Applications Unexpectedly quitting on OS 10.4

[nicrose]

Seems like ever since I upgraded to 10.4, my Mac has been quitting unexpectedly on certain applications such as Dreamweaver, flash, fireworks, and quicken.
I kind of solved the problem by creating a new user profile, but I want to work in my old user file. All my old files are on that profile!
Besides, I don't think creating a new profile has totally solved the problem because last week flash and quicken quit on me while I was signed onto the new profile.
does anybody know what is going on here?
I called Macromedia since most of the time it is their products that quit. they said it might have to do with the permissions on my old user account being set in a way that causes the programs to quit. They said I could fix the problem using my OS 10.4 software cd. The problem is, I don't own one because someone installed the upgrade using his cd.
Any suggestions?

[mad jew]

Do you have plenty of free hard drive space? In Activity Monitor, do you have a rapidly rising amount of page ins and page outs? :)

[nicrose]

Do you have plenty of free hard drive space? In Activity Monitor, do you have a rapidly rising amount of page ins and page outs? :)

I had about 91796/44522 under page in/out while running firefox and illustrator. I launched flash just now to see what would happen and the page in/out changed to about 98765/45470. (I have no idea what page in/out means.) 250 mb used and 5.39 free. I have a 40 gb harddrive, btw, with only about 11Mb being used.
thanks for helping, mad jew. never thought I'd say that in a sentence!:)

[mad jew]

You may just need more RAM. How much do you have at the moment? I don't use the same apps but I imagine they'd need lots of RAM.

Page ins and page outs are instances when contents is transferred between the RAM and the hard drive as OSX uses the hard drive as a kind of pretend RAM. Unfortunately, the hard drive is much much slower than the RAM and sometimes this can freeze and even crash a system.

As for the hard drive space, I'm a little confused by what you're saying. If you open a new Finder window, how much space does it say at the bottom? It should be at least 8GB.

[reidster]

Repairing permissions is a good idea. You don't need to boot from the installation media in order to repair permissions. Open up Applications/Utilities and run Disk Utility. Select your hard disk in the left pane and press Repair Disk Permissions. (it's on the First Aid tab) Whenever I have unexpected quits and rebooting doesn't help, repairing permissions does the trick. Hope it works for you.

[mad jew]

I think the macromedia people may have been a bit confused, but maybe they meant for you to repair the disk, rather than the disk permissions, because as reidster says, you don't need the OSX disks to repair permissions. If so, then you can repair the disk using fsck (http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106214) instead. It's a better option anyway because it is kept up to date with the system. :)

[berg]

Hi nicrose ...

You should find something in here to help you ... I hope ..

Applications Quitting - Apple
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=25398

Multiple Apps Quit or Fail to Launch
X-Lab
http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/multipleappsquit.html

For general problems after an update keep this handy ..

Problems After Update? Abridged

1. Start up in Safe Mode .. this will run the "Repair Disk" utility.
Be sure the computer is turned off.
Now press the power button.
Just after you hear the startup tone (NOT BEFORE), press and hold down
the shift key.

Now release the shift key when you see the start up screen with the gray
background with the Apple logo and the progress indicator.

During the startup, you will see "Safe Boot" on the Mac OS X startup screen.

To leave the Mac OS X Safe Mode just restart your Mac normally, without
holding any keys during the startup period.

2. Download and Run this ...Onyx
http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/11582
Go to Automation Pane ..
Check all the boxes EXCEPT
1. Optimize the system
2. Hidden DS Store Files
3. Links between documents and applications

Also choose "Clear All" in the button box for caches. Then execute

These settings perform three basic troubleshooting procedures ...
1. Repair permissions
2. Run Unix maintenance (cron) scripts
3. Clear caches

Before any system or security update ..
1. Disconnect all peripherals except keyboard and mouse ..
2. Make sure sleep and screensaver are disabled ....
3. Quit all other apps ..