OS X Finder and other applications hanging and/or freezing

[pavy]

I have a Powerbook G4, os x 10.4.11, 1GB RAM, 1.67GHz processor

Recently (the last week and a half or so) I've noticed my mac behaving strangely. Applications (and by applications I mean everything from the Finder, to iChat, Dreamweaver, Photoshop, Text Edit, and so on) have been hanging/freezing. I'll be doing something (using the computer normally) and for no apparent reason, I will get the spinning beach ball, and it'll just hand there for anywhere from 5 seconds to 45 seconds. This will happen repeatedly in a 'window' of time. That 'window' of time goes anywhere from a few minutes, to as much as 20 minutes (the 20 minute 'window' happened today). My computer will just hang, then it'll be ok for a moment, then when I go to switch application, or even use the application I am currently in when it first hangs, it'll just hang again...and then a few moments later, it'll hang again. And so on. Sometime restarting helps, but I have noticed that often (not every time) it takes much longer than normal for the spinning circle to appear when you first see the Apple logo on the white/gray background during startup.

Normally, after a little while, the computer will seem to be functioning correctly again, and may continue to function correctly for hours without any other hangs/freezes.

Here are some other details that may be useful:
- My Finder crashed today and reset itself, first time I've ever seen that happen on my computer, in the 4 years I've had it
- iChat froze and then crashed on its own earlier, after my computer woke from being asleep
- I looked at crash logs for both of these things and have them available if they can help. I did notice that both crashes were EXC_BAD_ACCESS
- I ran a memory checker http://www.memtestosx.org in verbose mode, using 3 passes, no errors were found
- About 3 months ago, I had my logic board replaced. I was also given bad memory (upper slot) that I had to take back to the apple store and have replaced
- I installed Smultron recently (a code editor for mac), I have installed nothing else recently
- I try to pay close attention to what I'm doing and what's going on when these hangs/freezes happen. I see no pattern between them...it seems to affect any application, happens at random

So...what're your thoughts? Bad memory? Failing hard drive? Software problem? Virus (are there any of OS X?)? Something else?

[Drubags]

Hi

Did you ever sort out this problem? I am having the same thing happen to my 4 year old ibook G4. Really frustrating as it's doing it most of the time and I have no idea how to fix it!

Dru

[Satcomer]

Do you have Stuffit installed? It has been known that a version of Stuffit plugin in 10.4.11 cause this.

[Drubags]

I do but I haven't used it in a while. Would getting rid of stuffit fix the problem if it caused it?

[pavy]

I would definitely try removing stuffit before doing anything else. I didn't know that stuffit had any issues...but remove it, reboot and see what happens.

This was the resolution to my problem:
- I had a corrupt hard drive, specifically a bad leaf count (among some other things). I went to the Genius Bar and they ran various disk utility programs, which were able to fix my hard drive. They formatted it, reinstalled 10.4, etc. and my computer has been fine since then.

Have you ran disk utility? My hard drive was reporting a bad leaf count, which cannot be corrected by Disk Utility, which is why you need Disk Warrior, etc. Try running the Disk Utility will booted into OS X and see what it says. Then also try running Disk Utility booting from your OS X DVD. See if it finds anything. If not, my guess is you don't have the same problem I did. Come back here if your hard drive is ok. Again, make sure you run Disk Utility while booted up, as well as booting from the DVD! Disk Utility operates more effectively while checking a non-boot drive. It did not report errors on my hard drive while I was booted into OS X. Then when I booted from DVD, it did report errors.

Boot your mac from the DVD:
- Put OS X DVD into dvd drive
- Reboot
- After you hear the dong, hold down the 'c' key and wait till you see the spinning circle. This will force it to boot from the dvd drive.

Once booted from DVD:
- I believe you need to complete the first "setup" step, which is selecting your language. Then, press continue.
- Once you're at the next step, in the menu bar (upper left corner of the screen), under one of those menus (I think it's the Utility menu) you'll see an option to run Disk Utility. Select that option.
- Select your hard drive. Make sure you select the actual hard drive itself and not just the partition (partitions are nested from the actual hard drive, on the left-hand side of Disk Utility).
- Verify the disk (may take some time...just let it go)
- Write down any errors you get.
- If you get errors, re-verify the disk. Do so 3-4 times until you don't have any errors. If you're still getting errors, then Disk Utility can't fix it.
- Note that, there were times Disk Utility said it had fixed everything, then I would re-verify and it would be fine. Then, I would reboot my computer and use it...then check disk utility again, and the errors would be back. If this happens, I recommend you go to the Genius Bar.

[Drubags]

Hi

I tried disk utility when it first started happening. It didn't report any errors so I guess my hard drive is fine. It did start making a whirring noise I hadn't heard before when I was editing in photoshop just before it started hanging and I wonder if it might be connected.

I will remove stuffit and give it a few days to see if it fixes it. Hope I don't need to go to the genius bar as the nearest one isn't very near!

Thanks for your reply

[pavy]

Did you try running disk utility after booting to dvd? Like I said, Disk Utility didn't report errors when i was booted into OS X like normal. Once I booted from dvd, Disk Utility reported several errors. The program can't run fully as intended when you're using it on the current boot drive, which is why it's necessary to boot to dvd.

Also, I heard weird noises from my drive, too, when I had this problem.

[DeltaMac]

Drubags - how much RAM memory do you have installed? Photoshop, when used with a minimal amount of memory, could cause problems similar to those mentioned - intermittent freezes, the spinning ball cursor coming up frequently, etc. You can monitor your system by opening your Activity monitor. Sort the list for All Processes, so it shows processor usage. Click on the System Memory tab (at the bottom of that window) watching for page outs, and swaps used. Both of those should be quite low, or even zero, on a system that has enough RAM installed. Your iBook G4 can have 1 GB installed in the single slot, with the rest of the memory on your logic board. Depending on which model you have, you could have as much as 1.5 GB memory for your system. If yours is still 512MB, then the best upgrade you can do is upgrade that.