Ibook Hanging Up

B

blasto

Registered
Hi
My iBook is hanging up. Here's what happens:

cursor still moves, keyboard still 'live' (i.e. there is still power to the keyboard), but no response from iBook. Can't force quit. Have to shut down using power key and reboot.

Run on OSX 10.3 - was running on the latest version but back to 10.3.5 after reformatting the drive after system got mashed from repeated forced shutdowns.

From reading postings and from the timing of the problem (it isn't application related as far as I can tell), i believe the problem may be related to either:

RAM
Disk
Airport extreme card.

I have taken the card out, and it hung once straight after, but not again since (about two hours, which is pretty good). Anyway of testing the card? I can't lay my hands on my diagnostics CD. the iBook is out of warranty, but the card is just within.

I have also seen various postings about problems with recent airport firmware, but don't know if that relates to the cards or base stations, or if the symptoms are common to mine.

Disk runs without a hitch under target disk mode

I shall try and track down a RAM tester via version tracker.

Suggestions most welcome.

Cheers
 
Usually if it's bad RAM, you'll get a kernel panic. (The gray box with a message like "Please restart you computer immediately) in multiple languages. Not saying that RAM isn't the problem, but that is a good indicator that a stick is bad, or incompatible with your machine. You should also look to see if the stick is coming up correctly (i.e. 256 MB 133Mhz, etc.)
 
I had a similar problem with my iBook. The cursor moved but nothing else on screen would (i.e. moving the mouse over the dock, etc). No keyboard commands would work except cmd+op+power to force restart.

After lots of checking (re-sit RAM, Airport, disk repair, reinstall, repair permissions, clear cache) I followed advice from Apple's support forums. It turned out it only froze when I applied pressure to the lower left corner/lower left of keyboard, usually when I moved it which made it seem completely random to begin with.

I used the 3 month free AppleCare to get it fixed, and they fitted a new hard disk. Now that it's out of it's warranty the problem started happening again...

Does yours only freeze when pressing in the lower left area of the iBook?
 
I have the same problem here. Pressure to the case or keyboard doesn't seem to matter -- it still manages to freeze when it's sitting unattended. This is reported in the system log upon each hang:

Jul 29 11:26:13 localhost kernel: ATIRadeon::submit_buffer: Overflowed block waiting for FIFO space. Have 5, need 6. RBBM_STATUS 0x80010140. VAP_CNTL_STATUS 0x00000002
Jul 29 11:26:24 localhost kernel: ** ASIC Hang Log Start **
Jul 29 11:26:24 localhost kernel: 0x01005c63 4f000217 00000007 00000003
Jul 29 11:26:24 localhost kernel: 0x0200b05d c0001c04 00000002 00000008
Jul 29 11:26:24 localhost kernel: 0x00004443 01e1f8b7 00001616 80010140
Jul 29 11:26:24 localhost kernel: 0x4000ffff 001e0000 51b3a220 72001005
Jul 29 11:26:24 localhost kernel: 0x080a0f00 00000000 040100f8 80000003
Jul 29 11:26:24 localhost kernel: 0x0008bbbb 00000002
Jul 29 11:26:24 localhost kernel: 0:0x00000002
Jul 29 11:26:24 localhost kernel: 1:0x000101ce

...and so on until the time that I reboot. The Apple Genius Bar folks had no clue what this could be, and they suggested updating ATI drivers (!), creating a new user account, and reinstalling the OS. None of these have helped. I fear it's hardware, which is upsetting because my warranty just expired and I'm apparently not covered by the Apple iBook Logic Board Replacement Program. And every hardware/disk test program I've tried comes up clean (Apple Hardware Test, Techtool, Diskwarrior). Help!
 
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