06-17-2011, 06:16 PM
My mom told me that the last few days her eMac has been freezing randomly and becomes completely unresponsive. A hard reboot fixes the problem for usually just a few minutes and then it happens again.
When I was over there last night for dinner, I tried a few things:
-repaired permissions (but couldn't repair disk since I had no way of booting it from anything other than the boot drive)
-tried downloading a free antivirus program (Clamxav), but couldn't get it to the point of starting a scan b/c the Mac would freeze
That's about it. Couldn't do much else b/c we had to get the kids home to bed. So, I didn't have time to create a clean user account and see if the problems persisted within the newly created account. I may be able to get there this weekend and try again, though.
One weird thing is that sometimes when it would freeze, it would freeze with a huge pixelated image taking up the whole screen. The first time, it looked kinda like a radioactive or biohazard symbol and the second time it looked like a bunny or smiley face.
Obviously, I'm wondering about some kind of virus, but I'm not sure.
Anybody have any ideas?
Thanks.
When I was over there last night for dinner, I tried a few things:
-repaired permissions (but couldn't repair disk since I had no way of booting it from anything other than the boot drive)
-tried downloading a free antivirus program (Clamxav), but couldn't get it to the point of starting a scan b/c the Mac would freeze
That's about it. Couldn't do much else b/c we had to get the kids home to bed. So, I didn't have time to create a clean user account and see if the problems persisted within the newly created account. I may be able to get there this weekend and try again, though.
One weird thing is that sometimes when it would freeze, it would freeze with a huge pixelated image taking up the whole screen. The first time, it looked kinda like a radioactive or biohazard symbol and the second time it looked like a bunny or smiley face.
Obviously, I'm wondering about some kind of virus, but I'm not sure.
Anybody have any ideas?
Thanks.