Mac OS keeps freezing while I use it! I keep having to reboot it.
SOLUTIUON:
Freezing Macs have been there since the beginning. There's no
ultimate solution, but here are a few things that help:
THE HARDWARE ISSUE
Given the age of our beige Macs, hardware issues cannot be ruled
out. That counts especially toward hardware that has not had its
capacitors replaced. Failing power supplies and leaking
logicboard caps are known to cause freezes, shaky or blank
screens.
Do yourself a favor and recap your board & power supply to keep
it alive for yet another decade. Another possible cause could be
excessive heat. If your Mac has fans, do they work? Is the room
where it is located too hot?
THE EXTENSIONS ISSUE
A common cause for freezes is the installation of a lot of system
expansions ("Extensions") that come with programs. Some of these
extensions may conflict with one another and it's often difficult
to find the culprit.
System 7 Today recommends installing Extension Overload. It's a
tool that lists all your installed extensions including what they
do and let's you deactivate them. By deactivating the latest
installs and re-activating them one-by-one you can often find the
troublemaker.
MACSBUG TO RECOVER FROM CRASHES
One thing we always wondered over here at System 7 Today is why
Apple never built some sort of MacsBug into the operating system.
For those of you who don't know, MacsBug is the assembly-language
debugger for developers to debug their code and recover from
crashes while testing their work.
The neat thing with MacsBug is that everyone can (and should) use
it. You can download it from the Macintosh Garden. After putting
MacsBug into the System Folder you should see the message
"Debugger installed" when booting up your system.
What MacsBug does is activating itself once your Mac would
normally freeze. So instead of being stuck, you're thrown to a
debug output screen. Don't be afraid if that doesn't tell you
anything. All you need to know is basically two simple two-letter
commands to type in:
ES This force quits the troublemaker and attempts to return to
the Finder. From our experience, this has a high chance of
success and usually allows you to save your work and safely
reboot or continue working.
RS This forces your Macintosh to reboot - no need to touch that
power button.
If you keep your system slim and use MacsBug you can
significantly enhance stability of Mac OS. In fact, many of us
almost never have a forced reboot anymore.
