[Koodari]

This is pretty weird. I have gotten multiple crashes in the last 24 hours: Firefox, Thunderbird, iTunes, and at one point when FF crashed and I started up Process Viewer to check up on things, it jammed too and simultaneously the Finder. Interestingly that time iTunes remained responsive... still, I had to reboot and I don't like that. I don't have a Mac so I could solve problems by rebooting. I do see things crash from time to time but not this much in such a small timeframe.

This is a latest model 12" iBook with extra memory, normal USB peripherals and a HD screen attached, running an up to date 10.3. (I see there is a new security update now; installing as I type). Nothing special is running, nothing special has changed with the computer. I did permissions repair, and have still gotten a crash after that. I thought the random crash symptom matches well with a memory problem, so I ran the full Rember test suite, all passed.

I have yet to fsck, that's coming up next, as swapping to a broken HD can easily produce effects similar to broken memory.. any other ideas to try?

Strange, the security update did not want a reboot. I would expect them to..

[ghoti]

Did you run the Apple hardware test? Sounds like a problem with your RAM.

[Koodari]

Nope, not yet. I'd expect Rember to catch a fault in memory, though, and it did not see any...

The Apple hardware test is on OS X CD, right?

[ghoti]

It's on the CD that came with your PB (but not on a Tiger install DVD, for example). I don't know Rember, so I can't comment on that. But the Apple hardware test seems to be pretty thorough, so I'd expect it to find the problem (if there is one).

[Koodari]

It's _i_Book. I headed to mozilla.org and upgraded the two apps that now seem to crash the most. New Thunderbird beachballed right after launch.

OK, off to fsck and Apple hardware test.

I really don't want this to be a HD prob... the usual story, there are no decent backups, and it might take a while before I get the other box online to receive them.

[Koodari]

Apple Hardware Test and fsck -f both passed.

Computer hung after reboot, needed another.

Truly baffling.

I got the Tiger install CD's on hand but I'm very reluctant to install a new OS when the hardware could be breaking down.

After HD and memory, the biggest potential sources for "random" crash I can think of are mobo/processor fault, and a bigtime DOS from the network. The latter is not unknown at our campus, and sometimes (rarely) ground my old Windows box almost to a halt. But I would expect an OS X box do better in a situation like that (have any of you guys see a DOSed OS X box?), so I don't believe that is the answer.

More ideas are warmly welcome, as are ways/utilities to stresstest the processor and motherboard.

[Paul]

My first priority would be to get a good backup.

About a week ago my TiBook was behaving similarly and even after several passing fscks and AHT I knew the hard drive was to blame. Make a back up and do a clean install. When I went to format my hard drive it finally failed.