[NYGEO18]

My powerbook is descending into chaos. I have over 7000 page-outs and my hard drive sounds like its writing non stop. Programs are crashing and Im losing control. Please help me people. I dont want to lose my precious powerbook.

[Randman]

We have called the mind readers but you could give us a little info.

OS.
Powerbook model?
Ram?

Just to be safe, back everything up NOW! We'll wait.












OK. Use check the system. Disk utility, hardware discs and if you have DiskWarrior, run it.

[brent0saurus]

i think we've lost him...

"Fox, NOOOOO!!!!"

who got that starfox 64 reference?!

Seriously though, if you get back online, i'd defenitely call apple before trying anything else, and if apple won't help, if you've installed any 3rd party ram recently, take it out. I guess i can't be anymore help than that.

[budster101]

Get a grip man!

Do what Randman said. I'll put some water on the stove and boil it...

[Jacob]

Heellloo? WAKE UP!

[Artful Dodger]

death by powerbook?

[Jacob]

poor bugger...dont let the newbie switchers see this...

[budster101]

What model PB is it?
Give us some information please.

[NYGEO18]

Sorry...
I posted two other threads and no one commented on them and the situation has deteriorated significantly.
I dont know whats happening. thats why I posted the thread. I did a hardware test and everything came out normal. all I know is that my computer is hanging on applications (and I have to quit them), its making a sound like its writing to the drive constantly. I looked in activity monitor and its paging out to the drive yet I have 1.25 gb of ram. Theres nothing hogging the cpu everything is normal. but when I look at "disk activity" I see these huge RED spikes every 20 seconds indicating "data written", corresponding with the sound of writing coming from my powerbook, yet Im only using safari. SMART status is "verified" "drive ok".
My computer has been upgraded to 1.25 gb of ram yet is slower than when I had 768 with panther.
I have noticed a SIGNIFICANT increase in people posting threads identical to mine. Program hangs, panics, forced quits, spinning beachballs, VERY slow activity, not just on this site but the apple discussions as well. People always respond with "maybe its your HD" or other regular potential problems that are common...yet no one has commented on how this is becoming far too common! Why are so many people experiencing the same thing?
It must be a software problem.

[NYGEO18]

Tell me what i need to find out from my computer and I will.

[Randman]

When did you get the ram upgrade? Sounds like bad ram if the hardware tests are doing ok.

Have the new ram removed and see what happens and report back.

[NYGEO18]

It happened with both the old and new ram I have. By the way I noticed that kernel_task is operating at 44 threads...is that normal?

[PrOeliuM]

The kernel_task thread number is fine (mine's at 46).

[tooki]

Check your console.log logfile. See if there are any IO errors. When i had terrible problems with mine, it turned out to be a failing hard disk.

tooki

[NYGEO18]

Checked it but it looks to have been reset. There isnt much information there. I restarted because I wanted to run Hardware Test. My Hd just made a weird loud click. Ive never heard this before. Do you think it could be a failing hard disk? Are my symptoms congruent with that problem?

Symptoms:
1) slow performance (with 1.25 gb ram)
2) lots of page outs
3) buzzing when pb is tilted
4) sounds like its writing all the time
5) app crashes (everything from safari to photoshop to activity monitor)
6) system hangs then needs restart (sometimes)
7) widgets are HORRIBLY slow

Last question...could it be a bad widget?
I downloaded TV Tracker and it KILLED my performance. So I deleted it and all was well. Should I delete all the widgets I downloaded?

[NYGEO18]

WAIT!!! I see I/O error in system.log!!!

[tooki]

With mine, it wasn't that it made it page out more (you are not seeing an unusual amount of pageouts), but what did happen was that the failing disk made each disk operation -- including pageouts -- take forever. And yes, a failing disk could cause many of the symptoms you list.

