[kleonard59]

I have a 5 year old white imac G3 500 with DVD and 384M ram, os 10.3.3 sharing files with a Windows XP pro machine over a wireless network. Imac can see the files on the XP computer via a C drive smb mount. I can copy files across but the imac will sporadically hang. Sometimes I can quite happily copy large photo directories across of 70M, then the next one will hang part way through. The only option is to reboot the Imac. Then try again and it will hang while copying another part of a file. The XP computer remains unhindered and does not crash. I have tried another XP computer and the same thing happens. I have turned all power save options off on the XP computers. The XP computers have no problems sharing files, large or small. Is the problem I am having common? I am very new to the Mac world.

[johnd0e]

Hi,
I have been using similar setup for my LAN until the end of last year. My iMac didn`t freeze, when accessing a PC`s file share, but it was horribly slow. Changing to Jaguar`s Windows filesharing fixed all the problems that appeared sometimes.
Maybe this workaround helps a little bit, but if somebody knows a real solution to this problem. I would be very glad to learn about it...

[Martian]

When the computer is choking on an application as opposed to a true freeze you can sometimes force quit the app, even the Finder.
The command is: Command option escape. (I suspect this was a good idea copied from Windows Control alt delete command)
This doesnt solve the problem at hand, but is better than hardware force quitting the whole computer.

[kleonard59]

When it does freeze., option command escape (force quit) does close the windows but doesn't give me back control. I have to hit the power button and reboot.

[kleonard59]

I tried removing the ram (PC133 256M) I recently installed. This left the Mac original PC100 128M ram. At first file transfer seemed more stable. I managed directories of about 250M. Great, problem solved. But then the freezes started happening again. What next?

[gyroscope4]

eh... what about sharing files from the mac, and using the xp machine to retreive files?

[kleonard59]

File sharing the other way, mac to xp works a dream, albeit a little slower.
I've been experimenting by reformatting the imac hd to unix. No difference, exactly the same freeze and reboot necessary.
I've noticed when it does freeze, the hd makes a little blip, as in a writing operation, followed by a system freeze. Force quit closes everything including finder.
It's frustrating when it does occur. It means I cannot walk away, leaving the imac to copy many large directories. I have more success copying smaller single directories, keeping it under the 100M size.

[kleonard59]

Finally found the solution: I cut the wireless lan speed from auto to 5.5mbs. File transfer is rock steady, albeit quite slow. At least I can set up copies of large directories and walk away and let it do its business, confident that on return I won't find a locked up imac.