Couple of Mac problems

Pixelcade

Ok I'm not finding answers on the open Web so I'll ask the community here.

1. On my Macbook Core Duo my Airport card seems to just turn off and it will not let me turn it back on. Now here's what I've done. The original card would just die after 15 min of use so I bought a replacement and installed it and cleaned the dirt and whatnot out of the inside. It's good it has N abilities but my router only goes to G. I have scanned my neighbors channels and am on a free one. My signal full bars in the living room and in my yard. But for no reason I can't time it the thing just turns off or it will have full bars but no data transmission. Thoughts or ideas?

2. My G5 Mac. For whatever reason this is happening more and more. I put in a new DVD burner about oh a year ago. Ran fine still does but for some reason it won't let me eject disc's sometimes. If I try and open Disk Utility it just spins and crashes it won't even open I have to restart. Any ideas? I've ran repair permissions, techtool and PRAM. Nothing seems to fix it. I can't pinpoint when it's going to happen it's random.

Any help or ideas would be very welcome!

menace690

1. Do you have other computers connected or just the laptop? This usually happens to me when my router is starting to go on the fritz.

2. Sorry, no clue.

Squirrel

1. Sorry, no clue.

2. Try dismantling it (like, taking the motherboard out) and sucking all the dust out. I did that to my G5 a few months ago out of desperation (it was freezing and kernel panicking in single-user mode). It's been running perfectly ever since. Most of the dust accumulated on the modem...

seanstar

2 sounds kinda like either the drive is going bad, or else the connection is loose/breaking. Only time I've known OSX to chew on a drive indefinitely-or-thereabouts is when it thinks the drive should be OK but can't quite resolve something about it. Gotten that on a bad hard drive or two, and similar with some odd-format game discs. I assume you've already checked the cable, though...?

Pixelcade

Ok here's the deal.

The Macbook has been taken apart as I put in a new Wi-Fi card. I cleaned out all the dust and cleaned the connectors that would be touching the Wi-Fi card and re-clamped the antennas. It still drops or turns off and will not turn on sometimes if it crashes even though system profiler says the card is there and working.

The G5 all connections are solid and the drive is not that old it seems to happen at random or when my system is being over loaded which happens all the time.

My router is constantly maxing my ATT internet 300kbps constant stream from apps, radio, video etc. I use remote desktop between my desktop / laptop and I do have a windows machine sitting on the floor for gaming but it's only on when I'm gaming on it (not often). My Wii is using the internet but not much I don't game online with it or buy DLC. Then there's my iPod Touch which I use a lot to check e-mail when I can't get on the laptop to use thunderbird and have low bandwidth on the G5. I know where all my bandwidth is going in and out through monitors. It does not seem like the laptop gets much use online except for e-mail and light web use.

I do clean out my desktop probably once every 3 months or so due to having two large dogs the dust gets pretty high in there.

Wizo

Pixelcade wrote:

2. My G5 Mac. For whatever reason this is happening more and more. I put in a new DVD burner about oh a year ago. Ran fine still does but for some reason it won't let me eject disc's sometimes. If I try and open Disk Utility it just spins and crashes it won't even open I have to restart. Any ideas? I've ran repair permissions, techtool and PRAM. Nothing seems to fix it. I can't pinpoint when it's going to happen it's random.

I have a similar problem with my 3-year old Mac mini, but my Combo drive is the one that came with the computer. Basically, when I insert a CD/DVD, it fails to show on the Desktop. If I open the System Profiler, it says I have no ATA devices nor a disc recording unit. I can't eject it through any of the standard procedures, like drutil, restarting with the mouse button pressed, pressing Cmd-E in iTunes, pressing the eject key and such. It only reappears if I leave the mini power brick unplugged to mains power for several hours and when I turn it on again, the disc shows on the desktop and sometimes it gets ejected if I press the eject button on the keyboard, sometimes it does nothing and sometimes it shows an eternal spinning beach ball.

But well, about your problem, I don't know which version of Mac OS X you are using, but I remember about older OS X versions (I think older than 10.4) being annoying with third party optical drives. DVD Player wouldn't launch, iTunes would refuse to burn media and so on.

Squishy Tia

#2 sounds like a corrupted/improperly loading IOATAFamily.kext or IOCDStorageFamily.kext / IODVDStorageFamily.kext gone bad. If the drive is known good, and the connections are solid, I'd try first running the combo updater for the currently installed OS X version you're using. Then I'd repair permissions afterwards (because you just know OS X is going to screw up permissions on install).

When you try DU, check Activity Monitor and see if any other processes are holding onto the disc/drive. It only takes one errant app that was poorly coded (i.e. makes the OS actually choke) to grind functions to a halt.

#1 - You noted you're using a neighbor's channels. Have you tried just connecting to your own router and seeing if the problem persists? That'd be my first troubleshooting step, just to eliminate the "outside variable". It doesn't matter if your router does G speed only - the airport card will autonegotiate down to G speeds easily. I know you want good speed, but if the problem goes away when you use your own router, then I'd suggest either living with G speeds or updating the router. One other likely cause is that your router is interfering with the airport card's connection to anything else.

Failing that, set your laptop's Energy Saver prefs to wall socket power and see if that helps (while obviously connected to a wall socket). Airport on battery power can be fickle sometimes, but usually only if the battery itself is retaining less voltage in its charge than is needed to run certain power hungry peripherals.

These steps may not solve your problem, but they can at least help narrow down the causes. And anything's worth trying, right? ;)

Pixelcade

Thanks everyone for the advice. I got a USB WIFI card by Hawkins and have not had a problem since. The desktop after a good cleaning and yet another permissions fix seemed to fix the DVD problem. I noticed the IDE cord was a bit loose. Thanks all

Now if someone can guide me on fixing my Ipod Touch Home button I have to press it sometimes up to 100 times to get it to work. Never had a spill, lives in a case with a protective cover over it as well. If there is a good video on how to clean the contacts please post me a link. I don't mind taking things apart I do it all the time.