Welcome to the MacNN Forums.

frankthetank966 · Dec 14, 2006, 05:16 PM

I have a MB with 2.0 GHz 1 GB of Ram and 80 GB HD. Ever since I have been using Mozilla Firefox 2.0 my computer has been freezing (not responding a bunch). Does this have anything to do with running Firefox? Just a few minutes ago I was running M.S. Word, Firefox and iTunes. My computer completely froze. I use Onyx, Repair Permissions and Tech Tool Deluxe twice a month. Once every two weeks. Is there any other program that may help improve my computer's issues?

frankthetank966 · Dec 14, 2006, 09:17 PM

Help, please!!!

amru · Dec 14, 2006, 09:56 PM

call apl-care [275-2273]

besson3c · Dec 14, 2006, 11:17 PM

top. Find out what is bogging things down.

frankthetank966 · Dec 14, 2006, 11:23 PM

Originally Posted by besson3c

top. Find out what is bogging things down.

huh?

amru · Dec 15, 2006, 12:25 AM

i think hes saying check activity monitor to see whts taking up power [grips of it]?

Gossamer · Dec 15, 2006, 01:20 AM

Yes, besson assumes every new mac user is familiar with the Terminal and its commands. He's suggesting you run the 'top' command from with the Terminal, but the same info can be found by opening up Activity Monitor. Check that and see what's taking up the most CPU or RAM.

frankthetank966 · Dec 15, 2006, 09:56 AM

Okay, so then after I run that what should I do ?

besson3c · Dec 15, 2006, 10:12 AM

If you find a process that is taking up a lot of CPU power, you'll know why you are having these slowdowns. I'd suggest reporting here with a list of anything taking up more than, say, 50% of our overall CPU for suggestions as to how to deal with this.

Out of control processes that you have not assigned a job to are usually crashed processes that can be killed off to reclaim the resources being taken hostage by this process.

muaddib420 · Dec 15, 2006, 11:07 AM

firefox crashes for me all the time, so now i just use safari, which seems more stable. firefox used to give me the spinny beach balls just about every day so i'd have to force quit (ctrl-apple-esc). safari's only crashed on me a couple of times.

try switching to safari and seeing if your problems continue.

frankthetank966 · 12:16 PM

I will probably switch back to safari if it happens again.

holy cow my switch back to safari may be quicker than i expected. in the activity monitor it says firefox use 92 mb of ram and safari only use 12.

i know this is a bit OT but what are these programs? and do you need them running? kernel_task, WindowsServer, SystemUIServer

jasong · Dec 15, 2006, 07:16 PM

Oh jeez, don't mess with them. The OS is series of little programs, and trying to stop any of the 3 you just mentioned will instantly kill the system.

First thing, stop wasting so much time with "maintenance." You don't need to repair permissions pretty much ever, and only need to run Tech Tool when something goes wrong.

What I would recommend is run activity monitor at log in and place it in your dock. Have the icon show your current CPU usage. Don't leave the Activity Monitor window open all the time as that will sap your processor. When the system bogs down, click the Activity Monitor icon and sort the window by CPU usage and see what's hogging the processor. You can also sort by virtual memory and see if anything is killing you there.

Also, can you describe the pause more? Do you get the beachball? Does everything just stop and then suddenly pick up again?

besson3c · Dec 15, 2006, 07:42 PM

The amount of RAM an app consumes is not a huge deal, as many will take what is available. What is more important is how these apps work under high loads, or whether they need a high amount of CPU to idle. If the latter applies, the app might be spinning its tires and going nowhere in some sort of crashed state.

frankthetank966 · Dec 15, 2006, 10:14 PM

Originally Posted by jasong

Oh jeez, don't mess with them. The OS is series of little programs, and trying to stop any of the 3 you just mentioned will instantly kill the system.

First thing, stop wasting so much time with "maintenance." You don't need to repair permissions pretty much ever, and only need to run Tech Tool when something goes wrong.

What I would recommend is run activity monitor at log in and place it in your dock. Have the icon show your current CPU usage. Don't leave the Activity Monitor window open all the time as that will sap your processor. When the system bogs down, click the Activity Monitor icon and sort the window by CPU usage and see what's hogging the processor. You can also sort by virtual memory and see if anything is killing you there.

Also, can you describe the pause more? Do you get the beachball? Does everything just stop and then suddenly pick up again?

