Mac is Freezing

[supanatral]

For the past 9 months, I've falling in love with my mac, atleast until it started freezing. It's freezing all the time and I can't find out what it is that's causing it. I took it to Mac Genius because I was fed up with it and I just got off the phone with them now and they told me that nothing is wrong with it, even though I've formatted it 3 times now and its still freezing. They suggested that its 3rd party software thats causing it, so now I'm wondering if anyone else has had any of the following programs:

OSX Desktop
Parallels
Microsoft Office
Firefox
X-moto
Chicken of VNC

Also, is there a way to check the logs to see if something conflicted with another program or to see if it froze like you can do in windows?

If not, does anyone know of a good place to sell my mac in Toronto?

[Satcomer]

Well the logs are accessible in /Applications/Utilties/Console. The freezes most likely are hardware problems. How old is the Mac? When does that Mac freeze (under what condition)?

[bobw]

Format the drive and reinstall OS X and nothing else and use it. Leave any devices disconnected for this. If it freezes, call Apple if the geniuses won't help.

Did you add extra memory, or did you buy it from Apple with 2GB?

[supanatral]

Satcomer - Mac Genus said that it isn't hardware problems for some reason. The mac is 9 months old and I don't use it for rendering or anything that is demanding but I found that it happens like when I'm surfing the web. It could posibly be firefox?

Bobw - I understand your point of view bob, but the issue is that I need my mac for my business and if I don't install programs, then it will be out of commision for a while. Ya, I've installed 3rd party memory but that's what I thought was causing the issue in the first place so I took out the other memory and left the 1gb stick that I got with it and it didn't fix my problems so I took out the 1 gb stick and stuck in the other and still no luck.

P.S. in the case that you've looked at my other post under the name "Mac OS X Backdoors", I haven't touched anything on it yet.

[Giaguara]

Where and when are the freezes usually? Is it under ANY program or some of them only? Is the freezing at totally random places or is it more common when you are doing something much more processor intensive, such as dealing with big files or graphics or rendering something? Do they occur instantly when you put the mac on, or after a few hours when it's warmer after use? Do any programs crash constantly?

If you look at the logs on console application, what usually shows at the logs when the freezing occurs? Maybe the computer is trying to do something - whatever it is trying to do, whether it is software task or reported errors from hardware, are to be seen in console when problems occur and after it.

[Satcomer]

Satcomer - Mac Genus said that it isn't hardware problems for some reason. The mac is 9 months old and I don't use it for rendering or anything that is demanding but I found that it happens like when I'm surfing the web. It could posibly be firefox?

I would put my money on flakey RAM. Have you run an extended RAM test on it yet? (Memtest)

[bobw]

Don't use Firefox for awhile and see if you still have the freezes.

[Kees Buijs]

I would put my money on flakey RAM. Have you run an extended RAM test on it yet? (Memtest)

Use only the 3rd party memory and leave the apple memory out. See if that helps (or makes it even worse).


Also take in mind that the way your system is now, you are out of commission quite often. Maybe it is better to invest some time for Bobw suggestion. It should not take so much time (a weekend) and might make the situation a lot clearer.


Good luck, Kees