You are right, I confused which log file IO errors would be in. Can you post the whole line of the log file that had the IO error? That'll help us make sure it is indeed the hard disk.

tooki

[NYGEO18]

Ok. It says this:
Sep 9 09:51:44 George-Estreich-Computer kernel[0]: SAM Multimedia: READ or WRITE failed, ASC = 0x44, ASCQ = 0x00
Sep 9 09:51:44 George-Estreich-Computer kernel[0]: disk2s0: I/O error.

and above it it says this about 20,000 times:
Sep 9 00:02:23 George-Estreich-Computer /Applications/Safari.app/Contents/MacOS/Safari: TIFFReadDirectory: tiff data provider: Seek error accessing TIFF directory.

[NYGEO18]

Also in Activity Monitor under the "Disk Activity" Tab it says as much as 16 IO/s
What is IO?

[tooki]

I/O means input/output -- reads and writes. In Disk Activity, 16 I/Os just means it's had 16 transactions during the period of time.

Now... disk2s0 makes me wonder. Normally, the hard disk is disk0 ("s" and the number means which partition), on mine it's disk0s3, for example.

What model of PowerBook is it?

In Disk Utility, click on the hard disk and then choose Get Info. It should list the "disk identifier". What is it?

tooki

[NYGEO18]

disk identifier: disk0s9

[NYGEO18]

check this out:
Sep 9 09:51:44 George-Estreich-Computer kernel[0]: SAM Multimedia: READ or WRITE failed, ASC = 0x44, ASCQ = 0x00
Sep 9 09:51:44 George-Estreich-Computer kernel[0]: disk2s0: I/O error.
Sep 9 10:55:28 George-Estreich-Computer shutdown: halt by george:
Sep 9 10:55:29 George-Estreich-Computer SystemStarter[488]: authentication service (497) did not complete successfully
Sep 9 10:55:30 George-Estreich-Computer SystemStarter[488]: Operating System enhancements for Virtual PC (500) did not complete successfully
Sep 9 11:17:16 localhost kernel[0]: standard timeslicing quantum is 10000 us

it mentions something about virtual pc. I have it installed but never use it. could that be an issue?

[tooki]

I doubt it.

What I can tell you is that the I/O error you're seeing isn't from your hard disk. You must have some other disk mounted that is having those errors. I don't know what "SAM Multimedia" is, but that would be the first thing I'd look for.

What all do you have connected?

tooki

[NYGEO18]

I may have done something here. I did have a "drive" there in the sense that I had a windows XP drive present in VPC but no operating system in it. I never got to using it, and forgot to erase it. My computer seems a bit more idle. By the way I dont have anything connected to my computer...except my bluetooth mouse.
Ill let you know if things go back to the way they were.
thanks a lot!

[NYGEO18]

when I have activity monitor up and Im looking at the io graphic in disc activity, should I see large red (out) spikes about every 10 seconds? Its going to about 800kb/s and higher for like a second then idle. Is that normal?

[Barry]

Sam, the Multimedia Demo Facility

Sam allows the user to record and store as a demo any sequence of interactions with StatPlay, with a synchronised spoken commentary (Les, Thomason, & Cumming, 1997). Menu selection allows playback of any Sam demo.

To record, Sam stores the initial state of the whole StatPlay application-including the current screen-then stores microphone input of speech in real time, and mouse and keyboard inputs. To replay, Sam restores the initial state of the application, plays back the speech, and submits the stored sequence of mouse and keyboard signals to StatPlay at the correct times. The user sees and hears the same sequence of StatPlay behaviour, with synchronised spoken commentary, as was earlier recorded. Demos can be nested.

[Barry]

do you have Statplay installed??

please list any non apple apps you have installed...it will help

[NYGEO18]

nope...no statplay.
I think that that may have been a multimedia component of windows xp. I really think that VPC was the culprit

[budster101]

VPC is a virus in my book... Remove ever last remnence of it on your computer and burn the disk to rid your computer of the evil that is M$. Please for the love of God!

