Powerbook Freeze - Safari & Firefox related

P

Powerbook Man

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I’m having a constant laptop freeze issue with both Safari and Firefox.

Laptop freeze occurs upon page load followed by most laptop functions being rendered unresponsive and a forced power reboot becomes necessary.

In most cases, the cursor remains the only active item on the desktop and I am sometimes able to click on other open applications and bring them forward but that is the limit of their functionality. I can’t force quit them via keyboard command either and the system clock is almost always frozen.

During the forced power reboot, the laptop does not seem to go through a permissions correction process (ie; the long delay that you experience during gray apple screen start-up.) The reboot process is fairly quick and sometimes the only abnormality occasionally noted after reboot is that the desktop background has gone back to a default setting. Not sure if related but sometimes the iTunes library is damaged and has to be rebuilt if application was open prior to freeze.

I’ve run complete diagnostics via Disk Utility, fsck, Applejack and TechTool Pro and no problems are noted. Is there any other info. I could be providing that would assist with solving this problem? Any assistance is appreciated!

OSX 10.4.11
1 Ghz PPC G4
1 MB L3 Cache
1 GB SDRAM
 
Powerbook Man said:
I’m having a constant laptop freeze issue with both Safari and Firefox.
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What version of OS X? [Ah, 10.4.11, I see... hehe] What version of Safari? What version of Firefox? Do you have any plug-ins or "enhancers" installed (Saft, PithHelmet, AcidSearch, etc.)?

Laptop freeze occurs upon page load followed by most laptop functions being rendered unresponsive and a forced power reboot becomes necessary.
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Does this occur on ALL pages? SOME pages? RANDOM pages? SPECIFIC pages? Pages with specific CONTENT (Quicktime movies, Flash, heavy JavaScript, etc.)?

During the forced power reboot, the laptop does not seem to go through a permissions correction process (ie; the long delay that you experience during gray apple screen start-up.)
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The system never goes through a "permissions correction process" upon boot -- the delay you experience upon boot sometimes is the system performing a drive integrity check (fsck, to be exact). It checks that the relative health of the filesystem is good, but does no permission checking/repairing.

If you create a new user account and log in under the new user account, do you experience the same freezes? If so, then the problem is likely with your general OS X install (meaning not specific to a certain user account), or it could be hardware-related (RAM, bad blocks on the HD, etc.). If not, though, then hooray! The problem is likely a rogue issue that is specific to your user account, which can be remedied with a lot less effort than a universal problem.
 
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  • 3.0.6 on FF and 3.2.1 on Safari.
  • No enhancers being used.
  • Problem appears to be random but I am guessing that it has something to do with whatever content it is loading.
  • Thanks for the insight on fsck during reboot. I will set up a second account and get back with the test results.
 
It is strange that it takes the whole system down with it (or most of the system -- it's affecting things outside of the current application, which hints at a system-level problem). A plug-in gone wonky or a corrupt preference file for the app would only cause the application itself to crash, not lock up the whole system.

http://www.macintouch.com is a very basic website, consisting of mostly text, which any computer made in the last 10 years should be able to handle with aplomb. I recommend visiting the site frequently, and if the problem ever appears while you're browsing that website, then I would be confident in saying that the problem is something at the system-level, and is not specific to the browser.

Also, have you ever experienced this problem while NOT surfing with a browser? Say, perhaps, in GarageBand or iMovie, or PhotoShop or anything? Do you have a funky network setup or anything?
 
This happens only when I go on the net and none of my other apps. And like I said, it is random as far as what sites I'm going on but it does happen almost every day now. Very frustrating. I'm not sure what to make of it where it happens with both browsers.

I've now set myself up a second user account and will visit that site you suggested during my surfing.
 
Look at Console when that happens/happened. (Applications/Utilities)
Console will tell more so in doubt post what happened when it froze.

Any Quicktime plugins?

Does it happen with safe boot?
 
Okay, this has gotten a bit strange.

I went back to my primary user account and booted in Safe Boot mode. Upon desktop, there was no Airport indicator in the menu bar and when I launched Safari, no internet connection was noted. So I went to Network settings and a drop down window kept appearing saying that my "network settings have been changed by another application." I could stop this window from dropping in. Everytime I clicked on the OK button, it would come back again. Behind it, I could see that all possible connection options were red and Internet Connect says that no Airport hardware could be found.

Any ideas on this?
 
addendum to last post - when I rebooted into my primary account after Safeboot test above, internet access was there. Then I went into Network settings and the same drop down window kept appearing indicating "network settings have been changed by another application" and I could not make it go away or get to the setting fields beneath it.
 
Ah, seems to be a common problem for those that installed a certain security update for Mac OS X 10.4.11...

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1712387&tstart=0

Scroll all the way to the bottom and read from there up -- there are a couple of suggestions for fixing the neverending "Your network settings have been changed..." message. Apparently whatever causes that message can also interfere with network access.

On a side note, have you been asked by a webpage in the recent past to download a "Quicktime codec" in order to view some material on the page? If so, did you download and install said codec?
 
Thanks, I'll read that thread and come back. I have not received any QT messages like you have suggested and from what I know about messages like that, I would not install anything suspicious like that as I keep my QT up to date via Apple and suspect it's not legit.
 
I managed to stop the constant drop down box from happening BUT in Safeboot mode, it still says "Airport is turned off" in the Network window pane while the Airport status pane indicates "no Airport hardware found." I didn't see anyone noticing this situation in that thread you directed me to - I'm wondering if anyone has even thought of it or what can be done about it. Any thoughts?
 
FYI, this is what I did to stop the drop box loop:

Open System Preferences > Security. Check "Require password to unlock each secure system preference" and then closing out of this process and going back in and changing it again and back out again.
 
Giaguara said:
Look at Console when that happens/happened. (Applications/Utilities)
Console will tell more so in doubt post what happened when it froze.

Any Quicktime plugins?

Does it happen with safe boot?
Click to expand...
Just getting a chance to get back in on this problem - laptop crash happened again last night while browsing on Safari and I went into Console after reboot. The Safari crash log does not show anything but there is info. in the System Log that shows activity from that time - would that be helpful to post?
 
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