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Gorilla · Nov 14, 2003, 12:13 AM

I just got my new iBook yesterday, and it's pretty nice, but seems pretty crash prone.

It crashed about four times yesterday, and three times today. It happens mostly when I am trying to mount a large dmg file, or when I am installing something. I've added a bunch of stuff like office, camino, proteus, and sidetrack, but I can't think of anything that would make the system unstable.

I ran the quick hardware check that came on one of the cds but there were no problems. Should I be looking for a software problem or a hardware problem?

Any help would be great.

Krusty · Nov 14, 2003, 12:38 AM

Originally posted by Gorilla:

Any help would be great.

Try looking in Volume/Library/Logs/CrashReporter/
and User/Library/Logs/CrashReporter There will be Crash logs for the system and applications in there ... see if you can make any sense out of them.

BTW ... no way in H#LL should you be crashing that much, it IS NOT NORMAL. I've crashed about 4 times in the last 2.5 years: 1 unknown and 3 related to a screwed up firewire port (hardware problem) -- and I'm notoriously bad for installing all sorts of crap, using dev tools, etc.

anaphora68 · Nov 14, 2003, 12:45 AM

It sounds as if you have bad RAM. If you have any user installed or BTO RAM remove it and see if the computer still crashes. If it doesn't, you need to get that RAM replaced and it should be covered under warranty.

d4nth3m4n · Nov 14, 2003, 03:04 AM

dare i ask where you bought this comp from?

Gorilla · Nov 14, 2003, 09:42 AM

Originally posted by d4nth3m4n:
dare i ask where you bought this comp from?

I bought this computer online at the Apple Store.

After a little research on Google, and from the posts here, I figured it could be one of three things: the ram, sidetrack, or a bad os install.

I went back and un-installed Sidetrack (something I found said it might be the cause), but it still seems a little weird.

I also ran the extended hardware test but everything checked out. If it were bad RAM, would this catch it, or is there a chance that this test would still miss the problem?

The last thing to do is re-install everything. This one will take a little more time..

Thanks for everyone's help.

pysan · Nov 14, 2003, 10:13 AM

Bad ram would certainly cause symptoms that you are describing, and no the hardware check CD will not pick it up. There is a lengthy discussion on faulty ram going on right now in the powerbook forum, so you might check that out. It does sound like faulty ram though, and the one way to be sure is to pull the extra ram and see if it still acts unstable after a day or so of normal use. Granted it will be a bit slower during all of that use, but that is easier than reinstalling everything first, and then figuring out it was the ram, so I'd do the ram removal check first.

One2meny · Nov 19, 2003, 03:59 AM

I'm getting my RAM replaced with another one. Talking to my MacMall guy, I guess they say it's an issue with Panther and the RAM. The RAM itself is at fault, but in a weird way. The RAM can be a good component, but not for your specific computer, with your specific Panther. Techies said that they've swapped the RAM in iBooks and Powerbooks having the same problem with the same kind of RAM, just a different module itself and everything has run fine, then they've taken the "faulty" module and put it in another computer and everything was fine. It's an anomaly.

In short, have the RAM switched. That's it.