Strange Freezes With Dual G5

M. Hicks

Registered
Hello, first post.

Just purchased a refurb Dual G5 1.8, received it Saturday. Formerly had a DIY G4 box with a Gigabit Ethernet board. Came installed with Panther, but Tiger discs were included and I upgraded the machine to 10.4.2 Tiger.

Dual 1.8/1 GB RAM/Radeon 9600 XT 128 mb/80 gb SATA/Mac OS X 10.4.2.

My boot drive on my G4 was a Maxtor 60 GB, and the G5 SATA 80 GB drive.

I have used Carbon Copy Cloner to synchronize my files and settings, and after putting my G4 Maxtor drive into a Firewire case, I synched the files to the G5.

I am getting intermittent hard freezes when I am web browsing, it has happened three times in Firefox 1.0.6 (particularly when I visit the Lakersground.net website), and just now while browsing ebay in Safari.

The fans inside the unit appear to be working normally, I don't detect the CPUs overheating or anything like that.

I am somewhat shocked, I had never seen a hard freeze in OS X...I never had that problem with my G4 (ran Jaguar and Panther on it), and I didn't know that it could be a problem with Tiger. I have repaired permissions...could I have some damaged preference files?

Seeking answers, thanks.
 
Have you run disk utility from the Tiger disk or run fsck?

1. Shut down the computer if it is on.
2. Press the power button to start the computer.
3. Immediately press and hold the Command (Apple) key and the "s" key for single-user mode.
4. At the command-line prompt, type: /sbin/fsck -fy
5. Press Return.

The fsck utility will go through five "phases" then return information about the disk's utilization and fragmentation. Once the check is finished, if no issue is found, you should see "** The volume (name of volume) appears to be OK."

Note: If fsck alters, repairs, or fixes anything, it will display the message:

***** FILE SYSTEM WAS MODIFIED *****

Important: If this message appears, repeat the fsck command until it no longer appears. It's OK if you need to do several "passes" of fsck, because first-pass repairs may uncover additional issues.

When fsck reports that, "** The volume (name of volume) appears to be OK.",
6. type: reboot
7. Press Return.
 
Used Disk Utility on boot drive by booting from external drive.

Had some disk issues, couldn't fix.

Broke down and did a complete clean install, reinstalled apps, backed up documents and gradually dragged them back to documents folder.

Repaired disk with Disk Utility by booting off external Firewire drive, repaired permissions, all of that. Clean install, mind you.

I have had three freezes in the last eight hours or so, and one grey screen with the multilanguage "You need to restart..." message.

When I have used hardware test, both the short and the long tests, nothing wrong was reported.

Very frustrating. The customized G4 that I had built did not have problems like this. Ran great for 18 months.
 
I have also run memtest, and looped it five times (took about four hours)...no errors reported.

This is a kernel panic message that I received on August 7, the only message that immediately appeared in some log form:

Panic(cpu 0 caller 0x000a4e68): simple lock (0x00385f50) deadlock detection, pc=0x0003c390

latest stack backtrace for cpu 0:
backtrace:
0x00095544 0x00095a5c 0x0002683c 0x000a4e68 0x0003c390 0x0002e4a8 0x0001ed54 0x0001ff9c
0x0002426c 0x0002e6fc 0x000abe2c 0x22266774
proceeding back via exception chain:
exception state (sv=0x2f68ca00)
pc=0x9003b0a8; msr=0x0000f030; dar=0xe00d1000; dsisr=0x42000000; lr=0x9074b848; r1=0xf0182410; xcp=0x00000030 (0xc00 - system call)

kernel version:
darwin kernel version 8.2.0: fri jun 24 17:46:54 pdt 2005; root:xnu-792.2.4.obj~3/release_ppc
model: powermac7,3, bootrom 5.1.8f7, 2 processors, powerpc g5 (3.0), 1.8 ghz, 1 gb
graphics: ati radeon 9600 xt, aty,rv360, agp, 128 mb
memory module: dimm0/j11, 512 mb, ddr sdram, pc3200u-30330
memory module: dimm1/j12, 512 mb, ddr sdram, pc3200u-30330
modem: microdash, ucj, v.92, 1.0f, apple version 2.6.6
network service: built-in ethernet, ethernet, en0
pci card: alchemytv, tv-card, slot-3
serial ata device: st380013as, 74.53 gb
parallel ata device: hl-dt-st dvd-rw gwa-4082b,
usb device: usb receiver, logitech, up to 1.5 mb/sec, 500 ma
usb device: usb printer, epson, up to 12 mb/sec, 500 ma

I'm starting to believe that my problem is more hardware than software related...any opinions?
 
Can you try removing all external devices (USB or FireWire) and operate the computer solely with the Apple-included keyboard and mouse?
 
I have used the original keyboard and mouse in setup.

Apple tech support has determined that it's a hardware issue, and they are going to replace my refurb.

I thank you all for your effort and time.

M. Hicks
Louisville, KY
 
M. Hicks,
Hopefully your new machine is better off, I have recently purchased the same referb machine from Apple and it is doing exactly the same thing you described. 5 Freezes with Safari, 1 with firefox and another with itunes after I plugged in my shuffle, not to mention that Safari just flat out doesn't load half the time which i think I fixed flushing the lookupd cache - I have gone through the - taking things out and reinstalling the system etc... My question, if you get this is what did apple replace your machine with, how long did it take, did they give you grief about it... and does your new machine work better... My G4 crashed 3 times in three years and it was self inflicted. I would love to hear about your resolution so that I can get mine replaced without friction, hell apple prolly repackaged yours and sent it to me.

thanks,
</m>
 
Hello,

I was shipped a return label to send back the bad G5, and after talking with tech and customer support on the last call, they literally shipped it the next day.

That impressed me.
 
Back
Top