Sudden freezing with a PowerBook G4 1.5GHz

[DrivinWest]

Hey all,

My PowerBook G4 1.5GHz, 1.25GB has started flaking out on me. Every hour or so the machine just freezes completely - no gray screen, no pinwheel - literally frozen in whatever state it is in doing whatever it is doing.

Holding down the power button works to reboot the machine. It comes up nominally and works fine until it happens again.

Actually, I should say it DID run fine until last night when the video I was watching started skipping. I checked ALL videos on the drive and now they all skip.

I've run a thorough harware test by booting from the CD and found nothing. I've connected the PowerBook to my iMac via Target Mode and run every test that Drive Genius has. Again, nothing. Finally, Disk Utility says the drive's S.M.A.R.T. status is Verified.

It still sounds like the disk to me. It's a Seagate 160GB drive - my 2nd as the first one crapped out on me! Might you hardware experts have any more suggestions? I think I may open it up, install an old drive, and see how that works.

Any help is much appreciated!

 

[crlvgchick21]

wierd thing

Ok I am no computer genius .... I'm one of those; take it all apart and put it back together again and see if that works, kinda people. lol But mine did the same things yours is doing and finally crashed. After my usually routine. I discovered my Airport Express Card was bad....dont ask me how or what is wrong with it. All I know is my computer wont run with it in. So I bought I new one and wha bamn it was new again! So if you have a wireless card...try removing it.

 

[DrivinWest]

AHA! I think crlvgchick21 was right. The trouble started shortly after I popped the Airport Card out while I was giving the machine a once over cleaning (no I didn't clean the Airport slot - I was just fussing with it basically).

With the card in the machine ultimately freezes. Sometimes it can happen after 15 minutes, sometimes after hours and hours. I pulled the Airport Extreme card and the thing hasn't crashed after 48 hours with 8 apps open and running video and audio on a loop (which might make no difference as the load didn't seem to cause it to crash more often or faster).

So it sure looks like it is the Airport Card. So how do I go about testing whether it's the card itself or the card slot? Hopefully there's an easier way than buying a new Airport Card and seeing if that works...

Many thanks!

 

[DrivinWest]

So it's not the AirPort card, it's the 1GB of added memory. I pulled the memory and ran Memtest OS X. It ran 30 cycles all day long and came up clean. I then put the memory back in and it crapped out (freeze) in a few minutes.

Does memory typically go bad like this. It's two year old no-name brand.

Actually, I think it is the memory as opposed to the memory slot. Is there any easy way to tell short of buying more memory or finding another PowerBook to try it on?