[webraider]

I spoke to a guy at the Apple Store.. although I'm going to ask again.. He said the same thing I did. Try setting the peferences on both displays but he told me he had not heard that one before.

What's concerning me is this coupled with the iMac crashes. It could be that you are having a problematic HardDrive or something else.. Especially if you are having Complete OS Crashes not even running CS. THIS IS NOT NORMAL. First.. I would run the Hardware check utility that came bundled with your install DVD. You can find information on that here:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1509

It checks your ram, hard drive and everything else under the hood and it's pretty thorough. I would also Call Apple Support and speak to someone on the phone. Where did you buy it? If you bought it at a walk in place.. maybe they would let you exchange it.. and do a transfer of files so that you don't loose your hard drive. If not.. see if Apple will except a return/exchange. You will want to use an external Harddrive to back up your user's folder. I do not recommend a back-up of everything because it could be that you have some corrupt preference file somewhere. Something else you could do is a re-format/install of the OS.. run all your updates first, then install your apps, set up your email etc.. and then bring your documents over. It's a bit tedious but quite honestly that's the only real way to update and OS from major revision or to start over fresh. It to me is less trouble than Archive/Install.

I'm saying this because You should be able to move icon's anywhere and if you are having complete freezes it either means you are missing a valuable part of your OS, or something's is plugged in to the mac causing problems (like a peripheral) OR something's wrong internally (like a HardDrive -Very likely these days on Macs or Windoze, or Memory modules, or Motherboard).

Just so we are clear on this.. did you experience system freezes without running Adobe CS??? Have you only experienced System Freezes with While Adode CS is running? A system freeze is the ENTIRE system crashing. A program freeze is just a program crashing.. but you can terminate it and re-launch it from the OS when that happens.

[C62008]

Hi, webrider,

I keep saying it and thanks agian. Interesting, I ran the Hardwarecheck utility and it came back with everything olay. I can't say for sure but probably all thefreezes I've experienced were when at least 1 if not 3 CS3.3 programs were running. So it could very well be an Adobe issue. I will keep a log of suspicious crashes/freezes and report back.

[webraider]

Did you say that there is an upgrade of Adobe CS out.. Like Adobe CS 4? I found some interesting Articles on Adobe Crashes, particularly when opening and saving documents. It is on Leopard of course.

http://www.macfixit....071204110627804

http://www.adobe.com...pardsupport.pdf

[C62008]

Hi, webraider,

Yes, CS3.3 came out fewmonths ago and CS4 came out last week. It's ironic considering Mac's creative community base's heavy reliance on Adobe products that Adobe products have always seemed to have way more problems running on Macs. That said, I still think I will upgrade to CS4 soon.

[Martian]

I didn’t notice that anyone has mentioned that you can open a Force Quit box with COMMAND OPTION ESC (Mac’s CONTROL ALT DEL)
The box will even indicate a “not responding” message next to a frozen application. This box works when the Dock’s force quit doesn’t.
The Activities Monitor in the Utilities folder is an excellent preliminary diagnostic tool.
Personally, I don’t recall ever having a true SYSTEM crash or freeze with OS X on a PowerPC that wasn’t readily traceable to a HARDware issue, or ever having any system crash or freeze on an Intel Mac. I could almost say the same for Win XP except for the very occasional “Sorry, Windows has experienced a problem and must close” followed with an automatic restart.
But my casual, un-scientific, and possibly invalid observation is that Leopard has some PowerPC only bugs and that some G3,4 and 5 owners wouldn’t be better off staying with OS 10.4. This wouldn’t surprise me though because MS’s enterprise mentality always supported its older systems better than does Apple’s consumer electronics mentality.

[Grapho]

C62008 said:

Hi, webraider,


Yes, CS3.3 came out fewmonths ago and CS4 came out last week. It's ironic considering Mac's creative community base's heavy reliance on Adobe products that Adobe products have always seemed to have way more problems running on Macs. That said, I still think I will upgrade to CS4 soon.

