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ajbaker · Sep 26, 2003, 09:00 AM

Having a bad day at work. Instead of taking it out on my colleagues (who probably deserve it) I have decided to let of steam here...

Can we all please stop saying "OS X has never crashed on me." It's not that I don't believe you, but neither is it helpful to all those for whom OS X does crash regulary - through no fault of their own.

Yes OS X is in-comparable to OS 9 in terms of stability. However I do believe it is still maturing. I can remember working with Win 2000 2-3 years ago; it used to crash fairly regulary, but now it has improved. OS X will too. In the mean time "OS X has never crashed on me" is not helpful.

A

Moose · Sep 26, 2003, 09:11 AM

Originally posted by ajbaker:
In the mean time "OS X has never crashed on me" is not helpful.

It's every bit as helpful as "MAC OS X IS IMMATURE AND STILL NEEDS WORK BEFORE I WILL USE IT FULL-TIME AND OH MAN IT KEEPS CRASHING LOTS AND LOTS WITH TRANSPARENT DOCK AND SILK AND WINDOWSHADE X ON MY BEIGE G3 DESKTOP WITH A 600MHz G4 UPGRADE IN IT."

Zimphire · Sep 26, 2003, 09:28 AM

OS X dumps on me maybe once a month tops. And it's usually my fault. (mucking with system files)

If your OS X is crashing that much. I would look into why.

ebuddy · Sep 26, 2003, 09:37 AM

Seriously dude, OSX crashes on you regularly? I can sincerely tell you it's not OSX that's crashing regulary. If it's crashing regulary you've got some hardware issues. What are you running when it crashes? What computer are you using? How often does it crash?

While I agree that the Windows OS's are becoming more and more stable each year, I'm not sure what you're talking about with regards to OSX and "crashing regularly." It just doesn't do that. I'm running OSX on my 500mhz Tibook w/ 512 mb's of RAM and the only time I "crashed" (meaning, absolutely had to restart) was when I had bad RAM and replaced a chip and voila! No more crashes. Now, I'm also running Jaguar on a 266mhz tangerine iMac and for a week now it's been solid as a rock. Granted, I'm not setting any speed records, but the OS is running crashless.

Normally, if an app freezes you simply force quit it and fire it back up. Just like the Task Manager in Windows. Only, I can tell you that the Task Manager in Windows angers me because you generally have to click OK several times before you can kill the app and even then the computer never quite seems to run the same until you restart. With force quit in X I've had no issues w/ firing it back up and cruisin' along. Let us know what issues you're having and maybe we can help. Don't just blame an OS that works perfectly crashless for 95% of us and then tell us not to gloat about it.

SMacTech · Sep 26, 2003, 09:42 AM

It has happened to a dual 867 at work. I replaced a 512mb stick with a "better quality" chip from Crucial and no more crashes.
I guess OS X should be able to work with bad RAM too, eh?

Spaztik · Sep 26, 2003, 09:42 AM

OS X has never crashed on me... what's wrong with you guys?

Adam Betts · 11:39 AM

Originally posted by Spaztik:
OS X has never crashed on me... what's wrong with you guys?

Me either. It have to be something wrong with his setting.

DrSpookles · Sep 26, 2003, 10:02 AM

It is frustrating for me. On my iBook, it is the ultimate in stability. It has crashed, but rarely.

On my desktop (dual1.25), it is pretty unstable at times. I did add some cheap RAM, and maybe that has something to do with it.

The thing is, is that it doesn't freeze. What happens is that it will get slower, and slower, and then eventually become incredibly unresponsive, and then I get the beachball of death in every app. This might happen a couple of times per week. I'm not even doing anything crazy processor intensive.

I might say open up 100 images in preview, or have multiple web pages going on, and compiling something in the background, but it is a dual processor machine and with 1.5 GB of RAM, it should be able to handle it.

