iMac crashes occasionally after shutting down harddrive

[heddesheimer]

Hi,

I have an iMac7.1 with Intel Core Duo, 2.8 GHz, 4GB Memory.

I'ts crashing occasionally without any related program start or running, or at least I never found out any relation between software or operating system. I had these with the old tiger 10.4 system and it's continuing with Snow Leopard 10.6 - This is what happens:

Just in the middle of my normal work (sometimes I don't even do anything at all), I recognize that the harddrive stops spinning (I can tell from recognizing that the low humming noise from the drive just goes away). After that, I can click on active window, but see the spinning beach ball. No matter how long I wait, this is not changing so that I have to turn off the iMac by holding the power key for a few seconds.

After reboot, all works fine. Yesterday I had another crash just a few minutes after reboot. But in most cases it works fine for another day or two until it crashes again.

I already ran DiskUtility (no harddisk errors found) and tech tool deluxe without finding any problem. In old Tiger 10.4 I needed to run a disk repair after each crash (obviously due to shutting down the system using the power switch), since Snow Leopard I never had to use disk repair after reboot.

Maybe anybody can give me a hint if there is something I can do about that. Apple care don't help me much, because I don't have an apple store nearby and I don't own a car to bring the machine in.

Any help appreciated

Marian

 

[wessew]

I have a few suggestions: 1) Obtain DiskWarrior and use it to repair your disk. It will often find and correct errors which Disk Utility misses. You will need to start up from a separate drive or the supplied CD. 2) Go into Energy Saver and uncheck the box which allows the hard drive to sleep when possible. 3) Open Activity Monitor and look at all of your running programs. There could be an issue or incompatibility with one of them, maybe something left over from Tiger. Uninstall any old programs you are not using. 4) Go into login items under Accounts and delete any old or unnnecessary programs which launch when you log in. 5) If none of the above works, you may need to perform an erase and then reinstall. If you do this, research how before hand. Tidbits publishes an excellent Take Control series of pdf's. One of them is entitled Take Control of Upgrading to Snow Leopard. In there you will find details on how to safely perform an erase an reinstall. Hope the above is helpful!