I tried everything!

[Sheetmetal]

Hello everyone. I am new here and I come to you with a problem on my G5. I have a Dual processor G5 running at 1.8 MHz. I am running the latest OS-X 10.4.9 and using 4 GB of RAM.

Here's the problem. Shortly after installing 10.4.9 my computer starting to crash. It would crash during the screensaver activation at first, then randomly and now almost always. Crashing means it would simply freeze the screen and it would not allow any keyboard or input from any device.

I removed all unecessary connections, USB multi-port, external hard drive, speakers, network conenction, etc. and nothing.

I rotated the RAM chips and nothing.

I ran Disk Utility and nothing.

I ran fsck -y and nothing.

I booted on an older Tiger version on a separate disk and nothing.

I created two user accounts, one a restricted user and another with system priviledges and nothing.

I used memtest and RAM is fine

I ran IceClean and nothing

I ran Preferential Treatment and it did find a few corrupt plist files and I deleted them and still nothing.

What can be causing my problem? I am looking for at least a direction because nothing seems to work.

One last note, the fans tend to speed up right before a crash. There is also a high pitched (like when your t.v. set is on) kind of noise after the machine freezes and crashes.

Any help would be appreciated.

 

[Sheetmetal]

Well, I narrowed my crash/freeze/lock out problem to Adobe Illustrator CS. It seems that everytime I ran the application, even if it is running in the background, it would freeze the computer. Being my primary use application, it became rather frustrating.

I did a complete deletion of all Adobe software inlcuding the CS applications, including all associated files and plists. After a new reinstall the same problem reapeared.

I ran my computer non-stop for a day without Illustrator open and there were no problems. I further found out that a palette window, 'Actions Palette' was causing some problems. I found this during an online search. I did close out that window and Quit Illustrator. Restarting and re-opening the window is the follow-up proceedure.

I don't know how succesful this will be, I've just started running Illustrator again and so, far so good.

I am using the first CS and am in the process of upgrading to CS3. Hopefully this will solve any lingering issues.

 

[Ric]

Hi there,

I'm glad you appear to have got the problem sorted !

Sorry we missed this one...

Let us know how the CS3 upgrade goes !

regards

Ric

 

[Sheetmetal]

Sorry but after a few hours it crashed again. My attempt failed. Something with Illustrator is the culprit. When I install CS3, I will report again.

 

[teapot]

Hi
You could try a little application called AppDelete found
here http://reggie.ashworth.googlepages.com/
just drag Illustrator onto AppDelete which should delete all fise pertaining to Illustrator, then reinstall it. It may or may not solve your problem. I have had no problem with illustrator on my system so it may be worth a go.

 

[Sheetmetal]

I tried AppDelete. Does a good job of yanking all of the associated files into the trash. A reinstalled illustrator does nothing.

My computer also crashes soon after the screensaver is activated.

Can't figure this thing out. Would a bad video card be a source and how do I test the video card? Oh by the way, I don't have my original install disk :-(

 

[Sheetmetal]

Update,

I ran Techtool Pro and if found minor things wrong with Tests/Files/Finder Info and was repaired. It hasn't crashed with illustrator again since yesterday afternoon.

However, my computer still freezes when the screensaver is activated. It is momentarily disabled. I'm going to tackle this problem next.

My computer has been working hard for well over 3 years and this is the first problems I have ever had. Techtool Pro also found badly fragmented disks. It isn't always necessary to defragment files but it helps a littleWord of caution, Techtool Pro tells you on the manual is that you should not optimize your disk from the CD. However, it does not warn you when you are actually doing it from the CD.

I'll report with more news later.

 

[Sheetmetal]

Update,

Installed New CS3 no change.

Crashes during following:
-Activation of screen saver
-Adobe Illustrator CS, CS3
-Google Earth, most recent version,
-Sometimes just crashes randomly.

Crashes are freezes. The screen is frozen, keyboard input and mouse input are non-existent, Sometimes screen turns blue. On re-start, there are a few pixels on the screen that are whitish grey. Sort of like scattered salt but only a few grains here and there. My next step is to re-install the OS and everyhithing from scratch. I wish Leopard was out already. Then it would be more worthwhile.

 

[searay345]

Hello Sheetmetal

I would try creating a new user account. Install one of the applications that crashes regularly like the latest GoogleEarth or try running the screen saver. This way we can eliminate weather you are having hardware issues or it is just issues with your primary user account.

You may want to try a program called Onyx. on the Primary user account and see if that fixes your problem as well.

I would try Onyx first. Run all of the cleaning tasks. Then if that doesn't work, then create the new user account. Please let us know if you need any help with any of this stuff.

Cheerio
Searay

 

[Sheetmetal]

I reinstalled the OS and still the same problem.

Today I yanked out my video card. The screen specks were a clue. The card is a Radeon and it has a cooling fan. The cooling fan spins but is hard to rotate. It may overheat the video processor and thus fail causing a system failure due to a video card failure. ???

I'll update you after a while when I get a new video card.