How do I go about testing to see whether or not my RAM is bad?

danengel · Sep 26, 2003, 10:06 AM

Crashed once because of the DVD player, and one more time, can't remember why. I'd say two kernel panics in six months is fairly good, taking into account that I use it a lot.

kovacs · Sep 26, 2003, 10:09 AM

OS X may be incomplete but it has always been very stable ( even the earliest 10.0 version ). Besides some predictable crashes or beachballs in the finder the OS has always been rock solid for me, I don't use XP very much but from my experience I can say that even XP is pretty stable, maybe the days of an unstable and crashy OS are finally over, stability is no longer a valid argument for switching...

sanity assassin · Sep 26, 2003, 10:14 AM

Like what the others have said, if it's happening regularly, then something is wrong under the hood. Not sure about everyone else, but OS X has been the stablest OS that I've used, especially with what I do with it. I use windows too, and quite like it, in the sense that I've had to cause of certain windows only apps,; but I find myself having to reboot it, defrag it, and do other magical things with it on a regular basis. Doesn't crash on me too much, but apps fall over all the time, more so than any other OS.

polendo · Sep 26, 2003, 10:17 AM

Mine has also crashed.. seldom, but yes it has. Actually the other day I just looked at the log were it keeps the crashes.. Office X is No. 1 in crashes.. no news there, I don't mind though.. i keep saving every damn minute I work on.

ebuddy · Sep 26, 2003, 10:35 AM

On my desktop (dual1.25), it is pretty unstable at times. I did add some cheap RAM, and maybe that has something to do with it.
Spookles, did the crashing start after adding the new RAM or did you add the RAM before installing OSX? The "slowing down to a crawl" thing seems strange to me. When things seem strange to me, I reset PRAM.

(in context; I was cleaning up OS9.2 apps a long time ago and threw away a fledgling MACH file *never do this*

and went into the ROOT shell. Resetting PRAM was not the proper medicine for the symptoms, so that was the only time I really tried resetting PRAM.)

I understand PRAM resets are generally in order when the computer acts "quirky". Since I did not at the time understand why the computer booted into the shell, I thought it was just acting quirky.

I'd offer more advise and help, but I'm starting to think AJBaker's post was a "hit and run." If he truly wanted help, he'd respond w/ more details...

To the rest of you; OSX ROCKS!!!

Agasthya · Sep 26, 2003, 10:35 AM

Originally posted by DrSpookles:
It is frustrating for me. On my iBook, it is the ultimate in stability. It has crashed, but rarely.

On my desktop (dual1.25), it is pretty unstable at times. I did add some cheap RAM, and maybe that has something to do with it.

The thing is, is that it doesn't freeze. What happens is that it will get slower, and slower, and then eventually become incredibly unresponsive, and then I get the beachball of death in every app. This might happen a couple of times per week. I'm not even doing anything crazy processor intensive.

I might say open up 100 images in preview, or have multiple web pages going on, and compiling something in the background, but it is a dual processor machine and with 1.5 GB of RAM, it should be able to handle it.

How do I go about testing to see whether or not my RAM is bad?

9:33AM up 37 mins, 2 users, load averages: 0.34, 0.30, 0.34

Yep

Crashed on waking up from deep sleep this morning. The computer was making funny electronic beeps after the system locked up (if anyone remembers the "Dead Mac" beeps from the old Macs, this sounds was very similar to that.). So I just restarted and all is happy (for now).

ebuddy · Sep 26, 2003, 10:44 AM

How do I go about testing to see whether or not my RAM is bad?

Spookles, I forget to tell you how I determined bad RAM to be the problem...I used the Hardware Test c.d. that came with the machine. Boot from it and it will run diagnostics on all your internal hardware. i.e.; Storage Mass, Logic Board, RAM, etc... I've heard some complaints from others that the diagnostics were not consistent. For example, they'd run it at 9am and all would check fine. They'd run it again an hour later and all of a sudden m_3/6 error would show next to RAM. All I could recommend would be to run it at least 4 times. If it gives you an error on anything more than once-address it. For me, I ran hardware test once, got error, trusted it, changed RAM chip, and have been fine since!

I hope that helps.

chris v · Sep 26, 2003, 10:54 AM

For me, OS 9 crashed at least once a week, sometimes as much as twice or three times a day. OS X as often as not will run flawlessly for 20+ days.

The most common cause of restarts at work are power outages, believe it or not. We're on the "wrong side of the interstate" here, and the grid is dicey. My dual gig didn't so much as beachball on me for over three months when it was new.

