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Panther keeps crashing...

A

AlbinoPigeon

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jan 1, 2004
132
71
Vancouver, BC
I have been experiencing constant Finder crashes on my iBook with OS 10.3.3

Everytime an option or dialouge box pops up (say: "Your battery is running low" or, "Are you sure you want to do ____") Basically anytime a box with an option causes another box to pop up, that new box causes a finder crash and I have to force restart my finder.

Apple`s tech support has said that it`s a common issue and that I should be able to find help in their knowledge base, but I haven`t yet. My 90 days ran out about 2 weeks ago, and I kinda dont want to buy the AppleCare unless it`s totally nessesary.

SO anyways, as a result, not only do I have to keep restarting my finder, I also never get to complete the task I was doing when OSX popped up a box to ask me something.

Other examples of when this happens is:
-when you want to empty the trash, it pops up a "are you sure?" box and it crashes. (therefore I can never empty my trash)
-when aqusition pops up a window at startup announcing a new version (therefor I can not use Aqusition anymore)
-when I want to empty the trash in Mail it pops up a box
-etc...
 
Have you gone the usual route of repairing permissions, checking all of your settings etc?

Have you installed any third-party sotware recently?

New periferals? (sp)
 
Or you could try "zapping the P-RAM" or whatever it's called. Do a search for that on the support website.

Good luck,
JOD8FY
 
Can't be THAT common.... I have hundreds of Macs, and I have never seen it. If they said it was, didn't they at least direct you a specific article?? Did you mention any shareware/freeware like theme sets? Did it happen on any specific pro apps? Sounds like a classic permission problem. for the most part, but that crashing is odd.
 
Are you sure Aquisition isn't at fault?

But if you've had enough crashes and panics, then there is a chance you'll need to do a run of both Disk First Aid and fsck (each until you get a clean pass).

Crash too many times and it'll cause catalog/file system problems.
 
ok...I need some explaining!

ok first to answer some questions...

-I installed synergy (that iTunes add on) but I dont think that's at fault since it was a while before this stuff started to happen
-no new periferals
-it happens in ANY program that pops up boxes to ask for confirmation of something (so something like the trash: not in any program at all, to Mail: a OSX program, to Acquision: a 3rd party app)


Now the questions:

what is: "You can also try running your daily, weekly, and monthly if you usually don't keep you computer on at night." (run what?)

what does repairing premissions mean? is that to do with the other users and what programs they can/can't use?

how do I do these two things: "Disk First Aid and fsck"


Ok and one more peice of info:

there are 2 users on the iBook, me (admin) and my sister. She is experience NONE of these problems...she runs all the same programs I do, but does not have access to preferences and intallation

maybe that will mean something...THANKS!
 
Most likely it is a third-party program that is running under you user account that is causing the problems.

Thing is with these programs, any OS update can start causing problems later on after months of zero problems.

Basically you are running something your sister is not, and that is most likely causing all your problems.

Though it is possible that a file setting could have been flipped and is causing problem, thus the need for Repair Permissions.

---

If it runs fine under your sister's account, there's some program causing problems in your.

But just like OS 9, it can be something as simple as tossing a preference file to get out of a problem.
 
I'm almost certain that the problem will be related to a corrupt file in your user's Library folder. In this case you have two options:

a) Create a new user and use it instead. Copy your documents from your old user to the new one.
b) Use trial and error to find or narrow down the cause of the problem in your Library folder. First try moving the Preferences folder (Home/Library/Preferences) to somewhere else on your hard disk. If that fixes the problem, the simplest thing to do would be to leave it that way, but to move individual preference files back to Home/Library/Preferences if you want to restore settings for a particular application.
 
I keep hearing about this. First off if the panther is not the os your system came with and you updated it to panther with low ram and a crapload of files then it will mess up... says so in the read me
 
HexMonkey said:
I'm almost certain that the problem will be related to a corrupt file in your user's Library folder. In this case you have two options:

a) Create a new user and use it instead. Copy your documents from your old user to the new one.
b) Use trial and error to find or narrow down the cause of the problem in your Library folder. First try moving the Preferences folder (Home/Library/Preferences) to somewhere else on your hard disk. If that fixes the problem, the simplest thing to do would be to leave it that way, but to move individual preference files back to Home/Library/Preferences if you want to restore settings for a particular application.
Click to expand...

Ok, I tried the premissions repair and it didn't help the problem. I also deleted ALL 3rd party apps and plug-ins, that didn't help (and yes, I deleted ALL the associated files, not just the app folder). So I think I might have to make a new user and migrate. So now I have yet another question, I am the admin, so can I make a new admin, or just make a new regular user and change it to admin after...how does that work? I really want to avoid reinstalling the OS.
 
When you create the new user, you can set them as an administrator at the bottom of the Security pane in Accounts. You can also change this setting at any time if you're using an administrator account.

It would probably be worth trying to move your preferences folder first though, because IMO this alone has about a 75% chance of fixing the problems, and if successful, will save a lot of time later when trying to set up a new user.
 
THANKS EVERYONE!

HexMonkey said:
When you create the new user, you can set them as an administrator at the bottom of the Security pane in Accounts. You can also change this setting at any time if you're using an administrator account.

It would probably be worth trying to move your preferences folder first though, because IMO this alone has about a 75% chance of fixing the problems, and if successful, will save a lot of time later when trying to set up a new user.
Click to expand...

THANKS SOOOOO MUCH! I did what you said with the preferences...it turned out to be the speech recognition prefs. Probably just one of them, but seeing as how wI dont use Speech anyways, I trashed all of them. It took about an hour, but way easier than a new user, and WAY WAY easier than a reinstall.

This is why I love the Mac community! You guys all rock!
 
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