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Anondson
Level 1 (9 points)
iPhone

Q: Power Mac G5 sleeps, then freezes and fans go overdrive.

I've browsed back a bit and noticed there are more than a few other people with this same issue.

I have a Power Mac G5 Dual 1.8. After upgrading to Leopard I noticed this happening more often, but ever now and then my Mac will go to sleep and freeze there. No keyboard action will wake it. Plus, while it is frozen asleep the fans to into overdrive. I have heard the fans kick up before while the machine is awake, but I have never heard anything like when this asleep/freeze happens. My wife likens it to a jet engine.

I recall this happening once through all iterations of Tiger. But with Leopard, it has now happened four times total.

I had done a clean install of Leopard, and I've only reinstalled a few other programs—iLife, iWork, Office 2004, CS 3, so no legacy from Tiger is hanging around in there.

Still, I have a habit of launching Activity Monitor when things behave strangely and I had noticed some strange things in Leopard that has me checking this out more often recently. I think I may have noticed some odd behavior by some programs that may be related to my Power Mac G5 intermittently freeze/revving unbelievably while asleep.

It seems that there is a greatest likelihood of the computer revving while asleep when the Real Memory allocated to the kernel_task process has climbed to roughly 300 MB. I thought it might also be a factor when other apps grabbed a massive chunk of Real Memory, so I've been alert for when Safari (for instance) climbs towards 300 MB of Real Memory as well. But no, the only one that seemed for certain to be related to this issue was kernel_task climbing to stratospheric Real Memory amounts.

Quiting apps helps get stupid programs like Safari to free up its Real Memory allocation, but I don't know of any way to get kernel_task to release its Real Memory allocation to proper levels besides restarting the entire computer.

Ever since I have noticed this apparent correlation between kernal_task and the freeze/sleep + fans issue, I restart or shutdown my Mac. And since I began shutting down my Mac when I see the Real Memory of kernel_task getting too high I have not had my Power Mac experience the freeze/sleep + fans.

I would be curious if anyone else who had noticed this freeze/sleep + fans issue has noticed if doing what I describe above helps them. I'm not sure why roughly 300MB of Real Memory seems to be a tipping point for me and I wonder if it might be a different amount for other people with Power Mac G5s and this issue. I wonder why kernel_task climbs to the heavens like a spreading wildfire grabbing more Real Memory and I wonder why Safari does it as well.

Dual 1.8 GHz G5, Mac OS X (10.5.1)

Posted on Dec 7, 2007 9:17 PM

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Anondson

Q: Power Mac G5 sleeps, then freezes and fans go overdrive.

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  • by John Resciniti,

    John Resciniti John Resciniti Apr 22, 2008 6:45 PM in response to adsfushi72
    Level 1 (30 points)
    Apr 22, 2008 6:45 PM in response to adsfushi72
    Subscribing, but I've also had issues. Since the upgrade I've had the fans thing once, but tons of apps just freezing and or quitting. iTunes and Firefox are the worst offenders, but Mail, and others have randomly quit or froze up. I have not done a clean install of 10.5, and from reading this, don't think I need to, but would love to see where this goes.

  • by adsfushi72,

    adsfushi72 adsfushi72 Apr 26, 2008 10:25 AM in response to John Resciniti
    Level 4 (1,115 points)
    Apr 26, 2008 10:25 AM in response to John Resciniti
    John Resciniti wrote:
    Since the upgrade I've had the fans thing once, but tons of apps just freezing and or quitting.

    What "upgrade" do you mean?

  • by John Resciniti,

    John Resciniti John Resciniti Apr 26, 2008 5:07 PM in response to adsfushi72
    Level 1 (30 points)
    Apr 26, 2008 5:07 PM in response to adsfushi72
    Upgrading to 10.5, sorry.

  • by adsfushi72,

    adsfushi72 adsfushi72 Apr 27, 2008 1:54 PM in response to John Resciniti
    Level 4 (1,115 points)
    Apr 27, 2008 1:54 PM in response to John Resciniti
    John Resciniti wrote:
    …I have not done a clean install of 10.5, and from reading this, don't think I need to…

    I don't think that the fan problem is Leopard-related, so I doubt that doing a clean install would help.

  • by RipclaW,

    RipclaW RipclaW May 2, 2008 2:53 PM in response to Anondson
    Level 1 (0 points)
    May 2, 2008 2:53 PM in response to Anondson
    Perhaps a lullaby would calm it back to sleep?

    Use to sleep just fine, then would randomly wake up all on it's own?
    Now it simply refuses to sleep at all...
    As soon as it goes to sleep or I put it to sleep.
    Immediately wakes right back up? How special.

    My setup has not changed only regular updates?

  • by Cameraflyer,

    Cameraflyer Cameraflyer May 2, 2008 4:12 PM in response to RipclaW
    Level 1 (0 points)
    May 2, 2008 4:12 PM in response to RipclaW
    Hi,

    Got the dual 2 G5 (10.5) and all my problems went into high gear right after the last set of updates this week...right about the time everyone started posting again on this thread!? Started last week when the USB seemed to stop while syncing the iPhone. This week as soon as I ran the updates the G5 freezes about 2 minutes after powering on. I can't navigate fast enough to get a good diagnostic before a complete freeze out. (even tried screen sharing from my laptops but its not even talking to the router at that point)

    my next step to attempt to save the data is to pull my boot disk and reinstall on a new disk but I suspect some type of hardware issue is going on. *** having 1TB to double check on the back up.

  • by icerabbit,

    icerabbit icerabbit May 5, 2008 7:25 PM in response to Anondson
    Level 3 (775 points)
    iPhone
    May 5, 2008 7:25 PM in response to Anondson
    Of course it figures. I was excited thinking I fixed my insomniac G5 (no auto - sleep) ( http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=7155114#7155114 ) and a couple hours later I come home - once again - to a jet engine roaring G5 rather than a peacefully sleeping G5 :/

    No trace about the issue in the console logs.