On three computers running OS X for 2 years, I have had to wipe and re-install from a backup exactly once (not counting operator error). "Never" is not a word that applies, but stability-wise, X is a whole new game.

CV

Spheric Harlot · Sep 26, 2003, 11:13 AM

Originally posted by Agasthya:
Crashed on waking up from deep sleep this morning.

Just a niggle:

I thought Macs weren't capable of "deep sleep"? There was, IIRC, a technical distinction to regular sleep having to do with the powering down of certain components - which the Mac doesn't do.

I've experienced nasty slowdowns as well, but a restart and a newer version of mlMac fixed that. (I'd quit the program repeatedly, and it seems zombies were haunting my system, doing weird things.)

The only kernel panics I've had were related to bugs in audio device drivers - one of which was a beta.

-s*

DrSpookles · Sep 26, 2003, 11:30 AM

ebuddy -- thanks for the advice. i think that maybe it has something to do with mixing 3rd party ram with the apple ram.. i might try removing the apple ram, just because there is more of the 3rd party ram

i'll run the diagnostics tonite, and try the pram thingy. i will be dancing a little dance if this can be fixed, because to be honest i had just gotten used to it, and strangely accepted it.

CatOne · Sep 26, 2003, 12:32 PM

Originally posted by ajbaker:
Having a bad day at work. Instead of taking it out on my colleagues (who probably deserve it) I have decided to let of steam here...

Can we all please stop saying "OS X has never crashed on me." It's not that I don't believe you, but neither is it helpful to all those for whom OS X does crash regulary - through no fault of their own.

Yes OS X is in-comparable to OS 9 in terms of stability. However I do believe it is still maturing. I can remember working with Win 2000 2-3 years ago; it used to crash fairly regulary, but now it has improved. OS X will too. In the mean time "OS X has never crashed on me" is not helpful.

A

I've seen 3 kernel panics in (counts in his head) 33 months of using OS X. So that's about one per year. So yes it does crash, but it's RARE.

If OS X is crashing "regularly" then you have a hardware issue, or you're mucking in the System folder (you have NO need to EVER do this). Or you're writing drivers or something ;-)

Seriously you should investigate, what you're seeing is not normal and not typical. Sure OS X can crash, but it does NOT crash "regularly."

CatOne · Sep 26, 2003, 12:32 PM

Originally posted by Zimphire:
OS X dumps on me maybe once a month tops. And it's usually my fault. (mucking with system files)

If your OS X is crashing that much. I would look into why.

WTF are you mucking with system files? Do you staple your arms occasionally too?

ajbaker · Sep 26, 2003, 01:05 PM

Oooooooops.

I forgot to say that I personally have no gripes with OS X; for me I am unlucky if it panics more than once a month. I was simply at a stressful point in the day and came across a few posts that simply stated "OS X has never crashed" in response to someone with a genuine problem.

My last panic was caused by waking my Powerbook G4. No reason. Just did!

Oh, and yes I am using OS X full time.

Ironically, in response to one poster who stated Win 2000 Task Manager usually takes a couple of takes to kill a process... I have the same problem. In OS X. Usually with Apple apps. Always have, always will.

naphtali · Sep 26, 2003, 01:18 PM

Well I know this sounds totally unscientific and stuff but I've experienced 'lemon installs' too, where everything just doesn't seem to work after Disc 2 installation is complete. Very fortunately, all these problems go away with another re-install, so really, I kinda have never let OS X crash on me.

cambro · 01:43 PM

Originally posted by Spaztik:
OS X has never crashed on me... what's wrong with you guys?

Hehe...same here. I've never had a crash, but I just write/run number crunching C programs, do digital image analysis, serve PHP intensive web pages, run a database server, and stuff, all at the same time.

Well, I DID have this one crash back in 10.0.0!

I agree with other posters. IF you REALLY have frequent SYSTEM crashes in X (MS Word unexpectedly quitting doesn't count!!!), you either have a hardware problem (bad RAM?), a bad X install with incomplete or damaged system files, or you have installed system hacks and then proceeded to update via Software Update glibly, without removing these hacks and/or third party kernel extensions. This can definitely make your system more prone to instability. But other than that, X is just not going to tank on you regularly. Sorry, helpful or not, that's true.

