Screwy problem with two computers freezing in same circumstances

Question

Screwy problem with two computers freezing in same circumstances

A friend's beloved iMac G5 (20", 10.4.something) stopped working. It would start up, the desktop would appear with icons, but if he tried to do anything with Safari, it would open the window and grind and grind away but never connect to Google. (His wife's Windows laptop works fine on the network.) After about 60-90 seconds, the spinning beachball would appear, the Finder would become unresponsive, and you'd have to restart the computer. I did enough troubleshooting to open a Terminal window first and start a ping to google.com before opening Safari. The pings would fun for a while, but stop whe the beachgball appeared, implying that processing had gone entirely out to lunch.

Fortunately, I was able to stat the iMac in target mode and used Carbon Copy Cloner to retrieve all the files from his computer, so they appear safe.

So I lent him my Mac mini Core Solo (10.6.something). I brought it over to his house, plugged it in with a separate monitor, and THE SAME THING HAPPENED. Start up, open Terminal to start a ping, open Safari and go to a web page and a freeze - spinning beach ball and the ping stopped.

I then brought both computers back to my house, and they worked perfectly. When I took them back, same freezing behavior. Things I've considered:

- Voltage. Voltmeter shows 120+/- 1 volt.

- Ethernet vs wifi at my friends house. An Ethernet connection has the same problem.

- Resetting the Westell DSL modem to factory defaults.

Any thoughts about further troubleshooting? Thanks!

Posted on Jul 15, 2015 4:41 AM

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Answer 1

a brody

Level 10

82,941 points

Jul 15, 2015 1:40 PM in response to AntonioEsteban

Your 10.6 machine has a better chance of working, but both Macs unfortunately are too old to use the latest Java.

See this discussion on getting older Flash on the older Mac:

Flash 11.5 hack for PowerPC

I also recommend connecting directly to the LAN port of the modem, and turning off Airport in Apple menu -> System Preferences -> Network as you set yourself up.

Make sure the Mac has no unnecessary software such as firewall, anti-virus, or so-called optimization software. Etrecheck can isolate many of those.

Peer2peer software should be removed.

Lastly, make sure your Mac hard disk is not over 85% full and backup your data. Additional isolation of issues can only be done on backed up systems.

See my backup FAQ*:

http://www.macmaps.com/backup.html

* I offer also technical support services which may give me compensation via the backup FAQ and other links on my page.

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Answer 2

Jul 15, 2015 6:47 PM in response to a brody

Thanks for the response. These are interesting points, but I'm not sure they really address my problem.

Yeah, both computers are old, but both work fine when in my own house. Neither of these need Java, and I was able to replicate the problem on both computers with Airport turned off and using Ethernet to the LAN port of the router.

The nub of the problem is: what would cause a total freeze of two separate computers with different OS versions? I'm beginning to think that I should replace the router at the friend's house, even as an experiment...

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Answer 3

a brody

Level 10

82,941 points

Jul 15, 2015 7:37 PM in response to AntonioEsteban

It is possible, or even better yet, see if the router is setup for IPv4 or IPv6. That may stump the older Mac if it is using a different IP tool.

Something else, the router in question may need to be set for 802.11g exclusively with no 802.11n and WPA2 encryption. This would ensure that the Mac is able to fully understand the router's wireless. I don't know how the 802.11g will respond if 802.11n is being sent together with 802.11g. It shouldn't matter, although newer hardware may confuse it. And the older wireless may not support the same kind of channel hopping of the newer router. If you know the wireless channel it is on, that could help too.

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