Power Mac freezes

Question

Level 1

24 points

Power Mac freezes

I am experiencing more and more freezes where if I am playing something with sound, the sound will start to crackle and then I know within a couple minutes the computer will freeze and eject all my external discs. I can not use the mouse or keyboard. I have to hard reboot.

So I have tried seeing if it freezes with no browsers running. Answer is yes.

It will freeze with just the finder. I did a hardware test, no problems found. I did permissions repair. I reinstalled High Sierra, still freezes. I did a safe boot, still freezes. I unplugged for 3 minutes and re-plugged, still freezes. I disconnected all external devices, still freezes. I have 400GB left in my 1TB SSD.

I have not opened Terminal or Console to see what is going on when it freezes. But obviously it is something at the Finder level.

Any thoughts? I'm ready to take it to the Genius Bar but thought I'd try this weekend a few last tries.

Thanks.

PowerMac, macOS High Sierra (10.13.6), 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD

Posted on Aug 11, 2018 7:45 AM

Reply

Answer 1

BobHarris

Level 9

53,261 points

Aug 11, 2018 8:32 AM in response to germane

A PowerMac is a very old Mac that uses the IBM or Motorola PowerPC CPU chip.

Macs manufactured since 2006 have all been intel CPU chips.

Your signature says PowerMac and macOS High Sierra. PowerMacs can only be upgraded to Mac OS X Leopard 10.5. macOS High Sierra is 10.13 and cannot run on the PowerMac PowerPC CPUs.

Now you are in the Leopard forum, so I guess it is possible you both have an older PowerMac running Leopard, and you have another Mac running High Sierra.

But you say: "I reinstalled High Sierra, still freezes. I did a safe boot, still freezes.", which as I said above will NOT run on PowerPC chips, so I'm going to assume you are NOT using a PowerPC

Try booting into Safe mode

<http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1564>

This will not load any 3rd party additions, it will load some more conservative Apple drivers (may cause screen flicker), and it will clear some kernel caches (a cache is saved data in a form that can speed up a program, but is totally redundant to the original source, and thus can be safely cleared). Booting into Safe mode is just an experiment, but can frequently eliminate any 3rd party interference, or a cached item out-of-sync with the world. (Verify Safe mode via Applications -> Utilities -> System Information -> Software -> Boot Mode -> Safe vs Normal)

Is it possible your Mac is Panic'ing? Can you check if you have any Panic reports and post a few if you find them?

Look for the Kernel Panic reports at:

Finder -> Go -> Go to Folder -> /Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports

<http://support.apple.com/kb/ht2546>

<http://support.apple.com/en-us/HT200553>

The panic report should have "panic" in the file name.

Please post the EtreCheck output as a "Reply" to this thread

<https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-6174> or <https://etrecheck.com>

Click on the Share icon and select "Copy Report"

.

And then Paste the report as a "Reply" to this thread.

If, AND ONLY IF, you get the error:

"The message contains invalid characters"

then try posting to PasteBin.com, and give us a PasteBin URL link.

<http://pastebin.com/>

.

EtreCheck is a tool that helps Apple Support Community volunteers debug problems without any access to the troubled computers. Debugging problems can be a difficult task even when the machine is in front of you. Attempting it via a discussion forum is extremely difficult. EtreCheck is a great help that regards.

Reply

Answer 2

Old Toad

Level 10

207,643 points

Aug 12, 2018 11:35 AM in response to germane

Two items that should be uninstalled:

1 - Google Chrome and supporting software. Google Chrome is a known resource hog and that shows in the Top Processes by CPU and Memory.

2 - Avast A/V software. There are no know viruses for Mac and having A/V software on the Mac only lightens your pocketbook and drags down the system and application performance. Do a Google search for how to uninstall the Avast software according to the developer's instructions. Also it's been crashing (see last line of the report).

If you're concerned about your computer's security read this user tip: Effective defenses against malware and other threats.

Reply

Answer 3

Old Toad

Level 10

207,643 points

Aug 12, 2018 2:50 PM in response to germane

Try what BobHarris suggested, reseat the RAM modules.

If that doesn't work, and you have 3rd party RAM installed remove the 3rd party RAM modules and see if the freezing stops with only the original Apple RAM installed.