EDIT: I added third party kernel extensions to this list.

Eriamjh · Sep 26, 2003, 02:00 PM

I get a KP about once a month, usually when using or unplugging USB CF readers.

I am very happy with OSX regardless.

[APi]TheMan · Sep 26, 2003, 02:08 PM

Originally posted by Agasthya:
9:33AM up 37 mins, 2 users, load averages: 0.34, 0.30, 0.34

Yep

Crashed on waking up from deep sleep this morning. The computer was making funny electronic beeps after the system locked up (if anyone remembers the "Dead Mac" beeps from the old Macs, this sounds was very similar to that.). So I just restarted and all is happy (for now).

Count the beeps... they mean something, Apple's knowledgebase has documents detailing this.

Hydra · Sep 26, 2003, 02:16 PM

Before I got my dual G5 one week ago I had a dual 800 that under OSX KP'd 3 times in 2 years. Not like 3 times or around 3 times but in actuality 3 times. I ran it 24/7 for 2 years and it refused to wake from sleep a few times in the beginning so I just left it running instead (you can add another 3 crashes for not waking if you would like) . I only restarted for OS upgrades or whatever needed a reboot for other installs.

I like the stability of OSX but any number of things can destabilize a computer and this will result in varying experiences. I think for most people OSX is pretty stable but if people are having trouble would you rather people be disingenuous and say instead "yeah I agree, OSX crashes all the time on me". How does this help anyone. If you know OSX is generally stable and crash-free, wouldn't it be more helpful to know that if your OSX machines does crash often?

-Jerry C.

Laurence · Sep 26, 2003, 02:49 PM

I would like to add that testing with the Apple hardware diagnostic CD will not find all RAM issues. Even if you run it 10 times in a row and it says your RAM is good, don't believe it. if you can, boot into 9 and test with Newer Tech's Gauge Pro. I had random crashing issues for about three months and always tested with the Apple CD. Finally I broke down and installed OS 9 to test with some other apps. Gauge Pro was the only app that told me the RAM was bad and after replacing all the RAM (1.5GB) with crucial memory I haven't had one crash in the three months since I replaced it. My processor load averages near 100% most of the time when I'm away from the computer (rendering things) and there is constant heavy network traffic as well.

It can't be stressed enough that bad RAM causes most kernel panicss in X.

If you have a machine that can't run OS 9 I have no idea what to do to test the RAM properly, but I would recommend just getting another DIMM anyway and just pull all your RAM out and put the new RAM in and test for a few weeks. 512MB of CL2 crucial RAM is less than $70 and it is well worth it just to avoid the frustrations caused by not knowing what is wrong.

pjmurphy · Sep 26, 2003, 03:53 PM

Originally posted by Laurence:
I would like to add that testing with the Apple hardware diagnostic CD will not find all RAM issues. Even if you run it 10 times in a row and it says your RAM is good, don't believe it. if you can, boot into 9 and test with Newer Tech's Gauge Pro. I had random crashing issues for about three months and always tested with the Apple CD. Finally I broke down and installed OS 9 to test with some other apps. Gauge Pro was the only app that told me the RAM was bad and after replacing all the RAM (1.5GB) with crucial memory I haven't had one crash in the three months since I replaced it. My processor load averages near 100% most of the time when I'm away from the computer (rendering things) and there is constant heavy network traffic as well.

It can't be stressed enough that bad RAM causes most kernel panicss in X.

If you have a machine that can't run OS 9 I have no idea what to do to test the RAM properly, but I would recommend just getting another DIMM anyway and just pull all your RAM out and put the new RAM in and test for a few weeks. 512MB of CL2 crucial RAM is less than $70 and it is well worth it just to avoid the frustrations caused by not knowing what is wrong.

I'm glad I found this thread so quickly..

I just got my new 17PB Rev B Wednesday.. I installed a 512mb yesterday and now I have had two fatal crashes (I have to reboot).

