g5 & mac mini not playing cd;s

[lenny dee]

ok i have been using mac's since the 2si & i have been buying mac's up to the current mac pro 8 core which i just ordered for my studio , But these last cpu's the g5 & mac mini seem to have problems playing back cdr's, store bought cd's, & pretty much any cd i put in it. it will play the first track, or maybe until the second or third track,
it is pretty random when it will stop i tunes from playing the disc & make me force quit to get i tunes to work again, it is a constant thing that is now becoming a bother to me & my staff, our business is a record label. so i need the cds to work. not sometimes all the time.

The first g5 we bought was broken after the minute i turned the power on.. &
i had to return it for a new one. even the guy in the shop looked shocked when i brought it back.

i am starting to think that the newer mac desktops might not be made as well as the older ones. And for the price, i feel that they should. my g4 still rocks, & seems faster then the g5 & the cd's well, they do play with no problems in the g 4. Once in a while with a cdr, ok i can deal with once & a while. Not every other time i put a cdr in the drive.

Do i need to clean or do something ? the g 4 has never been touched & runs fine. i just hope the 8 core does better then the g5,

or maybe it is i tunes ? which i feel is not so great either.

i make music with one of the g5's, & i have to say i am not too impressed
by the way its runs either, the little wheel, i see it more then i think i need to. i felt better working with a g 4 & older macs.

not sure if the older ones were made in china like the newer ones. but this
is it, i just bought the top of the line mac pro, if it is a dud, i will return it
& go to pc, - at least with a pc i expect headaches. but i won't go broke buying one.

 

[nixgeek]

1. Have you run Disk Utility on any of them and performed a repair on the permissions?

2. How about booting from the installation discs and running a Repair Disk on the hard drive using Disk Utility there?

3. Have you tried running a maintenance utility like OnyX to optimize performance on the G5 and the Mac mini? (Make sure you download the appropriate one for the Mac OS that's on those systems.)

4. How much hard drive space do you have available (Mac OS X like to have at least 10% empty space on the hard drive)?

5. How much RAM do you have on those two systems? 10.2.8 and 10.3.9 run better with at least 512 MB RAM, 10.4.9 and 10.5.2 run better with at least 1 GB RAM.

6. Have you tried swapping out the RAM modules to see if they are the culprits for your problems?

7. Have you updated to the latest versions of Mac OS X that they're running (10.2.8/10.3.9/10.4.11/10.5.2)? Have you run any Software Updates at all?

8. How will it do with DVDs? If it can play DVDs without a problem, then maybe the problem is iTunes after all. If it can't do DVDs either, have you taken it to the Apple Store or an Apple Authorized Service Center to have the optical drive looked at on both systems?

If the answer is no to any of them, make sure you perform them and post back with the results.