Panther = OK, Tiger = Lots of freezes

Question

Hi,
I just did a clean fresh install of Tiger on my eMac. After the install I repaired disk permissions (no errors found). Restarted. Installed the 10.4.7 Combo Update (downloaded from Apple.com) and again did a restart. And repaired disk permissions again (no errors found).
Software:
I installed the following software; Adium (www.adiumx.com), Quicksilver (quicksilver.blacktree.com) and Newsfire (www.newsfirerss.com). I'm running Mac OS X Tiger 10.4.7.
Hardware:
I've attached an external firewire harddrive, an usb cardreader, the official apple keyboard and a microsoft usb mouse (plugged into the keyboard's usb hub thing). Also, I have an internet connection by using a network cable. In the past, with only the official apple keyboard + mouse I had the same problems so I don't think there's a problem with the above hardware. I've tried a different keyboard in the past too. And I tried all combinations with the 2 RAM modules (256 MB + 512 MB, both installed by a certified Apple Dealer). The problem occurs both with a disc inside the SuperDrive and without. I also tried not using the internal disk for a while but that didn't help either.
The problem:
I get a lot of random freezes. For some hours everything works smoothly. But other times, one application freezes.. sometimes the Finder, sometimes Safari, other times Disk Utility, etc. When an application freezes (I get the spinning beach-ball) most of the time other applications will freeze too after I clicked them. Force Quitting applications doesn't work (well, maybe 5% of the time it does). Stuff only freezes when I actually click something, when there's interaction.
The weird thing is I almost had no problem when using Panther. I had my system checked by a certified Apple Dealer and they couldn't find a problem. (I had to run Panther at that time, which didn't crash that often)
Besides my freezes sometimes my SuperDrive will not open. Not by ejecting it in the Finder and not by using the Eject-button. I just tried Ejecting it in the Finder and the Finder froze.
I'm aware of an eMac repair program but it doesn't include my model. I do have some of the similar problems though. (my text gets scrambled too sometimes, both on Panther and Tiger). I tried the trick with removing some ATI files but that didn't help.
I've tried all the stuff like repairing disk permission, resetting firmware, resetting different kind of RAM's. But ofcourse I can try it again, just let me know which key combos I have to press .
Any help is greatly appreciated! If this forum allows it I can reward the working answer with some hours of webdesign/scripting work.
Thanks for reading,
Marc
PS
My system froze twice when writing this post. Luckily I wrote it in TextEdit and saved often.

Answer 1

Hi,
No need for apoligies. Double checking everything doesn't hurt.
About the three programs: they are all the latest version (all of them are updated regulary too). I don't think they are the problem because they are very popular and I haven't yet seen someone else having a problem with them. Indeed I don't use any other software, including menu bar add-ons or other stuff that may cause trouble.
I haven't yet tried starting up in Safe Mode. Since the problems only occur when I'm actually using the system I will try to only use the finder and if that doesn't crash anything I will start using the other bundled Apple software like Safari.
By the way, I've been installing DarwinPorts and some Ports too.. but they aren't causing the trouble because the problems were there before I installed it.
About the logs:
I didn't really know what to look for so I uploaded everything:
Finder.crash.log:
http://rafb.net/paste/results/SSf9mA49.html
System.log (notice all the httpd/Apache2 crashes):
http://rafb.net/paste/results/igu6cC81.html
Console.log.5 (notice the Finder crashes, they occured when trying to use Spotlight/Search):
http://rafb.net/paste/results/sx9y4468.html
httpd.crash.log (more info on the httpd crashes):
http://rafb.net/paste/results/lhJdGR17.html
DirectoryService.error.log:
http://rafb.net/paste/results/84lfry83.html
System.log (system-wide, the other one is user-specific):
http://rafb.net/paste/results/qp77r781.html
Windowserver.log
http://rafb.net/paste/results/2tSoAn47.html
I will let you know when I've got some results with Safe Mode.
PS
If you haven't tried Quicksilver yet, I can recommend it. It's hard to describe what it is but you can move/copy/open/edit/etc stuff with a few clicks. Once you've tried it you'll never go back.