Here is the RAM I bought:

Centon Laptop - PC2700 - (DDR333) - 512MB

I crash when I am surfing and iTunes was playing both times..

can it be the RAM??

thanks for your help...

rtav · Sep 26, 2003, 03:56 PM

OK - so this doesn't help, but....
OS X has never crashed on me - and I bought 10.0.0 the day it came out, and ran it on a stock BW G3 400 until last year, when I bought a QS 867. I have added extra hard drives and RAM, I run a FireWire webcam, ethernet, USB printing (Print Center is generally a mess IMHO), dual monitors and M$ Office (which does crash pretty regularly). But the OS itself has never hosed up - not one time.

I know that some people have trouble with kernel panics and so on, but not me. I can't help but wonder about hardware problems (such as glitchy RAM), or heat build up, or something OTHER than the OS itself (which is rock solid) as the source of the problem.

My .2 worth.

Agasthya · Sep 26, 2003, 03:58 PM

Originally posted by [APi]TheMan:
Count the beeps... they mean something, Apple's knowledgebase has documents detailing this.

it was more like a song. And when it started beeping I got kind of upset and just restarted the system before I could properly memorize them (I had just woken up from my sleep and I realized that I lost 3 hours of work in Keynote because of the freeze).

and do you have links to the KB articles or should I just search for "beep" in them?

ApeInTheShell · Sep 26, 2003, 04:11 PM

We have different configurations:

Some people switched when Jaguar came out.
A few tried out the public beta.
Others began their journey on either 10.0 or 10.1

Consider that the mac community has doubled in size with people from different professions all living under one roof.

Maybe someone buys Mac OS X 10.2 and has no problems, kept the defaults on, uses it for e-mail and music. No crashes whatsoever.

A person who tweaks their system and likes to have the latest and greatest downloads 10.2.8 without backing up their system. It crashes within the hour. It is not a crash resistant system but does that mean he/she should blame those who haven't had crashes?

Maybe there is some merit in people gloating that their systems do not crash. They can help those who do have crashes solve them. Or is this not the purpose of these forums?

Spheric Harlot · Sep 26, 2003, 04:35 PM

Originally posted by pjmurphy:
I'm glad I found this thread so quickly..

I just got my new 17PB Rev B Wednesday.. I installed a 512mb yesterday and now I have had two fatal crashes (I have to reboot).

Here is the RAM I bought:

Centon Laptop - PC2700 - (DDR333) - 512MB

I crash when I am surfing and iTunes was playing both times..

can it be the RAM??

thanks for your help...

Certainly possible if you haven't installed any additional drivers for peripherals.

If you have, try uninstalling or removing those first and see if the crashes persist.

If the do, it might be the RAM.
Can you possibly return it for a different-brand memory stick?

-s*

sosumi · Sep 26, 2003, 04:37 PM

Where I come from, frequent OS X KP's are caused by one thing and one thing only:

operator error.

If your install is bunged, Archive and install.

Fix permissions. Run a 3rd party disk utility. Don't **** around with your System files unless you know what you're doing or don't care what happens.

That's all you need to do. Seriously.

Sos

Catfish_Man · Sep 26, 2003, 05:22 PM

Originally posted by ebuddy:
Seriously dude, OSX crashes on you regularly? I can sincerely tell you it's not OSX that's crashing regulary. If it's crashing regulary you've got some hardware issues. What are you running when it crashes? What computer are you using? How often does it crash?

While I agree that the Windows OS's are becoming more and more stable each year, I'm not sure what you're talking about with regards to OSX and "crashing regularly." It just doesn't do that. I'm running OSX on my 500mhz Tibook w/ 512 mb's of RAM and the only time I "crashed" (meaning, absolutely had to restart) was when I had bad RAM and replaced a chip and voila! No more crashes. Now, I'm also running Jaguar on a 266mhz tangerine iMac and for a week now it's been solid as a rock. Granted, I'm not setting any speed records, but the OS is running crashless.

Normally, if an app freezes you simply force quit it and fire it back up. Just like the Task Manager in Windows. Only, I can tell you that the Task Manager in Windows angers me because you generally have to click OK several times before you can kill the app and even then the computer never quite seems to run the same until you restart. With force quit in X I've had no issues w/ firing it back up and cruisin' along. Let us know what issues you're having and maybe we can help. Don't just blame an OS that works perfectly crashless for 95% of us and then tell us not to gloat about it.

