At least once a day, OS X Freezes when I Command-Tab.
The application switcher comes up, the selection box is over an application I can move the mouse but that is it. I have to restart every time this happens. I will pay mucho to get this working.
*Update*
I found this person with the same problem:
http://simplygenius.com/geekblog/2006/01/26/1138308962040.html
*Update*
I already upgraded to 10.4.7
*Update*
I already tried to repair file permissions
*Update*
This happened on my PowerBook, and now it is happening on a "fresh" install on my new MacBook. Here is what I am usually running:
* TextMate
* FireFox (Have a hunch this is it for some reason)
* X-Chat
* Terminal
* Mail
* Adium
* SSH Keychain
* iTunes
People succeed in answering Rich Collins's questions 36% of the time (32 successes in 89 attempts).
Answers by: Dane Summers | Aurelius | nerkles | Juice10 | JJeffryes | Jake McArthur | falcoboy7 | alex | newbalous5001 | Robert Mayott
I have two ideas for you to investigate, the first is most likely.
#1
Check into whether any of your apps are running under Rosetta. You can see by using Activity Monitor and going to View > Columns > Kind. That will add a column that says Intel or PowerPC for each app.
So far the only trouble I've had with my MBP has been with non-Universal Binary apps. They hog tons of RAM and slow everything down, and I've had a handful of freeze-ups with them. Universal stuff is working fine for me so far, including TextMate, FireFox, Mail, Adium, and iTunes which I also run all day, and use the Cmd-Tab keys endlessly.
I suspect your problem is actually X-Chat and/or SSHKeychain, because according to MacUpdate.com, they aren't Universal yet, and probably have not been thoroughly tested under Rosetta.
#2
There is a good chance you have some bad RAM. I think this could be the case because:
1) The problem survived a fresh system install.
2) The problem happens when switching apps, which can cause a flurry of RAM activity (depending on how much is free vs. how much the app you're switching _to_ needs).
3) The problem takes hours to happen, so it may only occur when your RAM is closer to 100% used and you hit the "bad spot" on the DIMM.
4) Almost every time I've had a "weird" problem like this, it's been bad RAM or disk corruption (I maintain 25 Macs at my job).
Run Apple Hardware Test (it should be on your installer DVD) and that may detect bad RAM (be sure to do the most thorough test which takes forever). You could also try TechTool's RAM tests.
Keep Activity Monitor running with the "System Memory" tab active so you can see how much RAM is free up until the crash happens and keep notes on that.
If all that fails, I think the suggestion to hit the Genius Bar is what you need to do.
hey good suggestions.
Here is the only caveat. This happened with my old powerbook! I think this means it is not possible that it is rosetta.
It could be bad hardware - but the same problem manifested in the same way seems unlikely. I am now thinking it must be one of the apps I run. Most likely SSHKeychain. I'm pretty sure the crash has occured when I don't have X-Chat running. The only other thing that I am running that it seems you are not is SSHKeychain. I will turn it off for a while and see what happens.
Sounds like it's SSHKeychain, then (given that its site is asking for programming help, there are probably a few bugs!).
Sorry I missed that detail about having the same problem on a PB. Could have saved me a lot of typing!
OK I will stop running SSHKeychain. If I don't have any crashes for a while - I will give you the reward.
Just locked up as I changed from Mail (after reading your email) to Terminal. Here is what was running (in the application switcher at least):
* FireFox
* XChat
* Mail
* Terminal
* Adium
* Preview
* Quicksilver
I can eliminate pretty much all of those except for Adium as it has locked up previously with each of them.
Hmm, try getting rid of XChat too for a while, and also, can you post a list of what you have in /Library/PreferencePanes and /Users/yourname/Library/PreferencePanes ?
Do you have any mouse / tablet / trackball drivers installed? How about printer drivers (were there any you had to install vs. ones that come with the OS)?
Did you run the Migration Assistant from your old PowerBook? I ran into some minor trouble with that process when I went from the G4 to Intel.
Anything unusual in /Library/StartupItems ? I had some old PPC stuff (such as MySQL startup) in there after migration that caused trouble too.
Creating a fresh user account and migrating my data to it bit by bit fixed those issues.
XChat is not the issue - locks up even when it is not running.
ls /Library/PreferencePanes/
DivX.prefPane Flip4Mac WMV.prefPane GnuPG.prefPane
ls ~/Library/PreferencePanes/
Growl.prefPane
No weird drivers
I did not run migration assistant - fresh install
I do run PostgreSQL:
ls /Library/StartupItems/PostgreSQL/
PostgreSQL Resources StartupParameters.plist
Hmm, I'm running out of guesses now. ;)
Try taking out Flip4Mac since it's not a Universal Binary yet. You should actually run whatever their uninstall procedure is.
I haven't experienced that DivX prefs pane. Also check if GNUPG is Universal and try disabling it if not.
Also try one of the various cache cleaners. I recommend AppleJack. It claims to not work on Intel, but it's just a shell script. Apparently it all works except for Repair Permissions (which you don't need). It can run disk repair, clean caches, validate all your prefs files, and wipe the Virtual Memory.
If none of these ideas work, I think it's the Genius Bar for you!