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patrickjketelaar · Sep 17, 2002, 10:34 PM

ok, heres the story. i have a g4/400 tower (gigabit) with an internal 80 gig and 20 gig hd. it has 896 megs of ram. Geforce2mx AGP (apple adc) and a radeon 7000pci. When i first installed jaguar, it worked great. Then the freezes started. So after about a week I reinstalled jaguar (wiped the drive clean (80 gig) and installed fresh from scratch (first installation was an upgrade).

and a few days go by, and now the freezes are starting back up. most commonly occur in IE, but Netscape does it too, in addition to itunes. i ran fsck -y and it fixed some things, but they still occur. I pulled the radeon 7000, still occur. Does anyone have any idea whats going on here? 10.0-10.1.5 worked flawlessly. 9.2.1 works flawlessly. My ibook running jag works flawlessly. wtf is causing my g4 to freeze so much? and is anyone experiencing this too?

can anyone help me please?

curmi · Sep 17, 2002, 10:54 PM

Not sure it is related, but I have found that occasionally, after waking the machine from sleep (dual 450G4), applications stop responding and things start hanging. There is no way to recover, and you eventually have to reboot.

Is this the behaviour you see?

patrickjketelaar · Sep 17, 2002, 10:58 PM

not really. i never put the machine to sleep really. ill just be doing something, switching programs and bang. hard freeze. no mouse or keyboard input works.

Macpilot · Sep 17, 2002, 11:44 PM

Did you check to see if you have the latest Firware installed?

Also, your RAM could have gone bad. Try taking out all your aftermarket ram and unplug everything when you do your next OS install.

Macpilot · Sep 17, 2002, 11:45 PM

I meant Firmware, not firware.

Back up 15 and punt · Sep 17, 2002, 11:48 PM

This sounds like it could be a memory problem. I would advise checking out your memory. I run a 450 DP machine with 1.1 gig of memory and I haven't experienced any freezes except during boot up when I am trying to bring up Classic. This only occurs occasionally.

patrickjketelaar · Sep 17, 2002, 11:56 PM

1, yes, I have the latest firmware.

2. how could my memory just "go bad?" its worked fine for 2 years. surely the mtbf of memory is longer than (365*24*2)=17520 hours. i dont mean to be rude but im just sick of restarting my G4 while my ibook just chugs along with no problems.

but anyway. i did pull one of my chips (i pulled a 128 meg simm) ran it for an hour, and it came back. lemme try the 256 then the 512.

ive also been monitoring temperatures, nothing above 80 degrees F.

hoping that 10.2.1 fixes some stability problems, cause this has never happened before.

Love Calm Quiet · Sep 18, 2002, 12:04 AM

Yes, it's unusual - but memory *can* go bad at any time. Probably like most solid state electronics most of the bad apples sour in the first weeks of use. But I've had a module give me good service for 2 years, then go bad. (fortunately it was from company with *lifetime warranty* - that I never expected to need).

patrickjketelaar · Sep 20, 2002, 06:35 PM

bump. still gots the problems. down to one last memory stick, but ive also pulled almost every component and run it til it freezes. damnit! anyone have any ideas besides bad memory?

Guy Incognito · Sep 20, 2002, 06:46 PM

Originally posted by patrickjketelaar:
bump. still gots the problems. down to one last memory stick, but ive also pulled almost every component and run it til it freezes. damnit! anyone have any ideas besides bad memory?

Dude...I'm suffering the same problem with my Dual-800. Totally random freezes. No apparent reasons.

They used to occur often with 10.2. Then I tried virtually everything in the book.; Swapping RAM, going back to original stock config, running without a network connection, reseting the firmware, total wipe of the hard drive (one partition, multiple partitions), upgrading from 10.1.5, clean install, erase and install, running in thousands of colors (suspecting a Quartz Extreme problem), running in safe boot mode, running only Aqua apps (suspecting a brushed-metal problem), running only 1st-party Apple software. NOTHING!!! It didn't help at all.

I figured 10.2.1 might fix it...nope. It's freezing much less often since I've reset the firmware though.

Now suspecting a bad sector on the HD but can't confirm anything. Really sucks...I'm stumped also.

Guy Incognito · Sep 20, 2002, 06:55 PM

Oh, and the freeze only occurs if I'm doing something...if the computer is left alone to do whatever (run a screensaver, a DVD, iTunes music, downloading) it won't freeze. The freezes occur if I'm doing something such as scrolling through a PDF, scrubbing the dock, dragging a window or icon, switching apps, or simply moving the mouse cursor around aimlessly. I could leave the computer on all night and it'll be fine in the morning, 'till I pick up the mouse and do something with it.

I must admit though that I've had less crashes in the past 20 days than I had in one day before reseting the firmware (thanks Targon...sorry I couldn't get back to, I moved to Montreal, Quebec where it's seemingly impossible to get internet.)

The computer did crash under 10.2.1 once, so I know the problem isn't fixed if it's a software problem. The last 2 things I haven't checked fully is the GeForce 2 MX and the HD. If changing these two things don't fix the problem, I'm installing OS X 10.1.x on my G4 (never hardlocked on me in previous OS X versions), packing it up and selling it to some unsuspecting schmoe.

:XI: · Sep 20, 2002, 07:47 PM

I had strange freezes in 10.1.4 and still get them in 10.1.5 (i don't have 10.2 yet, so i can't say about that) it's wierd, like one app will freeze but everything else will be ok, until i try to force quit then the finder freezes (still have the mouse!) try to launch terminal from the dock? the dock freezes! grr!
i suppose i should leave ssh on and go in from my pc and kill anything that's screwed� but ssh doesn't seem to survive sleep� (more 'grr!') any-how, just thought I'd share

mrtew · Sep 20, 2002, 11:42 PM

I think you have some kind of hardware problem too. I wouldn't title your thread "jaguar freezes system". I really think you should consider having it checked out, not selling it to a sucker.

If you don't think it's the hardware, have you even tried Norton Disk Doctor. It works miracles on mystery problems, even if someone posts right after me saying Norton will mess up your drive.

It's got to be your hardware of a glitch that can be fixed... you know it's not 'Jaguar'.

patrickjketelaar · Sep 21, 2002, 12:47 PM

i appreciate all the people who are saying that it is a hardware problem, but i have to say this, i have had the computer for 2 years. i have used 9.1, 9.2, 9.2.1, 10.0-10.1.5, and now 10.2. During that entire time, 10.2 has been on for about a month. i never ever had any problems with any other OS, i can still to this day boot into 9.2.1 and run it fine with no freezes whatsoever. I have read on the apple forums that others are having the same thing, with different hardware. i have gone through every piece of hardware one by one replacing at a time, reducing the system capacity for ram, hd, video cards, etc. and none of that has worked. ive done the apple hardware test cd. nothing found wrong.

im getting to the point where im thinking about going back to 10.1.5. i cant use my computer for anything reliably.

anyone have any other ideas, other than hardware??

SMacTech · Sep 21, 2002, 01:24 PM

Do you have a partition on which you can go back to 10.1.5 or an OS version which did not freeze?
I love Carbon Copy Cloner. Before I upgraded to Jag, I cloned 10.1.5 on another partition. Fortunately, I didn't have to go back to 10.1.5

patrickjketelaar · Sep 21, 2002, 03:04 PM

i do have a blank 20 gig hd that i removed during testing for jag. im gonna put 10.1.5 on that and get back to work. jag is great on my ibook, ill just keep it like that.

patrick