emac troubles

Howdy all,
I'm at my wits end with my 2 year old eMac. Its a 1.25Ghz, 1 mb RAM, running 10.4.5. It crashes, and crashes, and crashes; hundreds of times. I've erased, reinstalled . . .in other word, everything I've learned in nearly 20 years of working with and on macs. Here's some examples of what its been doing.

Watching movie: Either it locks up, or the screen goes black, or the movie freezes but the sound continues. One of the three happens after the first four or five minutes. Disk Warrior helps, but doesn't solve it, neither does Tech Tool.

Running more than one app: like safari with itunes, or yahoo chat with itunes will cause a crash. With a gig of RAM you'd think I could, but no. Safari's slider stops mid-slide, and only a manual reboot will bring the computer back to life, but only half the time. Usually it takes more than one reboot.

Toast told me something interesting about a hardware problem concerning the servo. What the #$^$* does that mean? Also, I can't burn any movie as the computer locks up after a couple minutes. Its doesn't matter if I use Toast or the Apple burner.

The disk's SMART thing says its normal.

I'm sorely tempted to take this eMac apart to see if something's obviously wrong, or chucking it out the window. Please, please help.

Dave

Welcome to Mac-Forums, Dave66. Sorry to hear about your troubles.

How much RAM in the eMac do you have? When this unstable behaviour start? Did you change anything in the configuration, install any new software, added any new peripheral, etc. righ before this started happening?

Off the top of my head, what you could try is run the Hardware Test from the CD kit you got with your eMac. insert the CD that has Apple's Hardware Test on it and restart holding down the C key. When prompted, ask for the extended test to be performed. It will check out all hardware components. Just so you know, it might not catch anything if your problem is intermittent.

Mac Head,
Said in the post, a gig of RAM. And I've done the hardware test a couple dozen times. When I said I tried everything I know, that includes the common stuff like hardware test and the esoteric stuff as well. I'm pretty sure its a hardware thing, but what, I haven't a clue.

It started its current behavior about two or three months after I got it, before I added anything, and has gotten worse and worse since. Only recently I've been able to post in a forum without it crashing.

By the way, I was born in Montreal, though I grew up in the SE US.

Dave66 said:

Mac Head,
Said in the post, a gig of RAM. And I've done the hardware test a couple dozen times. When I said I tried everything I know, that includes the common stuff like hardware test and the esoteric stuff as well. I'm pretty sure its a hardware thing, but what, I haven't a clue.

It started its current behavior about two or three months after I got it, before I added anything, and has gotten worse and worse since. Only recently I've been able to post in a forum without it crashing.

By the way, I was born in Montreal, though I grew up in the SE US.

Click to expand...

Well salut, Dave!

Yeah the amount of RAM escaped me. You do know that 1GB RAM (can't be 1 MB nowadays) isn't a whole lot for all those modern day apps, right?

So ok you tried the Hardware Test and it didn't come up with anything (intermittent problem is my guess). No new peripherals before it went bonkers?

And why haven't you updated from 10.4.5? Tiger has gotten more stable with each update AFAIK.

Did you try resetting the PRAM/NVRAM? I have heard that some Macs do have stability problems when the battery goes bad, maybe try replacing it? eMac: How to Replace the Backup Battery?

Other than that, I'm drawing a blank here...

To be more succinct, it started with the original system - 10.3.5. I moved to 10.3.9 via disk update which helped for a while, then crashes increased. Since most diagnostic software moved to 10.4, I did as well. I do not install the diagnostics, I restart from the superdrive using DiskWarrior, Tech Tool or the System 10 disk. The newer version (10.4.8) really zonks my puter; 10.4.5 is the only semi-stable Mac OS I can use.

You know, I thought about the battery thing, but the time-date is dead on; hasn't gotten squirrely like it does when the battery is kaput. PRam zap is one of the first things I tried.

Dave

I'd give real money if someone knew what was wrong with my Mac and how to fix it.

Dave

Dave66 said:

To be more succinct, it started with the original system - 10.3.5. I moved to 10.3.9 via disk update which helped for a while, then crashes increased. Since most diagnostic software moved to 10.4, I did as well. I do not install the diagnostics, I restart from the superdrive using DiskWarrior, Tech Tool or the System 10 disk. The newer version (10.4.8) really zonks my puter; 10.4.5 is the only semi-stable Mac OS I can use.

You know, I thought about the battery thing, but the time-date is dead on; hasn't gotten squirrely like it does when the battery is kaput. PRam zap is one of the first things I tried.

Dave

Click to expand...

I know you have tried Tech Tool and DiskWarrior, but did you try the Apple Hardware test? It almost for sure sounds like a RAM problem. I could be wrong but that is my first guess.

Travis,
Yep, hardware test about 20 times. Found nothing. The Toast message telling me there was a hardware problem with the servo was the first indication that something is probably deeply wrong with my Mac, but what, I don't know.
Tomorrow I open her up and look around.
Dave

Have you tried a more dedicated memory test like listed in here:
http://www.macworld.com/2006/02/features/speedmemory/index.php
They're about half-way down the page: Member or Memtest.

I haven't tried them myself, but given your problems it really sounds like a memory problem of some type (loading apps crash the system). Another alternative would be to remove a DIMM if that's possible. I don't know if your 1Gb is all on one chip or if you have 2 512's in there, but what you could do is remove one and just run on the 512 for a bit and see what happens. If you still crash then swap the 512s and see if the system is more stable with the other chip. Then you would know that it's one of your DIMMs.

Thyamine,
Its two 512s. It's the most my poor mac can take, otherwise I'd have put a pair of 1 GB chips in it, as I always have upgraded RAM in pairs. I don't think its the RAM anyway, as the crashes started with the original 256MB chip it came with. I'll try the RAM change in-out thing, though all the tests I've run say they are fine. Thanks for the post, tho'
Dave

What is the exact servo error message you get?

Kyomii,
I should have written it down, but as I remember: "The operation failed due to a hardware problem with the servo." It had burned about 10 percent of the movie to DVD when that message appeared.
Dave