10.5.6 Freezing on screensaver

My Imac suffered from the same issue. It even did it when I was working away so I'm not sure it's the screensaver.
I used Onyx to do a bunch of maintenance without any results.
Having read this thread, I reset the PRAM. I also unplugged the machine from the mains overnight.
System seems to be working fine now...been checking the logs and no more waitforDMA messages.

Think it's fixed at my end....fingers crossed....

I'm having the same problem...

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1828152&stqc=true

Only now I realize my computer hasn't shut itself off. I can still faintly hear its fans whirring.

I, too, have a FireWire drive attached. It doesn't even have to be on for this to happen. I'll try disconnecting it and see what happens.

This seems to be a very common issue. I hope Apple gets us a fix soon.

A follow-up from me, too...

PRAM and SMC resets seem to have done the trick for me -- no more "awaiting DMA" log entries for the past two days.

See a related issue

10.5.6 Wake from sleep problem

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=8670918&#8670918

I doubt that it's a sleep issue of any sort -- sleep doesn't cause 80MB worth of log entires that refer to FireWire transmit and receive events. I thought PRAM and SMC resets had solved the problem, but it was only temporary. The coma seems to return if I leave my TimeMachine drive unmounted for several (6 or 8) hours. I've not seen the issue crop up if I leave the TimeMachine mounted.

I can confirm that SMC and PRAM reset solves the problem only temporarily. After a restart or use of an external FW drive the problem occurs again.

system.log is still running full of "AppleFWOHCI_AsyncReceive::waitForDMA - context not going inactive" messages, sleep (and wake up) doesn't work, shut down doesn't work.

Forcing my iMac to shut down also causes a deep traversal in backupd. Nice... 😉

Norbert

Same experience here. I tried a Combo update to start with and it appeared fixed for a couple of days before I got the black screen again. I then tried the SMC and PRAM reset, and I got another couple of days use before the problem reoccurred.

Roll on 10.5.7 😟

A follow up...

Ever since I unplugged my FireWire drive I've experienced no problems. My iMac goes to sleep and wakes up normally.

The same here.
My iMac works normally, when no FW drive is connected.
The problems only occur when a FW drive is (or has been) connected, even when it's off.

I'm having a similar problem where after my screensaver has been running, it will freeze and only a hard reset will get me back to my desktop. I have a mac pro. I have a USB external drive connect, a scanner, and a wacom tablet. No firewire. I'll check my log next time it happens and see what I get. Any updates on how other people "fixed" it would be helpful, Thanks!

Exactly the same problem here with 10.5.6 ... appears only since a few days. I connected an external FW drive before. The problem still occurs despite the drive isn't connected anymore.

Will try the PRAM reset

Thomas Berlin wrote:
Will try the PRAM reset

I'm afraid PRAM reset will not solve it.

Correct.

FYI: I filed a bug on this (#6505047) on bugreport.apple.com