iMac stops respnding after streaming video

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I have a 21" iMac from 2009 running Mavericks...never had any issues up until recently when the computer stops responding after watching streaming videos for some time.

I use a combination of Firefox and Chrome.

Lets say after 20 minutes, the first thing that happens is that web pages stop loading. The second is that if I scroll my mouse over to the finder bar or the lower dock, the spinning wheel of death comes up.

I thought maybe it was a flash issue, so i downgraded from Flash 13 to 12....but still having the issue. These symptoms started happening like 2 weeks ago.

anyone have any solutions? Thanks
 

chscag

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Boot your iMac to its recovery partition: hold down command + r and keep holding until you see the Apple. Once in recovery, select "Utilities" and verify the hard drive. Let us know the result and we'll go from there.
 
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Not sure the exact bit of information you're looking for, but heres what I got:

320 GB WDC WD3200AAJS-40H3A0
SMART Status: Verified
Partition Map Scheme: GUID Partition Table
Connection Bus SATA

Let me know if this is good enough or if you need more information.
Thanks
 

chscag

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That's fine, it appears your hard drive is OK. We needed to check that first before moving on to try something else.

Several other things to look at: How much memory does your iMac have? And how much hard drive space is free? More memory always helps and the more free hard drive space you have, the faster things generally move.

We recommend using the free maintenance and cleanup tool "OnyX" to clean caches, and do many other things that help to optimize your Mac. You can download OnyX from here.

You may receive a warning from "Gatekeeper" about opening OnyX and installing it. Just right click on the file and select open. It's safe and we recommend using it. Run it in full automatic mode.
 
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I have 5Gigs of RAM....theres about 100Gigs of hard drive space left. Its not a matter of space or "moving along"....because once the spinwheel pops up, theres no coming out of it without a restart

Im almost positive its the Flash thats causing the issue. I have been running my computer now for the past 24 hours and havent had an issue yet. Prior to that i was streaming youtube videos and such on chrome and firefox....and it would crash.

Im going to run onyx anyway
 

pigoo3

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I have 5Gigs of RAM....theres about 100Gigs of hard drive space left. Its not a matter of space or "moving along"....because once the spinwheel pops up, theres no coming out of it without a restart

Overall...how often would you say you restart/reboot this computer (under regular conditions)?

- Nick
 
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Boot your iMac to its recovery partition: hold down command + r and keep holding until you see the Apple. Once in recovery, select "Utilities" and verify the hard drive. Let us know the result and we'll go from there.


I maybe a bit OT here, but I'm curious why it's so often mentioned in these forums to boot from the recovery partition and run Utilities when the verify options and results are readily available with Disk Utility in a normal boot.

Maybe I'm missing something, but why use the extra step. As long as no 'Repair" is needed, but a Verify would let the user know if any Repair was needed.
 

pigoo3

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I maybe a bit OT here, but I'm curious why it's so often mentioned in these forums to boot from the recovery partition and run Utilities when the verify options and results are readily available with Disk Utility in a normal boot.

Maybe I'm missing something, but why use the extra step. As long as no 'Repair" is needed, but a Verify would let the user know if any Repair was needed.

You answered your own question.:) If a "repair" is needed…then it can be performed. Plus…it's just fundamentally a better idea/procedure to work from a separate volume if another volume is suspected of having a problem.

- Nick
 

chscag

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Maybe I'm missing something, but why use the extra step. As long as no 'Repair" is needed, but a Verify would let the user know if any Repair was needed.

Conversely, if a repair is needed you have to perform the extra step anyway - right? So why not take the extra 10 seconds or so and boot to recovery?

I maybe a bit OT here,

Yep. ;) But we understand and it was a good question. :D
 

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Mostly it's a "What came first…the chicken or the egg?";)

- Nick
 

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When that happens if you can run Activity Monitor in Applications/Utilities. Check RAM usage.

The times I have had that happen on my late 2007 iMac was the browser took all available RAM viewing video using Flash. Simply closing the browser released the Ram and system was fine again. It tends to happen for me doing a lot of videos in a row with my iMac due to only 4GB RAM and Flash sucking up all RAM.
 
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When that happens if you can run Activity Monitor in Applications/Utilities. Check RAM usage.

The times I have had that happen on my late 2007 iMac was the browser took all available RAM viewing video using Flash. Simply closing the browser released the Ram and system was fine again. It tends to happen for me doing a lot of videos in a row with my iMac due to only 4GB RAM and Flash sucking up all RAM.

ill see what I can do. the problem is, once it happens...the whole computer locks up and I cant do anything.
 

chscag

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Adobe issued another Flash update today. (14.0.0.125) Since you feel strongly that Flash is the problem, try updating to that version and let us know if it helps. Otherwise, other than a flaky hard drive, I don't know what else could be causing your problem.
 

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