iMac Diagnostics - next step?

N

Neeneko

Registered
Since I do not know if it is a hardware or software problem, posting here since it seems like a good first step. I am really hoping someone can point me in a good direction here.

So basically I have an iMac that I am trying to diagnose for someone. It occasionally (sometimes several times per day) freezes up and has to be rebooted. So far we have not found a good pattern to when or why it locks up.

I have tried the Apple Hardware Test, which showed nothing. I ran the disk scan, showed nothing. I installed a temperature monitor, nothing got out of range. I tried keeping an SSH session open on the machine, tailing several of the logs right up to the freeze.. nothing out of the ordinary. If it were another unix I would say it was behaving like a kernel panic, but since there is no virtual terminal or serial port I do not know how to confirm this theory.

So my basic question would be, what is a good 'next step'? I am comfortable poking around unix, but OSX is just different enough that I am not sure where useful information might be. /var/log does not seem to be showing anything out of the ordinary.

Thanks for any suggestions.
 
How did your run the hardware test? Looped (ctrl+L), extended, for hours or overnight?

Do you have extra RAM of the kind that the Mac uses? You could replace the RAM and see if that will quit the freezes.
 
@Giaguara

I ran it 'extended' twice. I think it took about an hour to run. I had not heard about this 'looped' option so I will try that next.

I believe the RAM was, at some point, upgraded in the machine (swapped out all modules as opposed to adding more). I can talk to the user about putting back in the old memory, but she was having trouble with the rather small amount it came with.
 
Looped is unfortunately not listed anywhere that you'd see in the software (I don't remember it ever having been listed there), but it's nearly always better looped. Same shortcut to break the loop later. It'll stop either if it finds an error or if you break the loop.

If the original RAM is still available, it could be worth trying with that. Even when it's running slower, just for test. If those issues don't run with the RAM it came with, then it will be worth to replace the newer RAM. And if they would still happen with that RAM, even that would tell something more.
 
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