[larrinski]

Over the last few months my intel imac has been freezing or having applications not respond almost every day. It freezes mostly during a log out of two different user accounts and the computer will not respond even given 10 minutes to sort itself out(log out)...

Finder will stop responding other times, and I have to re-launch it, iTunes will not force quit after not responding, even after doing it in Activity Monitor. So then I go into terminal to do a kill, itunes is not listied in top so I have no PID. Iphoto gives me the glorious beachball during scrolling... I have run Onyx and cleared the system caches and user caches, run the ever popular repair permissions...
.
The problems have not been consistent enough for me to nail down the issue. The log out problem seems fairly consistant, and during the last 2 months on the west coast of Canada, we have had quite a few power failures, which I think may have been the start of these issues. I don't have the computer set to auto-reboot, but there has been at least 10 times where the computer was asleep when the power failed.

I don't have too much problem with a fresh install(other than the time it takes and the many third party programs I have to reinstall). I have a full bootable backup on an external firewire drive. If I nuke and pave and only install an admin account, will I run into problems dragging over the other user accounts from the external(permissions etc)? Is it a good idea to do this(perhaps bring over problems), or just drag over itunes/iphoto libraries/mail accounts one by one...?

Thanks in advance.

[mrmister]

Swap. Your. RAM.

[larrinski]

I don't have spare intel ram or that would be a good next move! Thanks though for the suggestion. I may have to do that if the problems exist after a re-install...

[larrinski]

Bump...

I forgot to mention that the computer is slow to wake up as well. With a minute of beach ball.

[mrmister]

8 to 1 says it is RAM.

[Madrag]

do a RAM test.

Also:
if you had a spare partition, you could install the OS and try it for a bit to spot if it really needs an OS reinstall...
If the problem persisted, then I would assume RAM (even if the RAM test failed) or some other problem.

[larrinski]

Thanks. I will try a RAM test.

[jmiddel]

If you have a bootable current backup, why not reboot from it and see what happens, if the same stuff occurs, R A M

[larrinski]

I will try that now, as the hardware test was a pass...

[larrinski]

I was just thinking that my bootable backup is recent, within the past couple of weeks. I will give it a go though...

[larrinski]

I had some time on my hands, so I just reformatted. The only odd thing is that my webcam in photobooth is black as night even in a well lit room. Is there a software fix for this? Calibrating tool etc...

[Madrag]

did that solve your original problem?

I have no idea about the webcam...

[larrinski]

Everything seems to work fine. No crashes since the install. Still searching for the isight issue.

[Madrag]

I suggest posting in the peripherals forum, since the original topic has been sorted

[larrinski]

Cheers... I posted in the imac area as the isight is internal...

[frankthetank966]

Originally Posted by larrinski 

Thanks. I will try a RAM test.

how do you do a ram test? i had the same problem. the best thing to do is backup your most importanta data and reinstall mac os x.

[Madrag]

with the mac, they supply a CD to test the Hardware.

[frankthetank966]

Oh yea use the Mac OS X disc 1 and insert it, then shut down. When starting up hold down the "C" key and then let go when you see the windmill effect. Go to to top screen launch "disk utility" and repair disk. If it is successful then you probably are good to go, if it fails backup your data and re-install Mac OS X.