    ...
    5/5/08 5:38:19 PM ScreenSaverEngine[302] loaded in com.apple.ScreenSaver.Engine
    5/5/08 5:40:19 PM kernel IOPMSlotsMacRISC4::determineSleepSupport has canSleep true
    5/5/08 9:54:48 PM kernel Darwin Kernel Version 9.2.0: Tue Feb 5 16:15:19 PST 2008; root:xnu-1228.3.13~1/RELEASE_PPC
    5/5/08 9:54:45 PM com.apple.launchctl.System[2] fsck_hfs: Volume is journaled. No checking performed.
    ...

    The only thing I can say is that happens while the machine should go to sleep on its own or be asleep.

    This jet engine crash has happened at least once a week since 10.5.2 ... while this 'may' have happened once a year in all prior years of ownership.

    I resist the belief expressed by some that this is a hardware failure. The machine is clean. Has been cleaned once or twice a year. It has never moved. Lived in a cold dry climate. Never a sign of an issue until the past few weeks, most notably after installing 10.5.2. That is the last official thing installed and the last major change. Printers & scanners from HP have been uninstalled and their orphans removed.

    Has anybody seen anything in Console?
    Is there another place to figure out what crashed the machine?

  • by David Geiser,

    David Geiser David Geiser May 6, 2008 7:03 AM in response to Anondson
    Level 1 (135 points)
    May 6, 2008 7:03 AM in response to Anondson
    I haven't had any sudden crashes or sleep issues.

    My G5 went to sleep, with the fan roaring as described, and would not wake up. Forced shut down followed by restarting starts the fans, which increase in speed to the maximum, and the machine is otherwise completely unresponsive. Totally black monitor, no response to keyboard commands (can't boot from CD, reset PRAM), no effect from resetting the PMU, nothing except loud fans running.

    I'm guessing my motherboard is shot. Help!

  • by Richard Haszard,

    Richard Haszard Richard Haszard May 20, 2008 6:09 AM in response to Anondson
    Level 1 (10 points)
    May 20, 2008 6:09 AM in response to Anondson
    Same problem on a dual 1.8 PPC 1st gen with a nVidia 7800 GS AGP card. Came home to from work to find the fan roaring while the computer had been put to sleep before I left for work. Would not wake from sleep. Had to a hard reboot. Nothing in the logs to indicate a crash and temperature sensors were cool when I restarted moments later. This is the first time I have had the problem with Leopard. It happened once before in the early days of Tiger. The graphics card is the only recent mod - don't know if it is a factor.

  • by adsfushi72,

    adsfushi72 adsfushi72 May 21, 2008 9:21 AM in response to Richard Haszard
    Level 4 (1,115 points)
    May 21, 2008 9:21 AM in response to Richard Haszard
    Have you tried the terminal command from earlier in this thread?

  • by ComputerAggrivation,

    ComputerAggrivation ComputerAggrivation May 21, 2008 8:36 PM in response to David Geiser
    Level 1 (0 points)
    May 21, 2008 8:36 PM in response to David Geiser
    I'm having the exact same problem - Can't get it to start at all. It powers up I hear the harddrive start clicking away, no chime, black screen and nothing more. If I leave it like that the fans start ramping up...
    I thought it was a bad video card so I bought a new one and no different. I have done the full logic board reset and once it did get it started but if it went into sleep mode it would freeze and that was it. Now not even the logic reset is working. This is just really disapointing, these things are just getting too much like Microsoft products! All profit margin and screw the quality, it'll be paid for by the time they find out...

    Anyway, I did notice one thing, while waiting to see if it will start and having nothing happen, I notice the little light on the power button is blinking, three blinks, stop, three blinks, stop... What does this mean? How the **** do I get my computer back?

  • by Richard Haszard,

    Richard Haszard Richard Haszard May 22, 2008 12:41 AM in response to adsfushi72
    Level 1 (10 points)
    May 22, 2008 12:41 AM in response to adsfushi72
    No - because I only ever select sleep from the apple menu. Sleep is set to 'never' in system preferences. So I don't see how the terminal command would work for me - it wouldn't 'know' when I am going to tell it to sleep, so it could sleep the HDs before I put it to sleep.

  • by Richard Haszard,

    Richard Haszard Richard Haszard May 22, 2008 12:45 AM in response to adsfushi72
    Level 1 (10 points)
    May 22, 2008 12:45 AM in response to adsfushi72
    But I have done the logic board reset and also reset the nvram. I haven't had the problem again - so here's hoping that has done the trick. I do wish that Apple would come clean as to what the issue is - Leopard 10.5.2, or G5 running Leopard or some hardware or sensor failing.

  • by adsfushi72,

    adsfushi72 adsfushi72 May 22, 2008 7:05 AM in response to ComputerAggrivation
    Level 4 (1,115 points)
    May 22, 2008 7:05 AM in response to ComputerAggrivation
    When the power light blinks in a regular pattern like that, it means something is seriously wrong.
    If you're talking about the light on the display, go here: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=88366
    If you're talking about the light on the computer itself, you have incompatible RAM installed. Did you install RAM recently?

  • by NoDeceit,

    NoDeceit NoDeceit May 26, 2008 10:24 PM in response to Anondson
    Level 1 (0 points)
    May 26, 2008 10:24 PM in response to Anondson
    I had the same problem. I found out what was causing it. I added a USB card to expand USB ports. It has something to do with the extra card. If I staggered what I connected to it or just removed everything from the expansive card it would not have that problem. So those of you having this problem did you add USB expansion card?
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