PowerBook G4s (DL-SD) [#13]: Some units may be shipping with faulty media (and installed copy of Mac OS X) -- causing freezes
PowerBook G4s (DL-SD) [#13]: Some units may be shipping with faulty media (and installed copy of Mac OS X) -- causing freezes
It appears that some PowerBook G4 Double-Layer SuperDrive models may be shipping with problematic Mac OS X installation media (and the copy of Mac OS X installed at the time of shipment) that can make the units more susceptible to system-wide freezes.
We previously covered an issue where PowerBook G4 Double-Layer SuperDrive units exhibit repeated freezes and dropouts in network activity, related to the lookupd system daemon, which handles various networking routines.
It now appears that this issue may actually be caused by a flaw in the copy of Mac OS X shipped with these systems -- both the included Mac OS X disc and the system software that comes pre-installed.
MacFixIt reader Scott Metzel writes:
"I purchased a new, 1.67GHz, SuperDrive DL 17" PowerBook G4 last month and immediately had problems. In the first day out of the box, it froze at least 5 times to the point where nothing would put it back to a working state except for holding the power button down. In the next week I reformatted it three times, still with no luck.
"The freezes came at random, sometimes at night while it sat unattended, sometimes it'd freeze in the middle of use. I got a kernel panic once, but all other times the 'freezes' were just that. No error message, no kernel panic, no warning, the powerbook would just lock up completely. At times when I would leave it alone at night, I'd return to find my screen was black (energy saver) and the front LED was as bright as it could go, whether or not I had lights turned on in the room or not (the new powerbooks' LED's brighten or dim with the amount of light in the room now... much like the screen and keyboard). It would not respond to any input at that point.
"I ran the Apple Hardware Test supplied on Disc 1 of my original media and ran both the Quick and Extended tests only to find nothing was wrong. I originally thought it could be the extra 1GB of Kingston RAM that I installed. After having no luck, I finally returned the RAM. Yet even after taking out the RAM and reformatting again, this time with just the original 1GB of DDR2 RAM (Samsung) that shipped with it, it still froze. I ordered a stick of Crucial memory, that too failed. I tried leaving the system the build of 10.4.2 that is installed from the packaged discs, the 10.4.3 Delta updater, and the 10.4.3 Combo updater. Nothing seemed to have any affect.
"After having no luck for almost two weeks from the day I took it out of the box (which was November 2nd, 2005), I found an article from Stepwise concerning OS X Server and lookupd. By the symptoms, I thought lookupd may be the culprit of causing the freezes. I was not convinced that it was hardware at the time. The Stepwise article is here. After making those modifications, I didn't have another freezes.
"Last week (the week of December 11th, 2005), one person posted that they were an ADC member and received their full 10.4.3 DVD from Apple. I too am an ADC member and received my 10.4.3 DVD. That person reformatted and installed Tiger from their 10.4.3 DVD. Their powerbook stopped freezing. So, once my finals (still in college) were over on Friday, I backed everything up Friday night, reformatted, and installed Tiger using the 10.4.3 DVD from Apple via my ADC membership. After completing the install and installing all OS updates, I let the powerbook sit overnight, starting from about 1:30AM until about 10AM. I returned to find that my powerbook was still running! Since Friday night I have not had a single freeze. That was a huge change, as before my PowerBook couldn't make it one night without freezing."
"So, in summary, I firmly believe that I along with others have bad media that shipped with our PowerBooks. Just two weeks ago the university bookstore sold a new 15" PowerBook to a lady which froze even on the Setup Assistant the first time she powered it on. Subsequent reinstalls and restarts did not help."
A such, if you are experiencing repeated freezing with your PowerBook G4 Double-Layer SuperDrive, try obtaining a different copy of the Mac OS X 10.4.3 installation DVD, formatting your startup volume and installing the hopefully flawless copy.
Feedback? Late-breakers@macfixit.com.
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