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TICKET ARCHIVE -> Powermac G5 Crashing

arodweb - Sep 6, 2005 - 10:21 pm

Hello there,
First of all i use: powermac g5 2.5, tiguer 10.4.2

for some reason after some time of use my powermac crashes. i have noticed that i have to hold the power button to force quit it. then when i power it back on i see that my external usb HD has the activity light on and when the computer boots the system doesn't recognize it. i really don't think it's the external drive because i plugged it on another machine and it works. i ran techtool's diagnostic and the USB ports are fine and the external drive as well. it started happening since the last update of safari, all of the sudden safari would crash my powermac, well i stopped using safari and started to use firefox and it's still doing it but this time i can use the powermac for a longer period of time.

any ideas??

thanks

Waxer - Sep 7, 2005 - 2:56 pm

Hello there, thanks for your question.

The first thing that comes to mind is that your mac may be getting too hot. Go here: http://www.bresink.de/osx/TemperatureMonitor.html and download & install the application, keep it in the dock so you can monitor it, and make a note of the temperature when it crashes. If it is always at the same temperature, and that temperature is over 60 degrees, your mac's too hot. Is it in a ventilated area? Can you hear the fan working? Is it when you are doing intensive work like rendering video files, or at any time? The other possibility is unstable RAM...have you added any? is it factory installed? Lastly, do you get the same problems without your external devices connected? It may be that the USB port which looks fine is drawing too much power, and you need to make sure it's own power supply is connected. Good luck, and let me know how you got on, thanks, Steve.

arodweb - Sep 8, 2005 - 11:16 am

thanks for the reply.

i did install temperature monitor and it's pretty handy 'thanks'

YES, it was getting pretty hot because of the location of the cpu, so i moved further from t he wall to give it more room to breathe, and YES the fans work fine. that seemed to work with the heat factor keeping it in the 50's C , gradually it would go up but would reduce temp shortly after that. I mostly use apps like photoshop and macromedia stuff, i notice photoshop will heat things up a bit but then it would bring them back to normal, i don't do any video rendering, just images.

the external drive is working fine.

i spoke with a friend last night and he told me to do a clean install of the operating system.... i didn't do it since i saw the results after i moved the machine away from the wall 'heat wise'.

the machine just crashed about 10 minutes ago and i looked at the temp and it was 55c at that moment. i booted from the tiger disc to maybe do what my friend had suggested and the disc only gave me the following options: archive install "don't need to do that" ...... total install "totally wioe out my hd" BUT i didn't see the clean install option, if i go with the total install that will format my drive and i might loose all my settings.


at this point what do u think about this??, BTW the temp has been staying in the 50's so far.

thanks for your help

Waxer - Sep 9, 2005 - 4:29 am

Hello there, your friend has given you some good advice...a clean install does sort out a lot of things. Also, when you do an upgrade, if you have inherent problems with the mac, it can bring them across and still cause problems. The best setup for your mac is as follows: Use one primary hard drive as your system disk (I recommend an 80gb disk minimum, seagate or maxtor as this is what apple use), and a second, larger disk as your data drive (200gb for example). I use a 60gb and a 200 in my G4. If you already have a large disk, you could buy another hard disk and take your first disk out, put the new one in as a master and boot from your tiger disk, instal from there. This will give you a nice clean install, which you can update from there. Then install the second disk as slave, then use the migration tool to import all your settings from the old disk. This works pretty good and sorts out a load of problems. If you have a large disk already, and don't want to buy another disk, you can backup all your information to an external drive, then erase your internal disk & use disk utility to partition your drive into 2 parts, system & data, then do the install & import the settings as I said earlier using the migration assistant.

Before you take any of this on, however, ensure your Tiger disk is an original full install disk, and not the cheaper upgrade version. If it's the upgrade, you'll need to install Panther first, then do a software update, the upgrade to tiger, then do another software update. I hope you have broadband!!

Just as a last note, I don't know if you are aware, but the new CS2 package from Adobe has caused a lot of problems, I have had problems myself with it. Have a look here at this (from macosx.com)


Today's Featured Article
Late-Breakers
Thursday, September 01 2005 @ 08:30 AM PDT
Adobe CS2 (Photoshop, Illustrator) performance problems (#2)
Yesterday's reports of issues with performance from Adobe's Creative Suite 2 (CS2) applications generated dozens of reader responses, with most users corroborating slow operation -- primarily in Photoshop 8 (CS2) and Illustrator CS2.

MacFixIt reader David Notley's case is typical:

"Ever since installing CS2 we have a consistent slow down at one specific time. The first time you go to print in IDCS2, after the machine has been shut down, it takes a long time to launch the print window. After that initial slowdown the print dialogue window opens normally when launched again. The problem is the same on all four machines, all running OSX10.4.2. Repairing permissions, deleting and re-installing the printers has made no difference. The problem only occurs with CS2, no other applications."

Tommy Stubbs adds:

" I'm a longtime illustrator using Photoshop for many years. Photoshop CS2 has many problems that cannot be corrected by the user. Adobe has acknowledged a problem with brushes when you select smoothing and scattering with Wacom tablets. It locks up. The font preview issue is another. Overall performance is another. There are many improvements that will make CS2 a great application. But not till Adobe comes up with a fix. I have gone back to CS1 which works just fine. I have experienced no problems with Illustrator CS2 or any other CS2 applications."

Michael Fiegel writes:

"I convinced my boss to let me upgrade from Photoshop 7/Illustrator 10 to CS2, and what a horrid mistake that was. Startup times are at least double what they were in the older versions, and saving documents easily takes three times as long. Luckily I was smart enough to keep the old versions installed, so I've re-saved all my documents as Legacy format docs and have been happily working with PS7/Illustrator 10, and saving - literally - hours of time. The only piece of the pie that works well is Indesign CS2, but I've got no point of comparison so it may be that it's slow too and I just don't realize it."

Rob White notes frequent crashes in addition to performance issues:

"I also have frequent crashes immediately after starting up Photoshop CS2. (On the order of once every 4 times I start it) If I click the message button to restart it, it seems to run fine. Bridge seems never to crash, but can take as long as 2 minutes to fully open!"

Don Saban reports on his experience discussing the issue with Adobe's technical support team:

"I'm having the same issues. Adobe says "this is the first they've heard of it" and that I'm the only one with problems. My issues are: delayed brushes, rubber stamp, cloning tools, general sluggishness, and stalls that last up to 3 or 4 minutes. Adobe says that it's my machine, not their software that's the problem. All my associates, ranging from Panther to Tiger and G4's to G5's are having this problem. As Johnny Cochran once said, 'don't admit until you can fix.'"

We are working on identifying and confirming several workarounds that can provide temporary performance boosts. If you are having issues with slow CS2 application performance, please let us know.

Hope that helps, cheers, Steve.