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mpbritt · Mar 16, 2004, 03:48 PM

Greetings everyone. My CEO is having a strange crashing problem that I have been unable to diagnose and fix so far.

His Mac is a 17" PowerBook, 1.33 Ghz, 512 MB of RAM running Jaguar version 10.2.8. He uses an Apple Pro Mouse. He's had the PowerBook for several months and has been having this problem since he bought it.

The problem is that at random times the entire OS will simply freeze so that the only solution is to do a hard reboot. The mouse stops moving and there is no response from the keyboard.

These crashes generally happen when he is using some app in the MS Office suite, but they have also happened in the Finder. So far I have been unable to find the problem. I have deleted the Office preference files, run fsck several times, and rebuilt the Entourage database. All to no avail. I've applied all the updates to Office, as well, so that all the apps are up to the current version.

Other than upgrading him to Panther I don't know what else to do. But I would rather not upgrade him to Panther without exhausting all the options and trying to find a solution in Jaguar, since I don't KNOW that upgrading will fix the problem.

Any input will be appreciated.

Ω · Mar 16, 2004, 11:40 PM

Do your crash logs give any clues?

mpbritt · Mar 17, 2004, 12:13 AM

Not that I can tell. But then, I may not know what I'm looking for.

Ω · Mar 17, 2004, 12:38 AM

I would be looking in the logs in the console app. It might give you a clue what is happening.

If nothing is hiding in there, then I would run System Profiler and look at the logs tab. You might have to look at a few apps to see if you can find a corresponding time.

Also does it happen when you have the mouse disconnected?

Basically when something like this happens I try to remove possible problems to hopefully identify what is happening to the system.

Luckily I have not had to do it very often!

mpbritt · Mar 17, 2004, 01:02 AM

He was working with the mouse disconnected for most of the day with no crashes. I've suspected for a while that it might have something to do with a USB port but was not sure.

I'll have a look at the logs in the morning.