Freezes whenever I try to log in.

[MacConvertible]

My mac, which is a PowerBook 64, freezes quite often. Sometimes it's when I'm starting a second or third program (especially ichat,) but since I have 512 RAM, I'm willing to accept that for now. (Although I must say the unspeakable- when I had 512 RAM on my Dell, it never froze once- and I had that computer for 4 years.)
Still, it's a pretty machine.
HOWEVER, the most annoying part is that whenever I try to log into my computer, it a whole debacle. Simply getting to the login screen when I restart my computer takes a few tries- sometimes I have to restart a few more times; sometimes I put it to sleep and wait and when I awaken it, it gets to the login. Sometimes I give up and try again the next day. Then when I click my name, it often freezes, and when I type in my login and press enter, it often does so again. (By freezing I mean that it has the thinking-swirl-mouse-pointer on my screen for an intermittent amount of time.)
It's such a waste of time. Any ideas?

[gabrielleitao]

I have the same problem with my Intel Mac 2Ghz. i know I only have 512MB of RAM, but there is nothing that might be the cause of my Mac to freeze. I also had a PC, like you, but I had an Intel Celeron D 2.4Ghz with 1GB of RAM, 256MB GeForce FX5500. Impossible. The system was Windows XP and was an unstable system as everyonw know, but it never froze, neither once.

I hope we can get help and solv your freezing problem. Sorry if I wasnt helpful. I just purchased my Mac and it looks really odd to have a grand new Macintosh, as for us swichers, freezing on our brand new experience. good luck to us.

[eric2006]

Unlike Windows, OS X is a modern operating system. Vista is going to require as much RAM as Tiger currently does, perhaps more by the time they get it released. Your RAM is like deskspace, in a way- if you don't have enough, you'll need to clear it off everytime you switch tasks. OS X will write overflowing memory to the hard drive, so you should always have at least 5GB of space. Your Mac may pause for a while while it writes the current info in RAM to the hard drive. Just give it some time. Like, 10 minutes. Unlike Windows machines, it may recover.

You may also want to try a clean install. A whole lot of gunk can build up that may be starting up on login, then sucking up CPU while you work.