Tiger Issues

M

mkfinlay

Registered
I'm running Tiger on a 12" iBook G4 with 512mb Ram and since upgrading to tiger I have been having on and off slow down issues I orginally did an upgrade but had issues so I zeroed my Harddrive and did a clean install. This sort of helped but it tend run ok for the first 5 min then started hanging for no reason I have have tried everything I know of and still no luck. I can't really find a reason behind it.
Can anyone help.
Please
 
Your explanation ("issues" and "hanging") is rather vague. There's no reason why a clean installation of "Tiger" should cause any problems so either your iBook is faulty (bad memory or faulty Hard Drive?) or else you've installed something in addition to "Tiger" which is causing your problems.
 
Tiger is a) just not very good with only 512 MB of RAM and b) might still be indexing your harddrive(s)... I'd give the iBook the maximum RAM amount possible, if you want to work with Tiger. Or go back to 10.3.9, which works fine with 512...
 
Tiger is fine with 512. it's flakey with it's minimum 256mb, but that's understandable. 512 works fine, unless you use photoshopo etc a lot. for broswing and music, 512 is fine.

give us a more specific description of your troubles.
 
As an independent Macintosh IT technician and sales consultant, I can tell you that 512 MB is a bare-minimum for Tiger (10.4). You're slow downs are likely due to low RAM.

Another factor could be the amount of free space on your hard drive. If you've only got 5 or 6 GB remaining, you should either dump some stuff or consider getting a larger hard drive.
 
Wouldn't that be also dependent on the system itself? I have 512 MB RAM on my iMac G5 2.0 GHz and it's not that bad. I even use GaragaBand while doing other things in the background and I don't experience any problems. I'm guessing that it might have something to do with the system being a G4 system (CPU design, motherboard design, RAM controller design, etc. is different from that of the G5 system).
 
As I mentioned in another thread, slowing down can be caused by running something like "Messenger" from its disc image (instead of dragging the application to the Applications Folder), or by leaving a CD inserted, or by setting your Hard Drive to "sleep whenever possible". Look for the simple explanations first.
 
Most certainly could be other factors. There's no doubt about it. I was simply responding to the assertion that it couldn't be RAM and that 512 was more than enough for 10.4. While it will run with 512, the computer will have to do a fair amount of swapping memory to the hard drive and back -- a 40 times slower process than if you had enough RAM to avoid swapping.

Frankly, we need a better description than "hanging". What's handing? Does that mean that the computer is totally locking up (freezing) where you're forced to reboot? If that's the case and you have a fresh install then it's likely you have a hardware problem. Perhaps the RAM chip you have in the slot is bad?
 
Yes, in which case you would simply restore your files from your backup... er, I forgot... you don't back up filez:

http://macosx.com/forums/showthread.php?t=268961

In which case, you'll have to find a backup solution since being without one is not an option.

To wipe the hard drive clean and reinstall Panther, simply boot from the Mac OS X "Panther" install CD or DVD, then follow the very simple prompts to perform a "Clean Installation."
 
macworks said:
Frankly, we need a better description than "hanging". What's handing? Does that mean that the computer is totally locking up (freezing) where you're forced to reboot? If that's the case and you have a fresh install then it's likely you have a hardware problem. Perhaps the RAM chip you have in the slot is bad?
Click to expand...

By hanging I mean I get the spinning beachball for about 20 to 30 seconds for each action. and if running iTunes in the background the music freezes for the same amount of time this will not normally happen when the iBook is first turned on but generally after maybe 5 min use (however some times it will not slow down at all) It doesn't matter what programs are running it sometimes happens with only one programe running.

If the RAM is bad is there any way to check it? Under activity monitor it shows a value of inactive memory. This number somtimes gets as high as 170mb. Is this normal and what is inactive memory. (sorry I'm still pretty new to Macs and havn't quite grasped all the secerts.)

I also have 18gigs of free disk space. I had the 30gig drive replaced by a apple tech with a 60gig one before I installed Tiger.

This is very frustrating I'm not keen on going back to 10.3.9 I like the features in Tiger but this is causeing lots of headaches.
 
What operating system was on there before Tiger? What installation option did you use when you installed Tiger: Archive & Install, Erase & Install, or Upgrade?
 
Inactive memory is memory that has been filled, but is not currently being actively used. It's essentially equivalent of "free" memory in that if your computer needs it, it can use it by shuffling it's contents off to the hard drive.
 
Thanks for the definition. I was running 10.3.9 that shipped with my iBook. I did an upgrade install orginally and had issues so I did an erase and install this stopped most of the issuses I was having at the time but then my current problem showed up I had not installed anything else when it started playing up. Cause I thought that a 3rd party app might have caused it but i looked into that. As I am typing this I am not having any problems (for once).

This is frustrating.
 
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