I have a dual 867MHz MDD G4. It occasionally will not wake up from sleep. I also get kernel panics on the order of once a month. Hardware is stock, except for a hard drive which usually isn't mounted. Software is close to normal. I am running smoothstripes, but no haxies, and no apps weirder than launchbar. I've run kpdecode on the panic logs, and gotten no useful output (it seems to change reasons between OS updates). The sleep bug has massively increased in frequency since 10.2.8.

btw, I'm a programmer, and pretty competent at diagnosing and solving problems. I've repaired permissions, reinstalled (fixed in temporarily, so I'm going to do it again soon), run fsck, and the other usual fixes.

RayX · Sep 26, 2003, 07:37 PM

Originally posted by sosumi:
Where I come from, frequent OS X KP's are caused by one thing and one thing only:

operator error.

Bullshit.

Try playing around with SMB shares.

I won't go into detail, as this topic has been beaten to death in other threads.

From what I've heard, Panther/Samba 3 addresses a lot of these issues.

Devin Lane · Sep 26, 2003, 07:43 PM

Originally posted by Zimphire:
OS X dumps on me maybe once a month tops. And it's usually my fault. (mucking with system files)

If your OS X is crashing that much. I would look into why.

Same here, most of the real crashes are because of my curiosity, except for one annoying thing: Sometimes, the dialup ktext extension doesn't load properly, and I guess there is no error checking in apple's code, because when it doesn't load properly, it makes SystemUIServer (controls the clock and menu extras) useless. Yes, I have tried sudo kill -9 pid, but somehow it becomes unresponsive to even that, and never restarts. The only way to fix it is to restart, but, the computer never actually freezes.

quandarry · Sep 26, 2003, 08:03 PM

i've had a few kernal panics in the last 2 or three years...no big deal.

i had a weird thing happen earlier this week tho...i had one of those freezes that happen in os8/9 but in osx 10.2.6...

the arrow cursor would move but everything on the screen was frozen...can't remember what i was doing at the time...

reboot and everything has been fine...

Hydra · 08:15 PM

I just wanted to add that when the really nice (if any error report can be classified as nice) 10.2 multilingual KP screen reared it's ugly head on after months of running Jaguar, I actually got excited for a moment and took a picture of it for future reference

As a testament to stability of the OS and my own stupidity I completely screwed up my 10.0 install by accidently changing all the permissions on my Mac. Back in the 10.0 days when you right-clicked or command+I'd to Get Info there was the option of changing permissions on a volume and all enclosed folders but it allowed you to do so with one click and didn't ask for a password (or at least that's how I remember it).

Needless to say I clicked it, not really knowing what permissions were at the time, and all manor of strange and interesting things happened. My menu-bar disappeared, the dock became an unrecognizable mess and the finder didn't do much finding or anything else for that matter. Application wouldn't launch and the few that did, quit unexpectedly. But in the end the OS didn't crash and after a few days I figured out what I did and got everything back on track.

I don't think OSX is stable, I know it from experience. I disagree strongly, however, with those above that operator error is responsible for most KP's. I think bad RAM is a big percentage and I think bad power (and or fluctuations) can play a role (I love having a UPS). YMMV.

-Jerry C.

ASIMO · Sep 26, 2003, 08:22 PM

Crashed (kp's) regularly during 10.0 days. A couple of crashes between 10.1.x and 10.2.6. But then 10.2.7 came along. Bad. Really bad. Seven panics and a few auto logouts. Since 10.2.8, stability seems to have returned. Maybe.

mrtew · Sep 26, 2003, 10:21 PM

I muck around with system files all the time and OSX never crashes for me.

Shaddim · Sep 26, 2003, 10:48 PM

I've had 3 kernal panics, and all were caused by the USB bugs in 10.2.3 (happened when plugging in a Belkin USB hub). Since 10.2.5 everything's been perfect... of course, I also bought a better quality Griffin hub. My dual 1.42 is a damned juggernaut, it's crunching stuff 24/7 AND serves as all my servers. The thing just keeps getting faster the longer it's on (and the 10.2.8 update probably didn't hurt). God how I love my Macs!

