New iMac hangs every hour or two

[G4Grover]

Hi there all -

I am not entirely new to Macs, I've had a few over the years, but I haven't used one as a daily machine in a few years so I've forgotten some of the basics.

I bought a new 27" iMac yesterday and I've had it hang every hour or two since I've begun using it.

If this were my Windows box, I could figure out what application or driver is causing the hang, but I'm feel like all-thumbs here, fumbling around looking at console logs and trying decipher what is a 'normal' error and which are concerning.

Is there anything I should be looking for? I can see a few things stick out like a sore thumb...

It is logging this error every second:

10/20/13 6:31:23.000 PM kernel[0]: SMC::smcReadKeyAction ERROR TC0D kSMCBadArgumentError(0x89) fKeyHashTable=0x0xffffff80dedeb000

The logs are literally full of that error... (edit) these seem to be related to one of the monitoring apps I had running. I stopped both of them and the scrolling errors seem to subside. But I think it was freezing before I installed them - I installed them because it was hanging and I was looking for an easy way verify it wasn't a heating or hung proc issue).

It's a standard off the shelf config - nothing special ordered and no changes since I bought it. I have a second monitor attached and I've installed just a handful of applications

- Chrome
- Firefox
- World of Warcraft
- Silverlight
- Flash
- http://www.agileroute.com/cpuled/
- https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/systempal/id453164367?mt=12

Any suggestion on how to better read the console logs, what that error might be, and any other best practice Apple troubleshooting tips?

Thanks a bunch!

 

[benwiggy]

I would uninstall the last two, for starters. ("SystemPal" and CPU Led.)

Depending on how well/poorly they were written, they could be causing the problem.

You don't generally need to keep an eye on your OS all the time. That's what the OS is for. Should you need to check things for diagnostic purposes, then all that information is readily available in Activity Monitor and System Information.

If uninstalling those and rebooting doesn't fix it, then take your Mac back to the shop and get them to have a look at it.

 

[G4Grover]

Thanks for the reply -

I removed them both last night and continue to have locking/crashing issues. I'll be plugging along and suddenly I'll hear the fans start to spin up inside then within a few minutes the first app crashes then the cascade effect occurs. Every app starts to give me the beach-ball of death and I can't get any response from it and finally have to hold the power button to shutdown/boot back up.

Once up, it runs stable again for some time.

Where is the Mac equivalence of 'Application Event Viewer' in Windows?

I'd like to see if I can figure out the offending application (if that's what it is). If I can at least rule out it being a software issue, then I can swap it out. It's literally 2 days old at this point so I can exchange it without much heartache but I plan on installing the same apps (for the most part) and I'd rather not run in to this again after the hassle.

I would uninstall the last two, for starters. ("SystemPal" and CPU Led.)

Depending on how well/poorly they were written, they could be causing the problem.

You don't generally need to keep an eye on your OS all the time. That's what the OS is for. Should you need to check things for diagnostic purposes, then all that information is readily available in Activity Monitor and System Information.

If uninstalling those and rebooting doesn't fix it, then take your Mac back to the shop and get them to have a look at it.

 

[benwiggy]

Where is the Mac equivalence of 'Application Event Viewer' in Windows?

I'm not familiar with Windows at all, but your two main tools are Activity Monitor and Console.
AM will show you what processes are doing in terms of CPU usage, memory, open files, etc; Console will show you the messages being logged to various system log files.