Strange intermittent network problem with G5 Mac

Greetings

I have a strange problem with my Mac. It's a dual 2.0 G5 from May 2005
with 1.5 GB RAM, running OS X 10.4.3. It now can't resolve any web
pages in Firefox or Safari. Firefox says, e.g., "can't find
google.com". Safari says I'm "not connected to the Internet". It's like
I have bad name servers or something. But I can check my email with
Eudora. Eudora connects to my POP server, mail.MYISP.com just fine. And
when logged in to a different account, web pages sometimes resolve.

I have a three-day-old bootable Firewire backup. When I boot off that
backup, sometimes I can get web pages to resolve and other times not.

I haven't installed any new software other than Google Earth, which I
installed two days ago. I wonder if that might have something to do
with it.

I get the same behavior whether I'm connected through a router or
directly to the cable modem. And when the G5 is exhibiting this
behavior, a G4 that's hooked to the net wirelessly through the same
router as the G5 resolves web pages just fine.

So far I have done the following, and no joy:

1) wiped the hard disk and Carbon Copy Cloned the three-day-old
bootable backup to the internal hard disk.

2) Done an "Archive and install" of OS X 10.4 to the internal hard
disk.

3) Repaired permissions.

4) Disk Utility -> Repair disk (no problems found).

This machine stays on 24/7, and is well maintained and frequently
backed up, Diskwarriored, fscked, etc.

The machine has, though, been somewhat of a problem since I got it - on
several (maybe 10 - 20) occasions, it has just locked up, and I've had
to do a hard reset to regain control of it. OS X isn't supposed to do
that, and so I'm wondering if there might be some sort of hardware
problem with this machine. I've run the hardware diagnostics, and they
never find any problem, but I just wonder. And given the weird and
intermittent nature of the problems I've had with this Mac, I wonder if
I'll get any satisfaction from Apple.

Anyone out there had a similar problem? Ideas? Feedback?


--
-Bo Parker

The email address in the header is fake.

wrote:

> Greetings
>
> I have a strange problem with my Mac. It's a dual 2.0 G5 from May 2005
> with 1.5 GB RAM, running OS X 10.4.3. It now can't resolve any web
[snip]



Figured it out. It was leftover parts of Peerguardian that were messing
up my connectivity. Some .kexts and such. Got rid of all the little
parts that it spewed all over my hard disk, and everything works OK
now.

--
-Bo Parker

The email address in the header is fake.

Gnarlodious wrote:


> Have you swapped mouse, keyboard, etc? Last I heard some faulty USB devices
> could cause sudden freezing.


Thanks for your reply. I tracked it down using errors that showed up in
system.log. Turns out that it was parts of Peerguardian, which I
thought I had uninstalled a week ago, but apparently I didn't get all
of it at that time. Strange that it took so long for the problem to
manifest itself.

--
-Bo Parker

The email address in the header is fake.