my mac keeps freezing

R

rpj

Registered
Everytime I boot up my TiPBG4 in OSX, the screen freezes up.

Symptoms: I boot up and log in. I am able to open one or two applications (terminal window, Word, BBEdit, etc.), I might be able to type a small amount (for one or two minutes), then the screen freezes up. The only escape for this condition is a forced reboot (ctrl,apple,power button) or power down. I have always been able to reboot. The time before the screen freezes is inversely proportional to the number of times that I reboot. Eventually, the screen will freeze before I can login in. Also, if I boot-up and login, but do absolutely nothing, after about five minutes, the screen will freeze up and I will need to force a reboot. After reading a few of items on the web, I tried resetting the power management unit. This step extends the time before screen freeze, but did not fix the problem. I am at my wits end. I need to get work done, but it is quite difficult to do so when I can write a word or two, save them, then have to reboot.

I very recently, (a couple of weeks or so ago, I don't remember exactly), upgraded to 10.2.6. Prior to that time, I had no problems whatsoever. Since the update, I noticed that booting up the computer took longer and that one or two applications take time to think when saving, etc. Which applications exactly, I was not paying much attention to since up until now, the upgrade has worked fine.

I have a 800 MHz, TiPBG4, with 768 MB memory. Any advice that could be given me will be greatly appreciated.
 
I haven't tried to rebuild my OS. I have tried fsck several times. I haven't tried rebuilding because I haven't backed up some data and I am fearful of losing it ( I know, my wife keeps asking me how many times I am going let things like this happen before I learn to backup my computer more regularly).

Can I wipe out the existing OS and reinstall without losing my data? If so, how would I go about doing this?
 
Yes, you can reinstall OS X without removing your old system. Simply choose the "archive and install" option in the installer.

However, be wary of upgrading to anything higher than 10.2 because you could bring the problem back. I've avoided upgrading my iMac because I had freezing issues in 10.2.4 and I've heard bad things about others.
 
FYI, I think Arden is on to something! And yet, for some reason I simply cannot resist the upgrades - why, who knows -it's ridiculous to take a chance every month or two, yet I do. I have had a absolutely perfect running Mac since last fall when I bought my DP 1 GHz and with 10.2.6, boom, freezes and it won't always sleep or wake up from sleep. I'm going to take arden's advice and reinstall, but upgrade up to 10.2.5 which was just fine for me. In the meantime, why can't Apple just release solid upgrades - it is really absurd. Think of all the new Mac switchers who run the updates and discover little issues, yet don't know about places like macosx.com? I have been using Macs and computers in general for 15 years and I no longer have the patience to trouble shoot for basic issues like just having a machine that runs the OS. I'm sick of it, I'm really sick of it and think we should be beyond the days of having to open the hood of our machines (hood as a metaphor for troubleshooting the OS) every other day just to drive to the store(as a metaphor to just do basic computing).
 
I found when Apple releases an upgrade involving the system I do two things. first of all I always download the combo update instead of the the software upgrade update. Plus, I always repair Permissions.

I done this ever since a bad 10.1.x update. I took the advice of a local Mac expert and ever since I have had zero upgrade problems.

Mileage may vary though.
 
I install with Software Update and haven't ever repaired permissions - no probs on my end for any update. :p

Just in case someone asks, I don't repair the permissions because I've changed the permissions on lots of things...hell if I wanna have to go back and redo them. I checked the permissions once just to see what it thinks needs repaired...that was one helluva big list. :D
 
Ditto Darkshadow :)
rpj, this could be bad RAM, try taking all the RAM out and then booting the computer up, putting the RAM back in piece by piece. If it works fine with one or more of the chips out, then you probably have bad RAM.
 
Yes, take out all your RAM and try to boot your computer. See how far you get. :)

Actually, dlloyd's suggestion is valid. Try booting your computer with only one RAM chip at a time, and see if it works each time. If it does, try various combinations of RAM chips; if everything works okay with this, or if everything doesn't work the same way it didn't before, then it's not the RAM.

In my experience, the original release of 10.2 seems to be the most stable, or at least the version with the fewest crippling errors. I don't know how Apple manages to pull this off, but every single major update to 10.2 seems to have some sort of bug that brings many users down. I suggest not upgrading if you have a stable system until they iron everything out, for sure.
 
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