iMac freeze problems

[Tim in Scottsdale]

Guys

I have two iMacs here, one is a 21.5 Intel Core i3 Mid-2010 with 8gb and High Sierra 10.13.6 with 66gb available on a 500gb standard drive. It randomly freezes for 10 seconds and recovers by itself, one to five times a day. It also beeps and restarts, very random, up to three times a day. Twice it started beeping middle of the night in Sleep Mode, unresponsive, had to pull the power cord.

We copied everything onto a spare machine, a late 2009 Intel Core 2 Duo, also 8gb//500gb. It ran perfect for days, then we copied over to it, now IT is freezing like the first machine (no restarts yet).

Did I copy my problem into the second machine?

Do I have some conflicting apps? How can I determine? Is there a crash log hidden somewhere? How do I resolve these problems? I have a guy available, more of an iMac geek than me, and he hasn't suggested much.

 

[Ledgem]

When you say that you "copied everything over," what do you mean? Literally dragged and dropped files, restored from Time Machine, imaged one system onto the other?

If I'm thinking about what you did correctly, it sounds like a software problem. You could try to go through the Console to view the logs around the times that your system froze up. Sometimes something there stands out right away, sometimes it's a bit more involved...

Honestly, the easiest (and possibly fastest, even though it sounds most painful) thing to do would be to wipe your system, install fresh, and don't restore from Time Machine. Manually copy data over and manually reinstall the programs that you need. If the problem persists, then it's either a hardware problem, or something you've installed is causing problems - and that should become evident, because the behavior would show up again only after you install the problematic program.

 

[Tim in Scottsdale]

Hello

We used Carbon Copy Cloner, sent the entire hard drive to the spare machine. Redoing everything manually would be a nightmare.

Can you explain Console and accessing Logs and what do I look for? I'm not geek enough to find these things or interpret them.

 

[Ledgem]

Hello

We used Carbon Copy Cloner, sent the entire hard drive to the spare machine. Redoing everything manually would be a nightmare.

Can you explain Console and accessing Logs and what do I look for? I'm not geek enough to find these things or interpret them.

Realistically speaking, redoing everything manually is your best bet. It's probably not as bad as it sounds - I just recently did it, myself, after putting it off for two years... my first time doing it since I started using Macs a little over a decade ago. Crazy to think that I went that long without a fresh start; it seemingly used to be an annual or every-other-year event back when I was on Windows. Although I'm sure Windows has become much better in that time, too...

Catching what's behind the brief freezes may be difficult. You're likely to have better luck with the logs from those times when the computer completely freezes up or restarts. There will probably be some error messages in the Console logs; if nothing stands out at you, you can try copying and pasting them here, to see if someone else can get anything out of them. The section you want will be right before the reboot; in the console logs, you should see a gap of at least a minute (depending how long it takes your computer to reboot), and that's how you'll know you've hit the section where the reboot occurred. If you don't see any obvious error messages, copy the messages in the 20-30 seconds prior to the freeze and paste them here. Please note that sometimes the Console logs can contain sensitive information that you wouldn't want shared with others; please look them over before pasting them here to ensure that there are no personal identifiers or other sensitive information before posting.

My Console-diving days are largely over - you'll just have to hope that someone else has the time and skill to parse through them. If nobody can find anything, though, as I said, this is following you around multiple computers, you're probably going to have to do a fresh setup at some point in the future... the sooner you do it, the sooner you'll be back to a more stable computer experience. Don't take too long to rip that bandaid off.

 

[Tim in Scottsdale]

Thank you. Where is Console? Is that same as Terminal? Don't know where that is either LOL

 

[Cole Slaw]

Thank you. Where is Console? Is that same as Terminal? Don't know where that is either LOL

Both Console and Terminal are in the Utilities folder.
Applications > Utilities

 

[Ledgem]

You can also use Spotlight to find it. Spotlight is the little magnifying glass icon at the upper right corner of your screen; the keyboard shortcut to pull it up is cmd+space (holding the command key and then pressing the spacebar). Type Console and it should be the first result; hit enter or double-click it to open it.