iMac having frequent glitches / problems

[shawj]

Hey everyone,

Lately my 20" iMac has been acting funny. Here are some of the symptoms:

-Will frequently freeze up and I will be forced to give it a hard restart.
-Programs, Safari more frequently than others, will unexpectedly quit a several times a day.
-Files on desktop will randomly disappear for a second or two and then reappear.
-Every once and a while I'll click on iTunes or any other program on my dock to open it and the program will bounce up and down twice and then stop without opening. Sometimes I'll have to click them 2-3 times just to have them open. However, sometimes they "unexpectedly quit" before even opening.

All of this activity has been fairly recent. I installed more RAM about a month ago, and I'm wondering if that's causing this. Although, the computer seemed fine the first month (ish) after the RAM was installed and has only recently started to act funny.

Any ideas? Thanks!

 

[Spike88]

.

When you installed more RAM (a month ago), hopefully:
- you ensured ALL installed RAM chips is same company.
- you ensured ALL RAM chips is same speed.
- Same speed for that specific model of 20" iMac (re: its motherboard model).

Also... Some computers like "same RAM size" chips in each slot. Depending on its motherboard, some don't like 2 gigs in one slot and 1 gig in the other slot. All slots must be 1 gig or all slots 2 gigs. Not a mixture of different RAM sizes.

Mixing different company and different speed RAM chips can do very "funny things" to a computer. Might want to pull the RAM chips and double/triple check their numbers.

Also... Sometimes heat can do weird things as well. A few years back, I had a PC system that did the same thing. After a while, I discovered it only "frooze up" when it got hot. Never when first started ( when its internals was cooler). To make a long story short, I discovered one of its internal fans stopped working. Thus, after being on for 10+ minutes, it would get "internal box" heat overload, and it would start to lock up. If you can, do check operations of all internal cooling fans as well...

Hope this helps...

.