[NYGEO18]

Ok...situation still unsolved...check THIS out!!!
XBench results from tonight:

Results 29.98
System Info
Xbench Version 1.1.3
System Version 10.4.2 (8C46)
Physical RAM 1280 MB
Model PowerBook6,2
Processor PowerPC G4 @ 1.00 GHz
L1 Cache 32K (instruction), 32K (data)
L2 Cache 512K @ 1.00 GHz
Bus Frequency 133 MHz
Video Card GeForce FX Go5200 32MB
Drive Type TOSHIBA MK8025GAS
CPU Test 105.06
GCD Loop 102.35 4.00 Mops/sec
Floating Point Basic 83.59 302.28 Mflop/sec
AltiVec Basic 122.42 3.56 Gflop/sec
vecLib FFT 121.24 1.88 Gflop/sec
Floating Point Library 105.94 4.24 Mops/sec
Thread Test 87.72
Computation 63.62 858.83 Kops/sec, 4 threads
Lock Contention 141.23 1.77 Mlocks/sec, 4 threads
Memory Test 109.62
System 112.99
Allocate 392.25 255.87 Kalloc/sec
Fill 142.83 1136.96 MB/sec
Copy 58.82 294.12 MB/sec
Stream 106.44
Copy 105.80 773.38 MB/sec [altivec]
Scale 105.98 782.11 MB/sec [altivec]
Add 107.70 689.25 MB/sec [altivec]
Triad 106.32 649.63 MB/sec [altivec]
Quartz Graphics Test 106.50
Line 72.34 1.84 Klines/sec [50% alpha]
Rectangle 99.92 7.03 Krects/sec [50% alpha]
Circle 112.07 2.58 Kcircles/sec [50% alpha]
Bezier 118.57 1.29 Kbeziers/sec [50% alpha]
Text 173.58 2.83 Kchars/sec
OpenGL Graphics Test 68.08
Spinning Squares 68.08 47.64 frames/sec
User Interface Test 176.10
Elements 176.10 56.64 refresh/sec
Disk Test 5.76
Sequential 4.30
Uncached Write 2.84 1.19 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 2.77 1.14 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 20.73 3.28 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 5.92 2.39 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 8.69
Uncached Write 10.76 0.16 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 5.06 1.14 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 9.91 0.07 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 14.55 2.99 MB/sec [256K blocks]

Something is DEFINITELY wrong...and it looks like my HD. Whats the deal?

[NYGEO18]

same computer, less ram from '04:

Results 101.13
System Info
Xbench Version 1.1.3
System Version 10.3.3 (7F44)
Physical RAM 768 MB
Model PowerBook6,2
Processor PowerPC G4 @ 1.00 GHz
L1 Cache 32K (instruction), 32K (data)
L2 Cache 512K @ 1.00 GHz
Bus Frequency 133 MHz
Video Card GeForce FX Go5200 32MB
Drive Type TOSHIBA MK8025GAS
CPU Test 119.29
GCD Loop 114.83 4.48 Mops/sec
Floating Point Basic 122.76 443.93 Mflop/sec
AltiVec Basic 122.62 3.56 Gflop/sec
vecLib FFT 118.08 1.83 Gflop/sec
Floating Point Library 118.56 4.75 Mops/sec
Thread Test 87.70
Computation 63.71 860.12 Kops/sec, 4 threads
Lock Contention 140.64 1.77 Mlocks/sec, 4 threads
Memory Test 117.16
System 126.09
Allocate 623.70 406.84 Kalloc/sec
Fill 128.00 1018.84 MB/sec
Copy 69.56 347.78 MB/sec
Stream 109.40
Copy 108.26 791.37 MB/sec [altivec]
Scale 107.41 792.71 MB/sec [altivec]
Add 110.96 710.14 MB/sec [altivec]
Triad 111.08 678.72 MB/sec [altivec]
Quartz Graphics Test 129.45
Line 102.83 2.62 Klines/sec [50% alpha]
Rectangle 116.59 8.20 Krects/sec [50% alpha]
Circle 124.09 2.86 Kcircles/sec [50% alpha]
Bezier 122.13 1.33 Kbeziers/sec [50% alpha]
Text 245.37 4.00 Kchars/sec
OpenGL Graphics Test 99.92
Spinning Squares 99.92 69.93 frames/sec
User Interface Test 155.72
Elements 155.72 50.09 refresh/sec
Disk Test 59.73
Sequential 69.23
Uncached Write 68.96 28.74 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 50.95 20.87 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 150.33 23.80 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 58.83 23.77 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 52.52
Uncached Write 46.00 0.69 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 50.50 11.39 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 56.67 0.37 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 58.95 12.13 MB/sec [256K blocks]

Its a solid 10X better in the HD department!!!

