[web45]

My wife has a Mac G5 1.6 GHz running OSX 3.9. The machine will lock up when the scroll-down menus are used - the ones that act like window shades that appear and scroll down from the top of the screen, then scroll back up and disappear after a selection is made.

This occurs with all window shade type scroll-down menus in the System Preference folder (Desktop & Screen Savers “Options” and “Hot corners”, International “Customize Sorting”, etc.) as well as those in Safari “Print” and when adding attachments to emails. If you toggle the menu up and down the problem will sometimes occur right away (first up or down stroke) but always within three cycles. Then the “beachball of death” appears, and the only remedy is to force a power off and restart. Usually additional disk activity can be heard after the lock-up. I assume this is a software problem because the “beachball of death” continues to spin and still moves with the mouse. The clock stops.

What hasn’t worked: I’ve started the machine without OS9 loading, with the printer & scanner disconnected, and turned off all screen saver and sleep modes. I reloaded the print driver. I’ve run permissions repair and hardware test and Cocktail. I reloaded the OS (3.3), then updated back to 3.9. The problem occurred in both.

All Mac hardware is original, except I added more memory, from 256 to 1280, to see if this would help, but it did not. The problem occurs in either configuration.

What has worked: If run in “Safe mode” the problem does not occur. I tested by toggling several of the scroll-down menus ten times with no failures.

I contacted a local PC/Mac forum and the support person thinks it is a hardware problem. He suggested resetting the PRAM and PMU/SMU to see if that would help (it did not). If it is a hardware problem, why does it work in Safe Mode? Also, as noted above, it is not random. Before I spend big $$$ at a Mac store, I want to explore all options.

Thanks for your help.

[Big Mac]

Have you tried an Archive and Install using the OS X disc?

[web45]

I did reinstall 3.3 from the disc that came with the computer. Is this what you mean? This caused problems with Quark Express, (had to revalidate, which I understand you can only do once a year) so I hesitate to try anything that will mess up QE.

I understand there are no "conflicts" with OSX as with the older Mac operating systems, but this is what it acts like as the menus come squirming down. I assume this is memory-intensive activity, which is why I tried the memory upgrade.

I did not want to confuse the issue, but it also locks up when the screen saver comes on for more than a few minutes.

[Big Mac]

Conflicts in OS X are very rare because of OS X's cleaner architecture, but they rarely do occur. If the reinstallation had no effect on the problem, then that's not going to fix it. Regular menus should have no problem displaying themselves, no matter what system you're on or how much RAM you have. Bad RAM can cause strange behavior and slow-downs, however. Here's the standard order I go through to determine where I problem may lie:

1. System software (Archive and Install)
2. RAM (pull out third party RAM and retest)
3. Hard drive (boot from another drive to confirm the malfunction)