IMac Freezing/crashing, please help. Tried everything! :(

Question

Hello Fellow MacTalkers,
I am writing this post to ask you for a help with an issue that is very frustrating to resolve.
To begin with, I have purchased my MacBook Pro 2.4 GHZ, 3GB, Leopard running notebook about 7 months ago.
Until recently I have discovered that my computer is crashing randomly.
I am not a very tech oriented person, who knows much about console, logs and sorting out the hardware / software related issues.
About 2 months ago I started to experience some random freezes on my computer. Those freezes were occurring on different type of situations so it was hard for me to identify what could be causing the problem. The most common freezing that I have encountered, was and is that my computer screen just freezes and I can't perform any reset or rescue. Simply hard reset.
I started to think that this could be a cause of getting an extra 1GB memory that I purchased from Apple store, and that the memory could be faulty. But just to make sure I have done a clean re-instal of my os. making sure that I have all my permissions everything that could be a "common" cause of any weird behaviors on a mac sorted.
After the reinstall it got even worse.
I decided to take my computer to Apple authorized centre in Sydney broadway NextByte shop.
I explained the problem, asked if that would be possible to check some sort of console logs and track back what could be the cause of the problem that I am experiencing.
I left my computer for 2 weeks in service. And after that 2 weeks they have replied to me saying that they have detected no faulty with the hardware what so ever. I keep on persisting that I understand that the service people have done all the tests on external peripherals, checked the system performance through some kind of testing tools and it resulted with no problem. I rang the Apple complaints department asking if they could do anything about it as I am very worried that this issue won't disappear. They have informed me that there is nothing thay can do and they are basically sending my back home.
I collected my computer 2 days ago and started setting up some programs like adobe and all my apps. At first it was running all well, but then it started (leopard or hardware) to freeze again. On no particular occasion. I had to crashes in 3 hours.
I remembered the time of the crash and after the reboot, I checked my console and here is what I could find:
12/05/08 11:00:07 PM com.apple.launchd[1] (0x10b260.mdworker[1036]) Exited abnormally: Segmentation fault
I don't know if that is related to this post in any way, but as I said at the beginning I have no technical knowledge on where to investigate it further.
I would like to ask you for your recommendation on what should I do next.
I hope there is nothing that I am doing wrong with my computer as I am keeping it organized nad well maintained.
I thought also that that could be overheating related issue so I bought a notebook cooler, but that doesn't seemed to resolve the problem.
I am running out of ideas. Apple won't help me in solving the problem, I am also not sure how should I approach this case from the legal perspective. Can I go to fair traiding institution and ask them for help to enforce apple on returning my money for laptop, should I perform any tasks on my computer to fix the problem with some software.
Help, I am really running out of ideas. I am doing graphic design daily and this problem is driving me crazy.
I would appreciate your feedback or any suggestions on what should I do next.
Sorry for my cracked english. Im still learning my lingo in Australia
PLEASE PLEASE, help me on this one.
Kind Regards,
Michael Saganowski
<Edited by Moderator>
Message was edited by: sgnwsk

Answer 1

For what its worth, it sounds like the Leopard woes I was having before I left and went back to Tiger. I was in leopard for three months and I had too many problems to list here, but some common ones were Random system freezes/crashes (especially in itunes coverflow), Finder freezing, Adobe CS3 crashing and being generally buggy, not being able to run Final Cut Pro and After Effects at the same time.
My advice to you, check your memory if you feel like it could be the problem. If your memory is OK, then wait for the 10.5.3 update which is supposed to be out really soon (like within a couple of weeks or so from what I hear.)