Strange Tiger problems ... miracle cure ???

Posted:
in Genius Bar edited January 2014
So a couple of days ago on my 867 mhz power mac running tiger with all maintenance applied, I started getting the beach ball of death. Only way to break out ... power cycle the machine ...ykkes! Fixed permissions, no help. Started getting scary ... had trouble booting ... would take two or three attempts to come up. So backed up everything. Tried to reinstall Tiger ... install would hang at various points .... Arggg! Went to bed. Next opened box and looked for excessive dust. No dust. Ran hardware diags ... no problems found. Tried to install Tiger again .... everything is working!! Applied all maintenance and things appear to have settled down. The only thing I can think of was the day I had my problems was very hot (like 90 in the house). Could exessive heat be the culprit?

Any thoughts?



Dave

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 8
    johnqjohnq Posts: 2,763member
    Make sure the RAM chip/s are seated correctly.



    Heat makes a computer expand and cold (a.c./winter) makes them contract.



    RAM can wiggle itself loose over time.



    Let me guess, you routinely shut your Mac off at night?
  • Reply 2 of 8
    david_rdavid_r Posts: 8member
    Interesting thoughts about the RAM. I sometimes shutdown at night and then sometimes I leave the beast on for a week. No pattern, really. If I had to guess I would say the box is powered up for at least 36 hours at a time averaged over the years.



    Dave
  • Reply 3 of 8
    I got the beach ball again, so I reseated the memory DIMMS. Hopefully that will fix my problem.



    Dave
  • Reply 4 of 8
    johnqjohnq Posts: 2,763member
    Just be glad you don't have an iMac DV SE.



    I opened the bottom port to add RAM and the old RAM fell out onto the table.



    RAM sits upside down in those Macs and they were fanless, so the heating/cooling (when it's off) really expanded and contracted things.



    But I have seen RAM pop loose in G4 and G5 towers too.
  • Reply 5 of 8
    david_rdavid_r Posts: 8member
    Well, after reseating the DIMMS, I still get the beach ball of death from time to time. The system must be in some kernel routine as force quit is not available. It has been very hot here lately and this is the first time I have run the G4 in an un-airconditioned space. I am hoping that the heat is the problem. Very hard to tell what is failing as it only happens every hour or so. One good thing ... after the Tiger clean install things are snappier.



    Dave
  • Reply 6 of 8
    david_rdavid_r Posts: 8member
    Oh yeah, one other question I forgot in the last post. Are there any hardware logs I could look at for any error messages?
  • Reply 7 of 8
    baranovichbaranovich Posts: 184member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by David_R

    Oh yeah, one other question I forgot in the last post. Are there any hardware logs I could look at for any error messages?



    I'd try here first:



    http://www.apple.com/support/



    Then if you still can't find anything, Google it.
  • Reply 8 of 8
    david_rdavid_r Posts: 8member
    Well my problem finally went solid and the hard drive crashed good and proper. Replaced the drive and all is well



    Dave
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