ViveLaVie · Sep 26, 2003, 11:17 PM

Hi,

I am new at this forum thing, so be kind with me... :-)

I have had multiple problems for months now with my Powerbook (Ti 500mgh/1Gb Mem) running Mac OS X 10.2.6. I have had partial success in finding out some of the causes after hours spent on the phone with Apple Care. Since they are multiple issues, for one thing, and they also involve a few non-apple programs, each Tech Sup blames the "other" software "they don't support". So I have found the problem overwhelming and never found enough time to really fix it/them.
I hope that s.o. can help me figuring out part or all of these questions:

1. Can the different issues be related to each other?
2. Have you ever had similar issues?
3. Can you help me fix them or direct me to resources to fix/learn about them?

Here are the issues:

1. My apps (not just one: IE, AOL, Photoshop, NikonView, Now Contact, AppleWorks... etc...) do crash on a regular basis. Never used to when I first got Mac OS X. I get one of these messages from the console log:

Exception: EXC_BAD_ACCESS (0x0001)
Codes: KERN_INVALID_ADDRESS (0x0001) at 0x04a2a000
Exception: EXC_BAD_ACCESS (0x0001)
Codes: KERN_PROTECTION_FAILURE (0x0002) at 0x00000008

2. The oldest and most disturbing problem has been that both my displays (LCD & the Viewsonic external P225f) set to solid grey, actually show a regular pattern of darker and lighter lines. About 6-8 horizontal lines (about 1/16" wide) and hundreds vertical lines (1/36-64") in these 8-9 horizontal sections.
Troubleshooting with Apple, we found out that it seems to be software related because the pattern does not appear when logging in as a different user, running with another partition (I had a partition with system 9) or with a bootable CD.
After erasing the hard drive, reinstalling Mac OS X and all applications from scratch, the problem went away but then came back when I forgot about it and mistakingly re-included the old user folder in the new one!
Further tests seem to point the problem to the user's library as it disappears when I move the library folder out of the user folder and re-login. Loosing all my settings, preferences, etc... of course!

Do you know another way to find out which item causes the problem without going and trashing each one individually?

3. My firewire chain also seems to have some problems! The last item in the chain seems to unmount itself from time to time, while I am just working on something else, as if I had disconnected it without dragging it to the trash. I have 2 EZQuest hard drives, one Smartdisk CD burner, and one LaCie pocket Hard drive chained together. Changing the order or reducing the number of items does not solve the problem which occurs very erratically and inconsistently.

4. Another issue occurs with my Lexar Compactflash Cards and the USB Lexar Jumpshot card readers. They seem to download the pictures fine the first card I do, but refuse to download or even show on the desktop the 2nd or 3rd time. Using another card or different card readers does not help until I restart the computer. I do drag the Lexar icon to the trash before taking the card out.
The new FireWire Lexar Card reared I just got, the firewire PicturePad Digital wallet, as well as downloading directly from the camera (Nikon D100), all seem to do the same. So I play with downloading with each device alternatively, but it's a pain, a mess to organize files and slows down my work terribly of course.

5. Oh, I forgot to mention that the computer feels very sluggish too...:-) and I get the "Spinning-Wheel-of-Death" way too often for my taste! But I read that this would happen with a slow processor (500Mgz), when you have a lot of apps on the internal hard drive with only 20Gb. I keep my documents on the external drives, which is not as fast as the internal, I understand also. Do you know a better way to optimize performance?

Well, is that enough issues for one poor computer?... So you can see how complex my problem is and why I don't seem to find solutions to it.
Sorry for this terribly lengthy message and thank you for reading it.

I'll really appreciate any contribution to help me solve any or all these problems. And many thanks again.

rlmorel · Sep 26, 2003, 11:27 PM

I leave my Mac running 24 hours a day. I use it constantly running Photoshop, FCP, Illustrator, gazillions of shareware programs, etc.

My mac freezes on me maybe once a month.

Boy does that REALLY piss me off!...

Daniel Bayer · Sep 27, 2003, 03:43 AM

I use my rig full time.

I get a crash about once a month.

Once and awhile, I do something really stupid like instead of dragging a folder containing 5,000+ jpegs or tiff files to the trash, I do a select all, drag the files and MISS the fuggin trash and....B E A C H B A L L...........on the desktop they go....arghhh.

