Do I have a virus?

[zroll1]

A few facts before my question:

Last night I started up my 900Mhz iBook and Stickies, which is set to open on startup, locked up my computer. I had to restart several times before my computer actually worked. The next day I again started up my computer. Everything seemed to be working fine but it was acting kinda sluggish. I put it to sleep and woke it up about 15 minutes later. It was working even slower and most apps wouldn't open. Well let me clarify. The Apple apps, such as Safari, Mail, Address Book, etc., would start up but they wouldn't come up. I'd look in the dock and they were on but I couldn't see them no matter what I did. My friend told me about a recent software update called Pro Application Support which I had not installed. I checked for it in my Software Update but it didn't come up. I pressed check now in the System Prefs and I received to my overwhelming joy a kernel panic.

My question is:
Do I have a virus or is there something else that I should check/fix/try?

Thanks

 

[kgarner]

If its a virus, it is the first one known to OS X discovered "in the wild" so I doubt its that. Try to repair permissions (Disk Utility) or run Disk Warrior. You may have some bad preference files. I was having a lot of weird issues and after trashing all of my preferences (too lazy to pick them out one-by-one) 99% of the problems were gone. Good luck.

 

[Horrortaxi]

It's not a virus.

If it was just 1 application I'd say to trash the preferences but since it's a few of them try repairing permissions. If that doesn't fix it, reset your PRAM and firmware. Let us know how it goes. I can think of other, less likely, causes of your problem but let's try the easy stuff first.

 

[IJ Reilly]

After a hard reboot, running fsck in single user mode is essential because disk directory damage has almost certainly occurred.

 

[Makosuke]

Actually, you can do a disk check (which is a very good idea given the problems you're having) without resorting to fsck in the command line, if you're not comfortable with that:

Stick in the OS disc your computer came with (or if you bought Panther seperately, use the Panther disc, and start up from that. There's a "Disk Utility" option in the menu of the installer that comes up--select that. You've now got Disk Utility open, and you can use that to test and repair your startup disk. Do not, however, run a "fix permissions" when started up from a CD--you should only do that with the Disk Utility in your Utilities folder while you're started from the disk you're checking.

Hopefully one of these things will help, since you've obviously got a sick computer. Doing an "archive and install" is another option, if nothing else works or you don't have time to hunt for funky preferences (which might be able to cause problems like you're seeing) or other corruption.

 

[tomf87]

After a hard reboot, running fsck in single user mode is essential because disk directory damage has almost certainly occurred.

And if you're running 10.3, running fsck won't be necessary because you should have a journaled filesystem anyway.

Let us know what's happening.

 

[Makosuke]

And if you're running 10.3, running fsck won't be necessary because you should have a journaled filesystem anyway.

Not quite true; journaling makes corruption after a crash/forced restart less likely, but it doesn't guarantee a perfect drive. I've found errors using fsck or disk utility more than once, even with journaling on.

 

[zroll1]

Working

Well I got it to work. I tried resetting the permissions but that did nothing. I reset the PRAM but got nowhere. I also ran fsck but that said everything was fine. So I finally just ran an archive and install and everything is back to normal except Safari is messing up. Thank you for your input and help.

 

[7on]

if safari is messing up, try deleting the caches. Usually in the cache folder of the libraies

 

[hob]

I am currently sufferring a shockingly similar problem... My PowerBook just randomly locks up, normally i'll be running:
Mail
iTunes
Safari
Word X
BitTorrent

I'm almost 100% sure it's not to do with BitTorrent, because I leave that running all night without the system locking up, so it must be one of the other programs...

It locked up, then I hard reset, did all the usual resets and checks then safari just wouldn't show itself, just like the other guys original problem... I did an archive and install and had to reinstall safari from the apple website before it would work... And I'm still having the lock up problems!

Maybe I should have started my own thread...

Hob

 

[IJ Reilly]

Not quite true; journaling makes corruption after a crash/forced restart less likely, but it doesn't guarantee a perfect drive. I've found errors using fsck or disk utility more than once, even with journaling on.

Likewise. It seems journaling is oversold as the solution to disk damage.