Yosemite iMac freezing when using Chrome or Safari to stream video

[mjteigen]

I have OS X Yosemite 10.10.2 and a mid-2010 iMac with an 3.06 GHz Intel Core i3 and 16 GB 1333 MHz DDR3 of RAM.

About once a week my whole system freezes when I use either the Chrome or Safari web browser to stream video (Netflix and JWplayer seem to cause it...I dunno about Youtube). Firefox seems to work better, but I'm still in the process of testing that.

The system freeze is catastrophic: applications seem to be running normally to some extent in some kind of background, but my system won't accept input from the mouse (the cursor is frozen in place) or keyboard, including the force quit command. The only thing I can do is hold down the power button for a cold boot.

At first I blamed Silverlight (unfortunately I have an older mac and I can't just use html5 to play Netflix), but then the freeze happened while using JWplayer to watch a video on a streaming website. I recently bought and installed "Clean My Mac 2" which I've used a few times. Also, I recently updated "Self Control" to the new version which works under Yosemite. I can't think of any other system alterations.

Any ideas about causes or courses of action are certainly welcome. Thanks for your time.

 

[harryb2448]

G'day and welcome to the forums.

Thimgs are progressing so fast on the IT front, mjtelgen, think you are caught up with a slower and older CPU despite your more than adequate memory.

For example, you mid 2010 iMac returns a GeekBench score of 5722. A 2012 model with a 3.1GHz CPU has a score of 12,367 which is a massive jump in just two years. If Firefox does the trick stay with it.

 

[AndyS]

[Things] are progressing so fast on the IT front, mjtelgen, think you are caught up with a slower and older CPU despite your more than adequate memory.

I'm running a modern system (iMac Retina 5K, 27-inch, Quad Core, 32gb RAM, 4.0KHz, OS X 10.10.5), and yet I still get a TOTAL system freeze within 10 to 20 minutes of streaming video from Amazon Prime on either Safari or Firefox using...... Silverlight. Snce I have had zero problems before installing it, and zero problems after uninstalling it, it seems a pretty obvious conclusion. It also causes havock with Firefox 43.04 tabs. Both Amazon and Netflix insist upon using this heap of dung, so whilst Apple and Microsoft are fighting like babies in a school-yard, I've created a small partition strictly for streaming. It's a mega hassle having to boot back and forth between two drives, but at least I keep Pro Tools, Logic X and Final Cut problem-free.

 

[harryb2448]

Originally the service was available only to US residents. Has this changed or are folks using an illegal work around?

 

[AndyS]

Originally the service was available only to US residents. Has this changed or are folks using an illegal work around?

Could you explain what you mean?

 

[chas_m]

http://www.macnn.com/articles/16/01....available.in.more.than.190.countries.131945/

 

[harryb2448]

Does that apply to Amazon prime also chas?

 

[chas_m]

No idea, sorry. I know Amazon Prime is available in Canada and the UK as well as the US, but those are the only countries I routinely visit.

 

[AndyS]

Amazon Prime is indeed available in the UK. We subscribed some time ago.