But seriously, I think I have only had the finder quit on me twice in a year.

Hop Pocket · Sep 27, 2003, 11:47 AM

Originally posted by Daniel Bayer:
I use my rig full time.

I get a crash about once a month.

Once and awhile, I do something really stupid like instead of dragging a folder containing 5,000+ jpegs or tiff files to the trash, I do a select all, drag the files and MISS the fuggin trash and....B E A C H B A L L...........on the desktop they go....arghhh.

But seriously, I think I have only had the finder quit on me twice in a year.

You probably already know about this, but if you hold down the cmd key while dragging to the trash, it will prevent you from placing the items in the dock. it also keeps the trash can from dodging your clean up efforts.

Guys, thanks for the advice (I'm formerly DrSpookles).. I took out the 512MB ram stick last night (the one that was the different brand than the other three), and I put it to the test last night. Amazing. Not one spinning beachball of death and agony.

I can't believe that it was that simple. Here's to keeping my fingers crossed

Oh, also, heh, the machine does run a little bit slower, due to the paging out:

373547(0) pageouts

If I wanted to get another 512MB stick of ram (dualMDD1.25), any recommendations on the brand? I've heard Corsair is pretty reliable, as well as the macsales.com web site.

jeronimo · Sep 29, 2003, 12:39 AM

I had 1 kernel panic on 2 since 10.1.

barbarian · Sep 29, 2003, 02:13 AM

In my experience with scores of machines, if you have a stock 10.2 system on a stock machine with at least 512K of memory OS X is virtually crashproof. I have never seen a crash on any of the stock machines under normal conditions...really not a single k panic (app crashes yes... plenty of them), but k panics never.

K panics seem to happen in the with the following situations:

1. bad hardware (ram and bad usb devices being the most common culprits).

2. system tweaking (avoid anything that installs a kernel patch...stuffit deluxe 8 for example)

3. bad power supplies... all powerlines are not created equal... if you live in CA, major powerdips are the norm...and the result is usually a freeze. Also all surge protectors are not created equal, buy a good one.

4. extreme heat. A friend was having problems...when I went to investigate I discovered he had his mac in a cabinet full of stereo equipment... must have been 140 degrees in there.

5. moisture

6. bad install... often the user claims not to have done anything, but when you look you find that they have booted into OS 9 and have moved things around

Machines that have k panics of freezes tend to have them regularly. Every single one I have seen can be traced back to one of the items above. k panics are not normal. If you are having them, even one, unplug everything except the keyboard and create a new fresh user and go through a process of elimination...

Note when you install stuff only install it by user for exactly this reason. You don't want the system libraries polluted with 3rd party stuff.

- - e r i k - - · Sep 29, 2003, 05:41 AM

The early Panther builds used to crash on me regularly

They are back to rock solid stability now.

On the other hand when I worked at my previous company I had IT come and reinstall Windows 2000 (supposedly the most stable of them all) fresh THREE TIMES before it stopped crashing. Each with a blank HD and a stock PC. I can't explain it, and most wintel people think it's a lie. But there it is.

The moral of my story is: Sometimes you just get a shitty combination of hardware and software. Sell your mac and get a new one. You are more likely to not experience crashes. And for the love of Apple, DO NOT INSTALL APE (haxies) or NORTON!

sushiism · Sep 29, 2003, 01:29 PM

no kp's EVER for over a year, gooo TIBOOK!

Bobby · Sep 29, 2003, 07:00 PM

I think OS X has crashed on many of us, most likely close to ALL...

However, the frequency of crashing I experience is extreamly infrequent. Crases do happen, but I can't tell you the last time I had one due solely to the OS...

I do have program crashes, but that doesn't mean much, as it can be (and many times is) due to problems in the app itself...

The only real time I can fully blame the OS for a crash that is IT'S FAULT is on a kernal panic... I can't even tell you the last time I've had one at this point...

I rarely do a full reboot to fix anything. At most I normally do a log-out & login. I rebooted this morning because my iBook would not get an IP address, but after the reboot further testing indicated it was the ethernet cable it was connected to...