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Rob S UK Author

Level 1

18 points

iMac 24" hanging

I have an Intel iMac 24" running Leopard.

I have been having problems recently with it hanging. I try to do something and nothing happens, then the beach ball appears and I have no option but to turn it off. The time it takes to do this varies, but it seems to be getting worse. Today it was only an about an hour just listening to iTunes before it hung.

Any advice on what to do to resolve this would be gratefully received, as my computer is becoming more and more unusable.

I've attached something from the console that looks like it might be relevant, but I don't know what it means.

May 28 13:44:20 Rob-S-Computer kernel[0]: NVDA(OpenGL): Channel exception! status = 0xffff info32 = 0x6 = Fifo: Parse Error

May 28 13:44:20 Rob-S-Computer kernel[0]: 0000000b

May 28 13:44:20 Rob-S-Computer kernel[0]: NVDA(OpenGL): Channel exception! status = 0xffff info32 = 0x3 = Fifo: Unknown Method Error

May 28 13:44:20 Rob-S-Computer kernel[0]: 0000000b

May 28 13:44:20 Rob-S-Computer kernel[0]: NVDA(OpenGL): Channel exception! status = 0xffff info32 = 0x6 = Fifo: Parse Error

May 28 13:44:20 Rob-S-Computer kernel[0]: 0000000b

May 28 13:44:20: --- last message repeated 6 times ---

May 28 13:44:20 Rob-S-Computer kernel[0]: NVDA(OpenGL): Channel exception! status = 0xffff info32 = 0x6 = Fifo: Parse Error

May 28 13:44:20 Rob-S-Computer kernel[0]: 0000000b

May 28 13:44:20: --- last message repeated 9 times ---

May 28 13:44:20 Rob-S-Computer kernel[0]: NVDA(OpenGL): Channel exception! status = 0xffff info32 = 0x6 = Fifo: Parse Error

May 28 13:44:20 Rob-S-Computer kernel[0]: 0000000b

May 28 13:44:20: --- last message repeated 3 times ---

May 28 13:44:20 Rob-S-Computer kernel[0]: NVDA(OpenGL): Channel exception! status = 0xffff info32 = 0x3 = Fifo: Unknown Method Error

May 28 13:44:20 Rob-S-Computer kernel[0]: 0000000b

May 28 13:44:20 Rob-S-Computer kernel[0]: NVDA(OpenGL): Channel exception! status = 0xffff info32 = 0x3 = Fifo: Unknown Method Error

May 28 13:44:20 Rob-S-Computer kernel[0]: 0000000b

May 28 13:45:20 localhost kernel[0]: npvhash=4095

iMac 24, Mac OS X (10.5.8)

Posted on May 28, 2011 6:31 AM

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5 replies

Level 10

140,472 points

May 28, 2011 6:47 AM in response to Rob S UK

It's tough to say what is causing your SBBOD (Spinning Beach Ball of Death) however to help you diagnose the cause there is a good article you can read to help narrow it down. Please look over: Spinning Beach Ball of Death

Roger

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Rob S UK Author

Level 1

18 points

May 28, 2011 7:01 AM in response to rkaufmann87

Thanks Roger. I've checked my CPU usage before and that rarely gets high. I've tried closing two background apps that seemed to be using alot of virtual memory though, let's see if that improves things.

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Level 10

140,472 points

May 28, 2011 7:04 AM in response to Rob S UK

One thing that is very common is running low on RAM. Open Activity Monitor (Applications - Utilities - Activity Monitor) and click the System Memory tab. Then look in the lower left and you will see:

Free

Wired

Active

Inactive

Used

As a general rule of thumb if the Free RAM is 500MB or less the machine would benefit from a RAM upgrade.

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Rob S UK Author

Level 1

18 points

May 28, 2011 9:16 AM in response to Rob S UK

I've found some more things running in the background (some of which are for apps I've already uninstalled). I've removed them now, hopefully that will free up a bit of memory.

I have upgraded to 2gig of memory, but my free memory tends to be about the 300meg mark.

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Level 10

140,472 points

May 28, 2011 9:39 AM in response to Rob S UK

Well your machine clearly needs another RAM upgrade. I'm not sure which machine you have however you can upgrade it to at least 4GB, I'd recommend looking at www.macsales.com (OWC) for RAM. You may be surprised at prices and how much you can upgrade to. Maxing out RAM on an iMac like yours will turn it into a new machine again.

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iMac 24" hanging

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