0

5 yr old MBP Intel bought for video editing ran fine for 4 yrs, using Tiger & FCE 3.5. Past year has been stormy. Onset was unrecoverable crash dx'ed as not-worth-fixing logic board failure by genius at Mac Store.

Community-based Apple tech repaired logic board, which made computer bootable, but occasional crashes recurred. Additional servicing was done: new 250GB hard drive, upgrade to Mountain Lion, followed by partial downgrade to Snow Leopard (clean install) to restore compatibility with FCE 3.5.

System seemed to be working but multiple worsening crashes began yesterday after transferring ~ 3 GB iTunes tracks from old Tiger CCC bootable clone. Currently running an Apple Hardware Test from Tiger install disc. But viruses apparently do attack Macs and I would like to know the best way to determine if my MBP is infected.

Any advice would be appreciated. This is my first Mac, and I'd much rather be editing video than troubleshooting!

Improve this question

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
1

Apple Hardware Test will not test for virus, try some anti-virus scanner from reputational software provider like free anti-virus for mac. But remember all anti-virus can only check for known virus or bug, small or custom virus cannot be detect. If you have extensive knowledge about computer you can open "terminal" and type "top" to see all the computer process and look for the process that take up all the memories, then exit with "contrl+z"

Improve this answer
5
  • Thanks for ideas. I checked out the link you provided and will consider installing that software when/if the Mac is stable enough for a download. The Apple Hardware Test is not working properly even for hardware at this point, but that will be another question, if I'm getting the hang of Asking Different. Apologies for my expansive presentation in original question - I'm new here!
    – sharron Sussman
    Dec 25, 2012 at 16:56
  • Addendum: opened "terminal" & "top" @Kevin suggested and saw nothing amiss, a quiet CPU about 96% "idling". I think maybe this means an active virus not likely?
    – sharron Sussman
    Dec 25, 2012 at 18:14
  • Okay, can you see how much free memory you have? and have many free disk space you have("terminal" & "df")? if you mac have less than 5% of free space to use as swap memory. It seem to crash very often.
    – Kevin Chow
    Dec 26, 2012 at 2:06
  • The Mac is with the tech now but I will check "df" when I get it back and let you know. The 250 GB hard drive has over 200 GB of free space, though - is that what you meant by "free space to use as swap memory"?
    – sharron Sussman
    Dec 26, 2012 at 20:42
  • addendum/correction: The CPU had 98% "free space."
    – sharron Sussman
    Dec 26, 2012 at 20:56

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .