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Well.....THIS is peculiar.....
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Dedicated MacNNer
Join Date: Nov 2004
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Here I am, happily updating various songs in iTunes and PDF documents in Finder, doing quite a bit of cutting and pasting of graphics, and suddenly my dock stops working, Expose stops working, the three buttons at the top of the windows stop working, and the system slows to a CRAWL. LOTS of spinning beach balls.
It has happened three times in the last 24 hours. System gets to the point I have to hit the panic button and hold the power switch down to turn off the computer and start over.
What gives?
PowerBook G4 15 loaded with 1GB of ram running OS 10.3.8.
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Mac Elite
Join Date: Nov 2001
Location: Trafalmadore
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Next time this occurs, check your Activity Monitor or use Top to see if any particular process is hogging the cpu time. Possibly there is something causing the Finder to go whacky, like a corrupted jpg on the desktop. However, that shouldn't cause the computer to lock up, but you only mentioned slows to a crawl. You should have been able to logout, unless the WindowServer died.
I would also check the system logs, using System Profiler to see if it lends any information to the problem.
Great subject title.
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Dedicated MacNNer
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<Insert sound of abject panic here>
Okay. I'll try some of that, if I can figure any of it out.
I'm still trying to get used to a dock instead of a permanent icon bar!
ETA: Your mention of wallpaper reminded me that yes, the wallpaper-change routine locks up, too. Come to think of it, I think one picture has been present each time it's happened. I'll keep an eye out for that.
My wallpaper cycles ever 5 seconds or so.
(Last edited by USNA91; Feb 26, 2005 at 12:57 PM.
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Dedicated MacNNer
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In addition to that excellent suggestion of using the Activity Monitor to see what's happening during a slowdown (assuming you can get it open and functioning at the time), I'd turn off your rotating desktop background. Just go to a static Apple standard desktop background and see if the whole problem goes away. From there, you might be able to narrow down the search for your problem child.
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Mac Elite
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Originally posted by USNA91:
ETA: Your mention of wallpaper reminded me that yes, the wallpaper-change routine locks up, too. Come to think of it, I think one picture has been present each time it's happened. I'll keep an eye out for that.
My wallpaper cycles ever 5 seconds or so.
My dad had this exact problem where his pictures rotated every 5 seconds. It cycled through his entire library and one single picture would cause this to occur.
Of course it was hard to pin down which picture. We eventually did and he turned off this superfluous feature and his whole problem went away.
Activity Monitor is in your application/utilities folder. top in a command line in terminal. I would use AM as you aren't probably familiar with terminal.
An excellent utility that I use to monitor cpu usage in the menu bar, is MenuMeters. Check it out at versiontracker.com
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Dedicated MacNNer
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Originally posted by SMacTech:
An excellent utility that I use to monitor cpu usage in the menu bar, is MenuMeters. Check it out at versiontracker.com [/B]
Incredible little tool. Thank
P.S. - Still nothing. I'm wondering if it happens when I'm moving a picture using Expose and that one image pops up on the wallpaper. Maybe I'll do a test run just to see.
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Dedicated MacNNer
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Holy thread resurrection, Batman!
Anyway, I spoke to the guys at the local Genius Bar, and apparently having the wallpaper changing every 5 seconds is extremely memory-intensive. Throw Expose into the mix and CRASH!
I no longer run changing wallpaper, and the problem has not recurred since.
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Mac Elite
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Especially if you have some large TIFFs or something in the folder you're going through.
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Clinically Insane
Join Date: Oct 2000
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Originally Posted by USNA91
Holy thread resurrection, Batman!
Anyway, I spoke to the guys at the local Genius Bar, and apparently having the wallpaper changing every 5 seconds is extremely memory-intensive. Throw Expose into the mix and CRASH!
I no longer run changing wallpaper, and the problem has not recurred since.
Every five seconds huh? Of course your Mac couldn't take that - how could you stand it? 
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"The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground." TJ
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Administrator  Join Date: Apr 2001
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Just about any "background" function, whether it's obvious like the wallpaper rotation, or less obvious like Spotlight indexing, will use quite a lot of RAM. And Tiger likes to use a LOT of RAM...
I would think that having your wallpaper change every FIVE SECONDS would be disconcerting! It would certainly bother me.
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Glenn -----
OTR/L, MOT, Tx
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Dedicated MacNNer
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Originally Posted by ghporter
Just about any "background" function, whether it's obvious like the wallpaper rotation, or less obvious like Spotlight indexing, will use quite a lot of RAM. And Tiger likes to use a LOT of RAM...
I would think that having your wallpaper change every FIVE SECONDS would be disconcerting! It would certainly bother me.
Eh, I have hundreds of images, so it doesn't get boring. 
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