Okay the pause is different. I can either move the mouse and have the beachball but nothing works. Or I can't move the mouse and get the beachball and nothing works. Do you recommend running any programs?

besson3c · Dec 15, 2006, 10:38 PM

Frankthetank966: like somebody said, there are no magic bullet "make everything better" apps, and if there are some billed as such I would probably think of them as bogus anyway.

You'll simply have to learn a little bit about how to catch apps that have crashed, how to force quit them, and how to troubleshoot apps to prevent them from crashing in the first place. Unfortunately, this is just part of using a computer.

muaddib420 · Dec 16, 2006, 01:24 AM

also, you could try camino, another web browser made specifically for macs by mozilla.

Camino - Mozilla power, Mac style.

frankthetank966 · Dec 16, 2006, 11:01 AM

I dont really like camino. Thanks though

frankthetank966 · Dec 17, 2006, 08:49 PM

Okay, this is insanse. I am getting extremely frustrated with this laptop. I tried logging on a few minutes ago and the screen went black and all that appeared was a white cursor. I had to take out my battery to solve this issue. Anyways when I went to log on it took 3 minutes for the me to sign in and then 2 minutes for all my icons to appear. All I have on my desktop are Macintosh HD and 10 items (Finder, System Pref, Photobooth, Mail, iCal, Firefox, Dashboard, iTunes, Adium and Word) in my dashboard. WHAT IS GOING ON!!!

abbaZaba · Dec 17, 2006, 09:01 PM

give someone deserving the laptop and by an hp

besson3c · Dec 17, 2006, 09:23 PM

Originally Posted by frankthetank966

Okay, this is insanse. I am getting extremely frustrated with this laptop. I tried logging on a few minutes ago and the screen went black and all that appeared was a white cursor. I had to take out my battery to solve this issue. Anyways when I went to log on it took 3 minutes for the me to sign in and then 2 minutes for all my icons to appear. All I have on my desktop are Macintosh HD and 10 items (Finder, System Pref, Photobooth, Mail, iCal, Firefox, Dashboard, iTunes, Adium and Word) in my dashboard. WHAT IS GOING ON!!!

You say you have 1 gig of RAM, but what you're describing here sounds like your machine might not be recognizing some of it. When you go to your About This Mac from the Apple menu, how much RAM is it reporting you having?

BTW, the bar where your application icons are stationed is the Dock, not the Dashboard.

indigoimac · Dec 17, 2006, 09:34 PM

Let's boil it down to two classic mac troubleshooting techniques:

a) wipe and reinstall

and if it's still FUBAR'd

b) Call AppleCare and say "fresh install no worky, send me new machine"

frankthetank966 · Dec 17, 2006, 11:34 PM

Originally Posted by besson3c

You say you have 1 gig of RAM, but what you're describing here sounds like your machine might not be recognizing some of it. When you go to your About This Mac from the Apple menu, how much RAM is it reporting you having?

BTW, the bar where your application icons are stationed is the Dock, not the Dashboard.

1GB 667MHz DDR2 SDRAM

indigoimac · Dec 18, 2006, 09:13 PM

In that case I recommend what I did before, erase and reinstall, something is corrupted, but if that doesn't fix it Apple Care, weeee

frankthetank966 · Dec 18, 2006, 11:25 PM

ahh!!! i dont feel like doint an erase and reinstall right now. do you seriously think that will fix the issue or is it a low chance that it will? i might do it in a few months if this doesn't stop. right now i need my laptop even if it acts like this. it would be to big of a hassle to deal with downloading everything again and reinstalling everything.

frankthetank966 · Dec 23, 2006, 09:14 PM

This is going to slowly. I asked the Genius bar to have a system check when I brought it in for a wristpad replacement but I do not think they did anything.

indigoimac · Dec 23, 2006, 09:53 PM

Originally Posted by frankthetank966

ahh!!! i dont feel like doint an erase and reinstall right now. do you seriously think that will fix the issue or is it a low chance that it will? i might do it in a few months if this doesn't stop. right now i need my laptop even if it acts like this. it would be to big of a hassle to deal with downloading everything again and reinstalling everything.

To be perfectly frank, yes, I believe that it will fix the problem, and w/ good planning backup and fresh install back to the way it was before can be done comfortably in a day.

frankthetank966 · Dec 23, 2006, 10:40 PM

I ran Onyx system automation. If it doesnt work I will re-install it some time in the summer. I am to busy to worry about that now.

besson3c · Dec 23, 2006, 11:22 PM

"too busy", not "to busy".

frankthetank966 · Dec 24, 2006, 12:26 AM

yea sorry my spelling is not the best

jlivingston · Dec 27, 2006, 01:01 AM

I was having the same issue with Firefox 2 on my Macbook Pro. Finally figured it out. I used App Zapper to remove Firefox, then reinstalled it. Now it's 100 times faster and doesn't lock up.

