10.3.6 - Applications unexpectedly quitting

ant_s · Nov 22, 2004

My PowerBook G4 15" 1.25 SuperDrive has started making any app disappear (ie, "This application has unexpectedly quit.") whenever the app throws up an error or question dialog box. Which, obviously - is quite often!

Apps include Safari, iTunes, Software Updater and I even tried reloading 10.3.6 update, but can't because it asks if it's okay to run a program to determine if it's okay to install...

I tried repairing disk permissions from the startup DVD (as recommended by several people) to no avail. I also tried to isolate the problem by trashing Safari prefs files, again - to no avail.

Oddly, this has only started happening since Friday, and before then I had no problems at all with 10.3.6. I haven't installed anything or changed any major preferences that could have obviously caused this.

Also - this is only happening on my profile. I tried another user profile and even created a new one, and on both of these it's fine. I'd rather solve the problem rather than working around it and creating a new profile for me if possible..!

Any suggestions?

Any help greatly appreciated!!

Mechcozmo · Nov 22, 2004

Repair permissions from the hard disk.

The original disk has the default permissions, but as software is added and system updates applied you can have trouble.
Applications->Utilities->Disk Utility

Download a program like MacJanitor or Cocktail and force-update your prebindings. Also run your cron scripts. (Daily weekly monthly)

abhishekit · Nov 22, 2004

If repairing permissions is not working, try running fsck.

ant_s · Nov 23, 2004

Thanks for your replies - I tried all with no luck. I tried reinstalling Panther (keeping apps, profiles and networking etc intact) - and that didn't clear it. So I've decided to open up a new profile. Once everything's moved over I'll just delete the original one, then continue from there.

Cheers.

ant_s · Nov 24, 2004

After moving files about it's become even less stable so I've decided that I'll back all my files and some apps up and rebuild the entire machine.

Great. Reminds me of my Windows days.

decksnap · Nov 24, 2004

STOP!

Don't do any thing else until you've tried the following- I had the exact same issue and was able to solve it very easily. When the quitting was happening in a lot of programs on dialog prompts, I realized it couldn't be the apps themselves, so I figured it was the system's prefs gone screwy. Go into your preferences folder and delete all of your apple specific plists. (apple.com....plist) You will lose things like your dock settings, but since I couldn't isolate which plist was the problem I deleted all of them and restarted and it worked fine. Let me know if this works for you.

ant_s · Nov 24, 2004

o0o I'll give it a go! Cheers

I was planning on formatting over the weekend when our shiny new iMac G5 arrives

Will let you know how I get on...

ant_s · Nov 24, 2004

WOW!

That's FANTASTIC - like a whole new Mac for...very little work!

Thanks so much for this hint - everything seems fine now, and saved me a lot of hassle!!

Brilliant!

QCassidy352 · Nov 24, 2004

My gf's PM has been having exactly the same issue and it is really driving her crazy. We even went so far as to check the RAM, and although one of the three sticks did turn out to be bad, tossing it didn't stop the application crashes.

I'm so glad to hear about this simple and effective fix. I'll tell her to try it out asap!

p.s. All of the .plist files will be recreated with defaults upon restart, right?

edit: hmm, upon further review, I'm not sure that her crashes occur with dialouge prompts. It seems to be at somewhat more random times. Still worth a shot, I guess...

ant_s · Nov 24, 2004

Definitely - and yes, everything is re-created. Which is effectively like starting up a new profile.

Mine was quite random, but certain apps were sure to show up the fault (infact, I tried testing by going to the Apple Store UK and selecting GB - this makes JavaScript ask you if you want them to remember it, causing a crash).

Everything sorted now. Definitely worth a go - but I'd take a screenshot of your dock first

QCassidy352 · Nov 29, 2004

well, it didn't work.

Very disappointed right now.

I'm running out of ideas here. Clean reinstall of the OS is about the only thing I can think of that we haven't tried.

It is mostly excel that quits, but mail, safari, and others as well. If there are any more suggestions for this problem, I would greatly appreciate it. Thanks.

Sun Baked · Nov 29, 2004

ant_s said:
I tried repairing disk permissions from the startup DVD (as recommended by several people) to no avail. I also tried to isolate the problem by trashing Safari prefs files, again - to no avail.

Don't run repair disk permissions from the DVD -- just Disk First Aid from the DVDs copy of Disk Utilities since it won't run on the boot drive.

Run repair permissions from the Disk Utilities on the HD, which will use the HDs copy of packages for comparison and repair -- instead of the DVDs, which may no longer be correct.

Hopefully you aren't running Norton, or any other background app like Hardware Monitor, SETI etc.

But there could very well be something messed up in your user profile, so starting a new one and booting into safe mode should tell you whether that's the case (and not to move stuff over from your old one, reinstall everything and move data -- since anything can be the problem.)

QCassidy352 · Nov 29, 2004

Sun Baked said:
But there could very well be something messed up in your user profile, so starting a new one and booting into safe mode should tell you whether that's the case (and not to move stuff over from your old one, reinstall everything and move data -- since anything can be the problem.)

But if you just created a new user profile without reinstalling OS X, wouldn't the problem likely persist? Because all of the system wide preferences would be the same...

Also, why do you recommend booting in to safe mode? How will that help identify the problem?

QCassidy352 · Nov 30, 2004

help, please. We are at our wits end.

Sun Baked · Nov 30, 2004

QCassidy352 said:
But if you just created a new user profile without reinstalling OS X, wouldn't the problem likely persist? Because all of the system wide preferences would be the same...

Also, why do you recommend booting in to safe mode? How will that help identify the problem?

Creating a new user profile helps show you if the problem is at the user level, or at the system level.

Plus you already said your user profile is messed up.

If creating a new user profile works, reinstalling the OS and copying all the stuff over from the old user risks recreating the problem. Even if you wipe the HD.

Booting into safe mode (holding the shift key during boot) is the OS X eq of OS 9's booting with the extensions off.

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