[tooki]

Have you run your Apple Hardware Test disc yet?

tooki

[NYGEO18]

I ran AHT (extended). Everything came out ok. Whats the deal man? Are those #'s crazy or what? I bouht Tiger Cache Cleaner and ran every script it had. Did a "deep cleaning" of all caches. Even though I have Macaroni already. I fear that my HD is failing but Im holding out hope that its a software issue. My SMART status is still "verified".
What would slow a HD to a crawl?

[tooki]

You have I/O errors -- but they don't appear to be the hard disk. You need to track down what disk is "disk2".

tooki

[NYGEO18]

how do I go about tracking down what disk2 is? Where do I look? Id love to nail this thing. Thanks for your help thus far....

[Barry]

what does your system preferences/energy saver panel/options tab show for procesor performance???

do you have a disk in your optical drive, or any network drives/external drives mounted on your desktop? could your computer be trying to connect to a network drive that isn't available?

[NYGEO18]

all very good questions. My processor performance is on high. Still, that wouldnt change the read/write rates very much on my HD...and thats the issue. As far as the drive question, I have nothing connected to my computer. I do connect to a network drive (gf's ibook) occasionally and will look into that now. Though I have a hunch that its not the problem.
I called applecare yesterday and spoke to a tech. He seemed to think that this is a hardware issue. Simply that my HD is in a failing state but hasnt actually reached the point of outright failure. Im bringing my pb in tomorrow to potentially have the HD swapped out.

[kd]

If you want to know what disk2 corresponds to, you could go into the terminal and type the command "mount". From the output you can infer the correspondence between disk numbers and volume names.

Also, if an error of any kind (application problem, kernel problem, whatever) is occurring frequently and causing numerous messages to be written to some log file or other, this can cause a lot of disk activity to occur, for the writing of the log file itself.

[maczep]

Had to reply since I had a similar problem before.

Thought some of the folks here don't think it is hard drive, I had similar problem, which got worse few months ago. I had the same buzzing when tilted, and ocassional HD clicking and weird disk I/O activities. Much like what you said. I used Apple's suites of build in test and SMART all indicated HD is good until it stop start up one day. Luckly I have external HD and DiskUtil and Hardware tests still showed nothing.

So. I brought a copy of Disk Warrior, worth the money, and found out it had a bad sector that other software didn't see. Repaired it using Disk Warrior and ran permission fix. Everything is back to normal now. Don't get TechTool. They don't repair disks.

You might want to get a copy of Disk Warrior and an external HD (if you don't have one already) and see if it help.

MacZ

Originally Posted by NYGEO18

same computer, less ram from '04:

Deleted....
Its a solid 10X better in the HD department!!!

[NYGEO18]

how can I tell if a log file is being written frequently? which log should I examine?

[kd]

In the console, you can do:

ls -lt /var/log

to get a list of (some of the) log files, with those most recently changed at the top, and you can see how big they are. Look for logs that are megabytes in size and recently changed. Repeat the command to see if those logs are constantly growing.

There are other log files in /Library/Logs and in ~/Library/Logs, as well as in subdirectories of all those three places.

I saw a case once where a guy had disconnected a canon scanner that he had once had installed on his machine. Some software was looking for the device every few seconds and complaining in a log file that it couldn't be found. This was causing constant disk activity.

[mactropolis]

Whatever happened with your problem??

More importantly, what did running 'mount' from Terminal report that corisponded to /dev/disk2??

[NYGEO18]

well...
what I did was format my hd and clean install OS X. It has been ok since then...however I still have what I believe is a dying harddrive.
In terms of the disk2 it HAD to have been VirtualPC's disk. When I erased virtualpc all references to it disappeared. "mount" turned up nothing.
but alls well at this point and Ive been giving her a run for her money too with some HEAVY graphics work for days on end...not many problems with it since the reinstall.
thanks again,
g

[imacgeek]

DO a archive and install if you have changed OS since you got the com.