If it is 3rd party RAM where did you get it?

Reply

Answer 4

germane Author

Level 1

24 points

Aug 12, 2018 10:27 AM in response to BobHarris

Hi Bob,

Thanks for the reply. I didn't realize I was in the Leopard discussion group. It must be the last one I posted to, so that's where my browser took me. Anyway, thanks for the reply. I do in fact have a Mac Pro, not a PowerMac (old computer).

No panic reports, just a recent crash from Adobe Premiere. Below is the EtreCheck report

EtreCheck version: 4.3.6 (4D041)

Report generated: 2018-08-12 13:23:17

Download EtreCheck from https://etrecheck.com

Runtime: 5:53

Performance: Below Average

Problem: Other problem

Major Issues:

Anything that appears on this list needs immediate attention.

Unsigned files - There are unsigned software installed that could be adware and should be reviewed.

Heavy CPU usage - Some processes are using an unusually high amount of CPU.

More than one antivirus app - This machine has multiple antivirus apps installed.

Minor Issues:

These issues do not need immediate attention but they may indicate future problems.

Clean up - There are orphan files that could be removed.

System modifications - There are a large number of system modifications running in the background.

Low performance - EtreCheck report took over 5 minutes to run. This is unusual.

32-bit Apps - This machine has 32-bits apps that may have problems in the future.

Abnormal shutdown - Your machine shut down abnormally.

Hardware Information:

Mac Pro (Late 2013)

Mac Pro Model: MacPro6,1

1 3.5 GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon E5 (Xeon(R)) CPU: 6-core

48 GB RAM - Upgradeable

DIMM1 - Empty

DIMM2 - 16 GB DDR3 ECC 1866 ecc_errors

DIMM3 - 16 GB DDR3 ECC 1866 ecc_errors

DIMM4 - 16 GB DDR3 ECC 1866 ok

Video Information:

AMD FirePro D500 - VRAM: 3072 MB

Cinema 1680 x 1050

Cinema HD 1920 x 1200

Drives:

disk0 - APPLE SSD SM1024F 1.00 TB (Solid State - TRIM: Yes)

Internal PCI 5.0 GT/s x4 Serial ATA

disk0s1 - EFI (MS-DOS FAT32) [EFI] 210 MB

disk0s2 1.00 TB

disk1s1 - Macintosh HD (APFS) 1.00 TB (299.47 GB used)

disk1s2 - Preboot (APFS) [APFS Preboot] 1.00 TB (21 MB used)

disk1s3 - Recovery (APFS) [Recovery] 1.00 TB (519 MB used)

disk1s4 - VM (APFS) [APFS VM] 1.00 TB (2.15 GB used)

disk2 - Seagate Ultra Slim MT 2.00 TB

External USB 5 Gbit/s

disk2s1 - T**********e (Journaled HFS+) 2.00 TB

disk3 - Western Digital External HDD 400.09 GB

External USB 480 Mbit/s

disk3s1 [Partition Map] 32 KB

disk3s3 - P***************C (HFS+) 399.95 GB

Mounted Volumes:

disk1s1 - Macintosh HD 1.00 TB (697.99 GB free)

APFS

Mount point: /

disk1s4 - VM [APFS VM] 1.00 TB (697.99 GB free)

APFS

Mount point: /private/var/vm

disk2s1 - T**********e 2.00 TB (1.24 TB free)

Journaled HFS+

Mount point: /Volumes/T**********e

Network:

Interface en0: Ethernet 1

One IPv4 address

Interface en1: Ethernet 2

Interface en10: iPhone

Interface en2: Wi-Fi

802.11 a/b/g/n/ac

One IPv4 address

Interface en9: Bluetooth PAN

iCloud Quota: 48.17 GB available

System Software:

macOS High Sierra 10.13.6 (17G65)

Time since boot: Less than an hour

System Load: 3.41 (1 min ago) 3.41 (5 min ago) 2.10 (15 min ago)

Security:

System	Status
Gatekeeper	Mac App Store and identified developers
System Integrity Protection	Enabled

Unsigned Files:

Launchd: /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.avid.interplay.editorbroker.plist

Executable: ./RunAvidEditorBroker.bash /Applications/Avid/EditorTranscode/DBScript 0