Not to contradict you, but that is not the case for us. We have been operating since 1994 on a dual platform base. We are part of the Adobe Network Provider program since 1998. This means that we get through our membership, two full upgrades as soon as Adobe releases them. One for Mac and the other for Windows. Using them side by side, the Mac version has always been more stable and reliable for us, however, that said, I have noticed that Illustrator does crash on occasion. Now when I say on occasion I mean probably 4 crashes in the past year.

If your Mac is completely frozen and unresponsive, you have something else going on. How much RAM do you have installed on your Mac?

I have 6 Macs running the Adobe creative suite. Some version CS2 others CS3, and I have never had a freeze like you describe. I am running a MacPro with Leopard, the Adobe CS3 suit runs pretty good on it.

[C62008]

Hi, grapho,

I guess it's just a combination of personal experience, reading release notes over the years and reading forums. I have 4 GB of RAM. Don't get me wrong, I am happy with the switch. A long time ago I was pretty used to frequently saving while I work. It really is something I should do anyways.

[Grapho]

I am sure you are happy. The more you familiarize with the differences, the more you will grow to like it.

I am not a zealot that does not see that Windows has is place, but when you state that your iMac is completely frozen, it seem shocking, because this should not happen. I will experience an occasional program crash, but it never brings the OS down and I mean never.

I work a lot on 3D, and 3D applications by definition are unstable. Again, they never bring the OS down. They just crash and I start them up again.

Regardless, saving is good. Save a lot.

Two last things:

If you experience this freeze again, I would consider having the Mac checked by Apple, just to make sure you don't have a faulty RAM chip, or your logic board, HD etc.

The other thing is if you load 3rd party fonts on your Mac. If you did, make sure that none of them is the culprit to the freeze. A corrupt font can destabilize a system and some applications are more susceptible to this then others. They can be hard to trouble shoot, you would have to deactivate them all and activate them one by one. Or better yet, get FontDoctor do diagnose them.

[webraider]

I Second Grapho's recommendation. I would call Apple And let them know what's going on. At least just to make sure.. get them to check it. A System freeze just doesn't happen that much. I think I've had one in like a year, but it wasn't caused by an application, It was caused by hardware. If you were just experiencing a program freeze it would be different. There are things that the hardware scan does not pick up. Do you have an apple store close by to you? If not.. then call apple and at least explain to them what is going on. If you get your computer back and it's not crashing.. I bet you'd enjoy OS X a lot more.

[DPG4450Guy]

This is basically a dead thread, but, when I saw you were pulling out the power cord from the socket during what you perceive to be a 'crash' I almost choked on my fine Food Lion orange soda.

NEVER EVER EVER do this!

If you've done this more than once, you need to run DiskWarrior FAST! Go to Alsoft's page and order a copy.

A true crash will result in your screen going 'black' and a bunch of funny looking (i.e. foreign language) warnings coming up for you to restart your Mac. A crash of the OS is not the same thing as having an application crash - as previously mentioned.

Nobody seems to have said anything about reinstalling the OS. That's what I'd do in this case, just to make sure it isn't your hardware. Apple's HW test is not able to really pick up alot of thinks wrong with RAM. I've had it pass RAM modules before, only to change them out and viola! - problems fixed.



If after a fresh reinstall of your OS you are still eperiencing probs. then you definitely have some sort of hardware issue. Apple's QC is the highest in the business, but a lemon can still sneak out 1% of the time or less.

[pcthiker]

Me, too. I understand this is an old thread, but David Pogue's Mac OS X Leopard: the Missing Manual is a good read. Really. Pogue has a wry sense of humor and is an expert on all things Macintosh. A good bit of it will be about things you already know. But there will be enough there for you to dig through and continually gain expertise on your new platform. You have gotten some excellent feedback in this thread. But there is the issue of not being completely understood - both on your part - and on the part of the repsonders. Having something in black and white is sometimes a very big help. Have fun!