Yeah, yeah, I know. But my PowerBook G4, which is I guess maybe 3 years old now? anyway, it ran just fine on Jaguar for ages until I decided to upgrade to Tiger. Now it’s prone to freezing up on me and there’s often nothing to do but hit the power button! It happens most often in web browsers (I use both Safari and Firefox), but it’s definately happened in e-mail before and I think it’s happened in the program I use to catalog my books. What on earth has gone wrong?! How can I fix it? It’s still rare, and I’m still loyal and drinking the Kool-Aid, but this is upsetting.
How did you upgrade from Panther to Tiger? I usually do an “Archive and install” (save your old stuff, install the new OS, then switch over), but some folks just install the new OS on top of the old one, which sometimes causes conflicts.
If nothing else, boot up with the Tiger CD, then do an “Archive and install”. You’ll get a clean copy of Tiger to work with, but your existing stuff won’t get erased. You’ll probably want to run Software Update a few times afterwards just to make sure you get the latest updates, too.
I keep up pretty well with Software Update. I don’t remember how I upgraded to Tiger - it was right when Tiger came out - but I might not have done it the smartest way. Also I didn’t upgrade from Panther, I’d been holding out. Surely going from Jaguar to Tiger wouldn’t screw it over, right?
You’re not by any chance running OSX with the option to switch to Classic environment and run OS9 as well, are you? I am running two identical G4s, one with just Tiger and the with Tiger plus the OS9 switching option. And the latter freezes if you so much as look at it funny, while the former is perfectly smooth and stable all the time.
Just checking, though I think you probably would have mentioned in the OP if that was so.
Isn’t it scary having to reboot your mac coz’ it froze? shudder PC-flashback!
One other item to check:
I had a Mac running OSX which would crash and freeze at seemingly random times. I finally tracked the problem down to a faulty 512 MB memory module. The module would start out being 512 MB, but then after running awhile decide it was 256 MB. The sudden loss of 256 MB of memory would cause a system crash. After restart, it would be recognized as 256 MB and all would be well (sort of).
The module was finally replaced under a lifetime warranty. Haven’t had a crash since.
Okay, I hate to admit it, but I know next to nothing about my Mac because it, er, just works. When I had a PC, especially under 95 and such, I knew twenty-eleven different ways to fix it and all sorts of things about it, because I had to fix it all the time. But now? Nothin’. So. I know under Jaguar it could run in Classic, but I don’t know if it does now under Tiger or not. (I do have one program I used to need Classic for, but since I haven’t run it since I updated Tiger maybe I don’t need it like I think I do.) How can I find out? And if it’s a memory issue, how do I figure that out? It’s embarassing not to know enough about your machine.
Ok. A couple of standard things to do when your Mac is acting up:
• Repair Permissions on your HD (from Applications>Utilities>Disk Utilities)
• Check the RAM - if you have more than one stick, try removing them one at a time
• Run Hardware Test from the discs which came with your Mac (you might like to run this a number of times as RAM problems aren’t always picked up on the first run)
If this fails to locate the problem, it may be that something was borked during the upgrade - might be time to backup your files and reinstall Tiger.
OB
Just thought of something else. Do you have any USB or Firewire devices attached to your machine when it freezes?
OB
Two issues I know of could be causing this.
<1> There is currently a known issue in Tiger that causes conflicts with Spotlight trying to index while certain programs are writing their temp files. If Entourage is the mail program of which you speak, you’ll run into this. As of the lastest interim build on Software Update, the fix from Apple is not yet available.
The workaround is to goto System Preferences | Spotlight, click on the Privacy tab, then click the + sign, select the folders in which you normally save files, and click Choose. In the case of MacOffice apps, you’ll need to add the Documents folder - goto your user directory and choose the Documents folder. This will prevent Spotlight from indexing these specific folders.
<2> There is a current issue with Norton Antivirus running under Tiger causing a similar problem. If you’re running it, launch it, goto Preferences and uncheck “enable Auto Protect.” No ETA from Norton yet on when they might resolve this issue.
I am not running Norton, and I don’t use Entourage (I used Mail until it quit sending my mail for some reason and now I use Thunderbird.) I will try that list of things to try, but am not sure I can find the disks that came with it - I’ve just moved and I have NO idea where to even start looking for that. Will report.
Zsofia, try the disk utility Applejack. You can download it here.
Applejack makes use of the single-user mode; that is, after the application is installed (it won’t show up in the applications folder — all you can save is the Read Me file), restart and hold down the Command and the S key until text starts to flow down the screen. After the text stops flowing, type Applejack then hit return. A list of five maintenance tasks appears, the first being the disk repair.
Applejack appears to use Disk Utility to make these repairs. After I loaded Tiger, I had to run the repair program three times in a row (without rebooting) before it could report all was well after the fourth run. I was about to trash the problem files when it fixed them all.
The rest of its jobs include fixing permissions, fixing the preferences files, and dumping the cache files and swap file.
You can have Applejack go through its routine automatically by typing Applejack auto then hitting return instead of typing just Applejack. And it cleans deeper cache files if you type Applejack AUTO (upper case). But for the first run I suggest doing it manually by just typing Applejack then return because you may have to repeat the disk repair multiple times, as I did.
(I am not affiliated with Applejack and knew nothing about it until a couple of weeks ago when my machine was freezing and crashing, and Onyx, another freeware repair utility, couldn’t fix it.)