Before I tried to reinstall it without using App Zapper and it didn't work. Hope this helps.

CharlesS · Dec 27, 2006, 01:06 AM

Probably you just had a messed-up prefs file. I'd go delete that rather than go reinstall the whole app.

Hi I'm Ben · Dec 27, 2006, 11:17 AM

Frank,

You're reluctant to change browsers, you have not visited or called Apple and reformatting is out of the question for "at least the next two months". While I don't think reformatting will help you all that much there definitely is either something wrong with your computer or the way you're using it. I'm going to go out and say you're probably experiencing problems because of running rosetta apps which eat ram.

However, if you're unwilling to try to solutions presented to you stop posting in here about the problem. You need to visit an Apple store or call their phone support if possible. Complaining about it and doing nothing won't get anything fixed.

frankthetank966 · Dec 27, 2006, 04:15 PM

I visited the apple store Ben. They didn't do anything. I used App Zapper to unistall Firefox and reinstalled it however I switched back to Safari

rjt1000 · Dec 29, 2006, 09:04 PM

A good troubleshooting tip is to make a new user account. If the trouble disappears there, it confirms the problem is one of the apps, processes, preferences or settings in your usual account.

May be worth a try: turning off "autoscrolling" in Firefox prefs > Advanced > General tab, helped a lot on my Pismo.

frankthetank966 · Dec 30, 2006, 12:26 AM

how do you make a new account? i am new to the mac interface. sorry anyways do you think it will work.

frankthetank966 · Dec 30, 2006, 12:28 AM

Is anybody else having major issues with their Macbook, or is it just me?

rjt1000 · Dec 30, 2006, 09:04 AM

Originally Posted by frankthetank966

how do you make a new account? i am new to the mac interface. sorry anyways do you think it will work.

System Preferences > Accounts > click on +

chabig · Dec 30, 2006, 09:30 AM

Originally Posted by frankthetank966

Is anybody else having major issues with their Macbook, or is it just me?

It's just you. Seriously, you're new to the Mac and you're bringing over a lot of Windows baggage. On the Mac, there is (Jasong) no need to run all of the maintenance items you mentioned. Also, there is no need to run an application to uninstall other applications.

I don't think you need to reformat your hard drive (although that would definitely fix your problem). Instead, just insert the DVD and reinstall Mac OS X using the "archive and install" method. This will only replace the OS, while leaving all of your apps and data alone.

Chris

frankthetank966 · Dec 30, 2006, 10:23 AM

the dvd that came with it? the applecare dvd?

frankthetank966 · Dec 30, 2006, 11:18 AM

When I called Applecare they recommended for me to Repair Disk. This failed twice so he eventually told me the best thing to do was to re-install Mac OS X and whip everything out on the Hard Drive. I only agreeded because he said that if another issue like this occur they will probably refund my full money and I would be able to buy a CD2.

rjt1000 · Dec 30, 2006, 01:19 PM

Originally Posted by frankthetank966

When I called Applecare they recommended for me to Repair Disk. This failed twice so he eventually told me the best thing to do was to re-install Mac OS X and whip everything out on the Hard Drive. I only agreeded because he said that if another issue like this occur they will probably refund my full money and I would be able to buy a CD2.

AFAIK, Apple will not give you a new machine unless they have had to do something like more than 3 repairs on it.

More than likely, the problem is not with your computer but with the software or settings.

Why don't you just try reinstalling the system as numerous others have advised (using the system restore disk)?

If you bring it to an Apple store, they may help you do it.

frankthetank966 · Dec 30, 2006, 05:18 PM

Originally Posted by rjt1000

AFAIK, Apple will not give you a new machine unless they have had to do something like more than 3 repairs on it.

More than likely, the problem is not with your computer but with the software or settings.

Why don't you just try reinstalling the system as numerous others have advised (using the system restore disk)?

If you bring it to an Apple store, they may help you do it.

I did re-install the system. And btw I have received 3 other malfunctioning Macbooks before this one. PMU died, Hard Drive died, and Logic Board. Anyways I am going to try to repair the disk now lets see how i works.