I've been editing on my mac for a couple months now and so far, I've enjoyed it. Until recently.

Programs freeze and become unresponsive. force quit does not work. even when I attempt several times. even tried through terminal and activity monitor. Nothing. I ended up turning the thing off bc it completely froze and not even the mouse moved.

EDIT: Its not just one program. Safari, Firefox, PS and Bridge are all culprits but PS and bridge are the most frequent offenders

I've had to cut the thing off at least 4 or 5 times TONIGHT.

I'm also having trouble burning a disk. I am attempting to burn images to a dvd using toast. also tried just dragging onto the dvd. it is saying i dont have permission to access some of the files. WHAT??? The images are on an ext hd. I edited the image on a pc but haven't had this problem before when moving images or burning disks with even older files than this one.

I'm really at a loss. I want to take it out in the alley and fill it full of .32 calibur bullets. Seriously.

Anyway, its a dual 2.3 GHz PowerPC G5 w/ 4.5 GB RAM and Leopard.

something is wrong somehwere jess (duh), once you get it settled, you'll love it.

who set it up?

lol... who set it up? me! The mac was used and I just updated to Leopard, bought toast installed firefox and that was it.

Ouch.... sounds like a cooling or ram/motherboard issue.... probably ram. Possibly take it down to the mac shop for some testing?

do you want my husband to go over a few things with you to sorta troubleshoot?

tami...I would love that.

he is sleeping now... should i wake him up? i'll tell him jess needs him, stat!

he can chat wtih you later, let me know when your up and coherent. (tomorrow for you)

it seems that the disk is now burning but that doesnt solve the other issues. I'll be back here at 4PM tomorrow. Thats 28 hours from now. Not sure what time that is for ya'll. I'm usually here til at least 7PM but usually much later.

hey when burning a disk is it necessary to click "mount" what the hell does that do?

Mount is a unix term to "connect" the drive to the OS. Where are you seeing that?

Why are you using Toast? What about simple drag and drop? Or create a burn folder.

Do you have an Apple store in the area?

-Bill

no apple store except for an hour away. Purchased toast for another reason but when the drag drop and the burn folder options weren't working I tried through toast. Got same error til I disconnected drive and directly pluggd into usb vs plugging into a hub


edit: understand mounting now. to me, mount means to kill and stuff an animal to hang on the wall.....

It is funny that you are seeing the word mount anywhere. Usually that is only at the unix prompt. Yes I would stay away from using hubs. Doesn't your G5 have several ports?

Also I would check into backing up your data. Are you noticing the problems only when using those external drives? A buddy of mine just lost 500gb because he didn't back it up. Drives are cheap. Bullets in the alley are cheap. Explaining to your husband that you are in jail because the police use Windows machines is not.


Bill

I'd bet $1 that it's Leopard. We had a TON of similar problems when we did the Upgrade from Tiger.

You may want to clear off your documents and files (or move them to another drive) and do a complete clean install. That's what eventually worked for us.

hm.... I hate this kind of stuff.

I'd much rather call the geek squad. Sheesh. Thanks for the heads up damon and bill and yes, i have the drive backed up already.

you do drag and drop on toast. i use it all the tme.

he will be playing cricket in 28 hours (or about to be leaving for the game) and i wouldnt want him to start anything that could get complicated. he plays this sunday as well.

thanks tami. We'll find a time to chat if I don't blow it the eff up before then! hahahahah

I guess I just don't understand why use Toast. I'm not really against it or anything, I've only used burn folders or drag and drop on the desktop.

-Bill

Is your external drive formatted NTFS for Windows? Wonder if that's the culprit with Toast.

So this machine is really a G5? What version of Photoshop are you running?

A common fix for a Bridge lockup can be fixed via purging the cache file manually. Go to:

Macintosh HD>Users>(your username)>Library>Caches>Adobe>Bridge and delete the Cache folder. Once you launch Bridge again, it will rebuild.

Hope that helps in the mean time!

-Leon

I'm pretty sure that was the problem she was having with burning - I spoke to her on the phone earlier and she said it was formatted on a windows machine. I had her copy the files she was going to burn to her Macintosh HD, and I assume that ended up working.

