OSX System Freeze

C

crash

and burn
ok, heres the deal: i have a Blue & White G3 450MHz with internal zip, DVD 40 GB internal IDE hard drive, external firewire LaCie CDRW burner, Dual Viewsonic 19" A90 displays (on twin ATI Rage graphics cards) and 448 MB of ram all running OSX 10.1.4

the problem: the computer simply freezes. solid freeze, no mouse movement, no hard drive activity, no processor activity, no anything. i DO NOT, however see a kernal panic on screen. everything just stops. the only solution is a restart.

let me detail the history of this mystery crash. the machine ran perfectly fine with just 9.2. as soon as i upgraded, it began happenning. the first thing i though was software. ok, i chucked all the third party stuff, like, the kensington trackball mouse drivers, ASM, tinkertool, etc. no luck; same crash.

then i thought it was the ram, because i know OSX has troubles with third party ram. i started swapping out the third party modules and using only apple ram, and even rotating the existing apple ram. no good, same crash.

so i get a copy of drive 10. it tells me that it might be the SCSI or FireWire interface. so i unplugged the FW burner. same crash. since the hard drive was originally a SCSI internal on an Apple/Adaptec PCI scsi card, and i wanted to avoid buying a new hard drive, i backed up my data, erased and reformatted it and started from scratch. same crash.

so i bit the bullet. bought a 40 GB internal IDE drive. after almost 3 hours of installs, same thing. same damn crash.

which brings us up to now. there are no erroneous log entries in system.log or aeven any of the other logs. (i've even gotten desperate enough to check httpd's access_log)

the copy of OSX that i am installing is from a CD that has worked perfectly in installing on three other machines (two G4s and an older G3 BW)

i apologize for the lneght of this post, but i'm at my wits end. all of the appropriate channels of information have been consulted and i don;t know what else to do. i would hate to think i need a new system board. ugh.

anyway, thanks.
 
i should also note that the freeze occurs for no apparent reason. it happens at very odd times. for example: running AIM, and iTunes, i try to launch IE and it freezes.

other times, i'll have terminal, IE, and entourage running, when i switch from entourage to terminal, it freezes.

usually pretty random like that. i have all the newest versions of the applications that are running when the crash occurs.

i'm a die-hard, long-time mac user and i absolutely love OSX. i'm not willing to just let this problem go. it must have some kind of resolution.

thanks.
 
Try this: boot OS X, log in, and let it sit for a while... how long between freezes? An hour? Two? Let it sit depending on the length of time between freezes and see if simply letting it run with no apps loaded produces the same freeze.

If it freezes like this with nothing running or loaded, whoa. Something is DEFINITELY wrong. Hardware problem, most likely, but not definitely.

If it doesn't freeze, cool -- it's most likely an application or combination of applications causing the freeze.

I've had these freezes without kernel panics that require a hard reboot, but reformatting and reinstalling solved that. I know you've tried that, but it may be time to try it one more time with a bare-bones, no 3rd party peripheral system and a single IDE drive.
 
the console was completely shot; mouse pointer moved, but that was about it.

Logging in via telnet (or ssh) worked, but not even killing all processes belonging to the logged in user helped to recover the console. shutdown -r now did, however, recover the machine.

In my case it was a mix of buggy apps (old HP all in one drivers)
 
Could be bad memory. I know what you said about it, but you tried all different combos of the DIMMs, even leaving in just one at a time? Otherwise, I don't know.

Good luck.
 
Just one other thing:

Try booting into single user mode and run fsck -y until there are no errors. Then reboot and see how long until you freeze again.

If you keep freezing and there is no problem with the directory structure, you may need to do some kind of re-install.

Good Luck.
SA:)
 
Originally posted by buc99
Just one other thing:

Try booting into single user mode and run fsck -y until there are no errors. Then reboot and see how long until you freeze again.

If you keep freezing and there is no problem with the directory structure, you may need to do some kind of re-install.

Good Luck.
SA:)
Click to expand...

He said he did do a completely new install on a newly formatted drive.
 
Yeah I know, but just Humor me. Maybe something went south in the install that was not visible. Maybe not. I'm grasping at straws here since this does not make sense. So to cover all our bases, reboot into single user mode and do a fsck -y till there are no errors and reboot. Hey, it can't hurt.

