 26, 2006, 09:10 AM

It's one of the discs that come with the system.

HyperX · Oct 26, 2006, 09:12 AM

Thanks! I will look into it. Taking earlier train home to mess with this. I remember only seeing one disk. The Mac OS X disk. I will look in the box for others.

thebunny · Oct 26, 2006, 09:14 AM

You have the hardware test both as a separate DVD and as part of the restore DVD. It came with your Mac.

iMacfan · Oct 26, 2006, 09:37 AM

Seperate CD? I've only seen it on the restore disk.

David

OreoCookie · Oct 26, 2006, 09:42 AM

No, the Apple Hardware Test is on the Installation DVD … at least that's how it is with my ProBook. Just put in the DVD (disc 1) and press D during start-up.

Tuoder · Oct 26, 2006, 09:43 AM

In general, it is a good idea to do upgrades one at a time, so that way, if there is a problem, you know what it is (usually).

thebunny · Oct 26, 2006, 02:50 PM

Originally Posted by iMacfan

Seperate CD? I've only seen it on the restore disk.

David

Heh, in the olden days there was a separate hardware test CD as well as the restore DVD. I don't have an Intel Mac yet...

Todd Madson · Oct 26, 2006, 03:06 PM

This is the red herring:
"firefox to version 2.0 and downloaded 4 extensions"

I'm told that extensions for previous versions of Firefox don't always
work well in v2.0. Some are downright incompatible.

Try removing those extensions and check again. If it's still unstable,
then remove each upgrade one by one.

HyperX · Oct 26, 2006, 07:03 PM

Originally Posted by Todd Madson

This is the red herring:
"firefox to version 2.0 and downloaded 4 extensions"

I'm told that extensions for previous versions of Firefox don't always
work well in v2.0. Some are downright incompatible.

Try removing those extensions and check again. If it's still unstable,
then remove each upgrade one by one.

Yup! thats what it was. The Fire Ftp extension was causing all the issues. Got rid of it and all is well. Right on the money. I love this Mac!