Jessica, it sounds like there are more issues with your computer than just a few basic things... if an erase and install of leopard (remember to download the combo update 10.5.4 - i can send you a link if you want) and running all available updates doesn't help, i strongly suggest taking it to a mac store and having it analyzed... sounds to me like it could be a logic board and/or RAM problem.

+1, however the ram issue shouldnt be an issue unless you manually changed those yourself and not in an authorized repair center, but the logic board is possible. Macs aren't invincible, i had tonnes of problems with my first macbook pro but after getting it sent in to be fixed it hasnt given me a problem for over a year. Hope its all sorted, Mike knows his stuff so hell get you sorted

NO GEEK SQUAD!!!!!!!Sorry, Just have to say that Geek Squad is terrible, they are nothing but a group dolts who's job is to sell you extra services and things you probably don't need and in the end just backup, reformat, and re-install your machine.I'd drive the hour to the mac store and have them look at it. Most of the time they are super knowledgeable and can diagnose problems very quickly.Ram dies all the time! Of course it could be an issue!

Macs are kinda funny, in that the system they come loaded with tends to be teh best system for all the bits and bobs inside. I've been told that you pretty much never wanna upgrade to a new OS, just download all of the upgrades and fixes for your current OS.

huh? who told you that? that is wrong.

The info about the computer that I posted I got by clicking "about this mac"

I didn't end up having to move any files. I just disconnected the drive and plugged it into the computer directly instead of the hub. The computer itself just has 3 usb ports. 2 on back and 1 on front. Its about 3 yrs old.

Herrrrrmmmm...

I'm not a "bleeding edge" early adopter but tend to upgrade 2-3 weeks after a release. After deploying and upgrading several dozens of machines over the last few years, this description just isn't my experience. Windows on the other hand is another story!

RE: Bad RAM-

One way to check in on your Ram: Go to About This Mac and click "More Info." This brings up System Profiler which tells you a lot about your machine.

On the left column look for Memory. Click to see information about your installed Ram. Look under Status. If it says "Error" you may need a replacement. I've seen "Error" a couple of times and simply shut down the machine pulled out the Ram and re-seated it and the Error went away. (How's that for science?!)

Anyway, hope that helps!

-Leon

LOL that's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. You must be referring to Windows Vista... right?

For sure don't upgrade your mac to vista.... ;-)

I had a very similar problem and I thought it was the video driver. The MAC store told me I was crazy but if I paid $100 they would diagnose it for me. I added RAM, switched out RAM, reinstalled an older version of OS/X. Nothing worked.

Took it to them and paid the $100. Yep, video card. Ugh! If I had followed my instincts and switched the video card out right away I would have solved the problem.

If you have a monitor other than a cinema display you might want to swap out the video card and see if that fixes the problem.

If you have a cinema display with the old connector, you'll need a brick ($100) to use it on a newer video card.

~rc

Did you receive the original CD's that came with your machine? If so you should run the Apple Hardware Test that is located on the Mac OS X Install Disc 1.

Though not the same diagnostics an Apple Store will run (as they will run the Apple Service Diagnostic), the AHT is a good way to diagnose preliminary hardware issues.

Does sound like RAM to me as well though.

Good luck and keep us posted.

looked at the more info section in about this mac and it showed no errors for RAM

Do you have the original install disks? Did you run the hardware tests? The hardware test will tell you more so than the OS itself.

Toast is great for burning a bunch of data at one time - like a 50gig wedding. The program allows you to span multiple discs in one burn. You just keep feeding it dvd's and it keeps track of what was burned where. It's a huge time saver. Anyone doing data mgmnt on a mac should check it out.

Well, if you do decide to shoot it - I'm all over helping you out with that

Great advice Allison this is exactly what I would suggest as well. The AHT will tell you if you have any hardware problems and if you do a loop test you'd find out if you have any issues that only happen over a period of time.

If you find no hardware problems then the best thing to do would be a clean install of OSX but make sure you back up all your data and have a valid copy of leopard 1st.

why have you not messaged me?

lol been too busy trying to get photos edited and not get sued!