Good Luck.:)
SA
 
i abridged most of my original post.

i had run fsck -y as single user as well as run disk utility after booting from the CD. yes, i tried all the ram combos. even with a single 128 module. at this point, its been ok with only two slots filled, and all the peripherals removed. but, i've tried it before with the inevitable crash lurking around the corner. at one point, i thought i might have something to do with the DSL modem. or perhaps the linksys router, so i even upgraded the firmware on those. (well, just the router, i couldn't find any kind of "firmware upgrade" for the modem.)

i tried the suggestion about leaving it running with no programs. the machine had an uptime of 12 hours with no incedents. upon resuming regular use, it crashed.

i run an almost identical system at my job with no problems. ugh. frustrating.

i appreciate all your help,
 
You really sound like you have covered pretty much all of it. Sounds like a hardware problem. How does OS 9 run? If it crashes too, then it has to be a hardware issue. Did you try actually removing the SCSI card altogether?
 
crash: I have a couple of questions.

1) Are you sure that it's a total lockup? Does the menubar clock keep going? Or is it just input/output devices that don't respond, like the keyboard, mouse, speakers, and other devices?

2) Try pushing the power button on your keyboard/front part of your computer. I doubt this will put it to sleep, because you need something like a cube or an Apple flat-panel display for this functionality to work, but it's worth a shot. Sometimes putting my comp to sleep and waking it fixes a lot of problems.

3) Try installing escapepod. You can find it here: http://www.versiontracker.com/moreinfo.fcgi?id=14756&db=mac

When your comp freezes, try pressing Control-Option-Delete to see if it force quits the front-most app. If it doesn't, then try pressing Control-Command-Option-Delete to see if it can force a logout.
 
Good points. I just installed escapepod today. Really cool utility. I love the ones that people have simply made for themselves out of necessity and release for others later on.
 
OS 9 runs with no problems. always has. it'll run indefinitely, with no errors or incedents. i can stuff all the slots with ram, and i can run all the programs i want. except os x, of course.

the menubar clock stops. apps with any kind of movement, stop also. eg: aim has the rotaing ad banners, with animated ads. they stop.

entourage has schedules that automatically check my numerous accounts. that stops.

and yes, i totally removed the scsi card. that was the point of buying a new drive. so at this point, theres no scsi card

PowerMac G3 Blue and White 450 MHZ/40GB IDE/256MB (only two out of four slots filled, 128 each) no peripherals plugged in. the only thing non-stock about the whole setup is that i have a macally keyboard. i can't imagine that would cause any kind of problem, but i'm going to put the old crappy apple keyboard back on tonight when i get home. we'll see.

as a side note, why would my system gong not ring on restart? the system volume for OS 9 and OS X is at full, and yes the speakers are on and turned up... what gives?
 
i noticed something odd about the crash last night:

if itunes is running, and its playing a song, and the crash occurs, the audio will skip and play the same single second of audio over and over and over indefinitely. over and over, skip, skip, skip.

vexing.
 
Any chance of re-installing using a different OSX CD? A long shot, I realise, but at least it would take it out of the equation.

R.
 
I can't believe that it is necessarily a hardware problem since OS9 runs without a hitch.

My feeling is something is not installing correctly from the OSX disk. Anyway you can get your hands on another copy and see if it installs and keeps your computer from crashing?

Just grasping for straws now. If your computer is up to date hardware wise and OS9 runs, it would seem highly unlikely that a "good" clean install of OSX would crash on the same system.

Good Luck.
SA:)
 
The suggestions to try installing from another OS X CD is a good idea. Otherwise, it's possible that there is some hardware in there that OS 9 has no problem with, but OS X does, as in no support. AFAIK, that Mac should be totally supported by OS X, right? And you removed ALL hardware that did not come standard with this Mac for testing purposes? FWIW, the only thing that ever froze up Linux for me was many years ago when I went to run Doom and hadn't properly set up my sound card. Once it started, it froze.

Just some more thoughts....
 
Sorry if I was not clear. What I should have said is that any Modern mac without after factory changes should run OSX without a hitch if it runs OS9. There may be a problem with the size of the Harddrive. Once again grasping at straws, I vaguely remembering hearing of some people having trouble with OSX on large drives. I will investigate and see if I can find the reference.

Good Luck.

SA:)
 
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