Help! Frustrated "switcher" having problems with my 550mhz TiBook.

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flipmedley

Registered
I am having major headache with my PBG4 550mhz. The machine has been upgraded to 512MB of RAM and a 60GB hard drive.

The machine will literally lock up in Mac OS X whenever I fire up any "memory intensive" applications. It's sporadic, but it dies. As a Mac newbie, I have no idea how I can check the RAM. I am just looking for tips on how I can troubleshoot the system.

Also, the reason I have a 60GB drive is because the old 20GB drive died on me. I'm outside the warranty, as my machine suffered a drop which slightly damaged the case about nine
months ago.

I'm currently working at a customer site in Long Island, and I'm debating about whether it would be best to take my lumps for a week and have the Apple Store in Garden City take a shot at repairing it. Any ideas as to what I can diagnose before putting it into the shop.
 
Most hard crashes in OS X are caused by bad RAM. The fastest way of checking if it's the RAM is just to take the RAM out and see if your problems go away.

If the problems do go away, then try taking your new RAM back and getting higher quality RAM.
 
...everything seems to be better. I tried checking each SO-DIMM by booting the system with one, then the other. It locked up both times, so one possibility is that both SO-DIMMs are flaky.

*HOWEVER*, the big twist is that after re-installing Mac OS X, all my problems cleared up.

Clearly, reinstalling the OS is a Microsoft-like solution to instability, and I was wondering if it would work or not. For the past half hour or so, it's been pretty stable. So this brings up another question... are there any system diagnostic tools I can use under Mac OS X to diagnose future problems?
 
Disk Warrior has been a savior many times. They are coming out with a OS X version soon.
 
Noton Utilities has been my savior. They have an OS X version out already.

Another suggestion is to upgrade to OS X.2 Jaguar has been touted as 'great'.
 
...thanks for the wisdom about Norton. I already have Disk Warrior, which works great on the OS X partitions, though it boots me into OS 9 to do its magic.

I've also found some other interesting "problems" with my TiBook...

1) Applying too much force on either side of my trackpad seems to disable the trackpad. If I apply pressure (while "resting" my hands) to the area around the trackpad, it ceases to operate. Thankfully, I have a mouse. :rolleyes:

2) It still will lock up on occassion, but now it's down to once every day or more, and it seems that it happens when I am doing something that requires lots of graphics updates. It's almost as if Quartz went kablooie, to paraphrase Calvin and Hobbes.

That said, as a bonus, I've ported all the shell scripts for BEA Weblogic 7.0 so I can work with the J2EE server on my laptop. As a result, I can do everything I need (run a DBMS, run an appserver, run a browser to test it) on the laptop! Sweet!

:D
 
I think you should get it checked out by the folks at the Apple Store. If it is crashing once a day there is something wrong.
How bad was the "drop" your machine had ?
 
Perhaps the drop shook loose a heat sink or perhaps the replacement HD that was added runs too hot for the limited space. In that case the processor may simply be overheating.

I have a similar problem on my Pismo where I know for a fact the connection to the heat sink is not proper. The Pismo has a G3 with a temperature sensor. During intense operations I can see the temperature rise. If it hits 96C then the machine locks up. I use ThermoInDock to monitor the temperature. You can get it from VersionTracker.com. Later processors do not have the sensor. You'll have to try it to see if it works.
 
Good advice given here.

A lockup a day is still too high for MacOSX, I use it daily and almost never crashes. I compile lots of UNIX apps via Fink quite often, but it really doesn't make any difference (it doesn't crash). The only kernel panics I've had are with QuakeIII (bug in OpenGL surely) and waking from sleep (no big deal, maybe once every two weeks or something).


dani++
 
flipmedley have you done a simple disk first aid?

startup holding down apple+s
at the prompt type in fsck -y
if it finds no errors then just type reboot
else type in fsck -y
and keep doing that untill you get no errors
(more complete instructions at apple.com)

And if the Apple people say something major is wrong think about a new laptop instead of fixing this one. I have a powerbook 667 and it has been on for over a month or more 24/7 and has not crashed once.

twister
 
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