Getting a little sick of OSX

[macEfan]

It seems the last stable OS-X version was Panther.

I think all the mac OS's Choke if they are installed on macs that can bairly support them.

10.1 is better for a g3 beige than 10.2
10.2 is betterfor a g4 400 than 10.3
10.3 is better for a g4 533 than 10.4
10.4 seem to run more stable on macs that have AT LEAST:

733mhz processors
384mb ram
at least 6 gb free hard disk space

good luck on fixing your problems.

 

[Sedulous]

infact i'd say this machine is more problematic than my windows machine. at least a single App will wipe all the spyware probs...

Just now my Translate Widget has stopped working all together. re-opening it says Japanese in both language selections, only you cant change the lower box. it always says Undefined or English if you select English in the top box.

OS X will not shut down. its had hard-shut downs for months now. It just hangs with only the mouse and desktop image. no fading out to blue or anything.

Automatic waking up, only at night though. Fans spin like crazy. have to do a hard reset.

Any solutions to these problems? or should i cut my loses and do a format. i thought i gave up on formatting when i left windows I've posted these probs before but now they're really getting on my nerves.

Have you done the usual series of fixes? Do permissions repair, cron jobs, update prebindings, run fsck, perhaps even reset PRAM/VRAM.

 

[FFTT]

You might want to give Tiger Cache Cleaner a whirl
unless you have another good maintenance app.

I agree about the Widgets too.

It's hard to tell from what your describing, but I'm wondering if you're putting some files in the wrong places.

Are you by any chance using Virex 7.5 or Nortons?
Both are terrible CPU hogs.

You may not need a clean install, but you may need
to clean up what you've put on your system.

Check your activity monitor to see what's running.

 

[pknz]

[RANT]
If you are sick of it, I would urge you to move on to (or back to) Windows or Linux.

If it truly is unbearable...because if you find these smallish bugs making you sick of it, what does Windows and Linux make you feel, you must want to kill yourself with the bugs in Microsoft.

One Spyware sweeper? I have 3 on my PC, not each on picks up the others do.. (Adaware, Microsoft Spyware Sweeper (or whatever its called), and SpySweeper - all up to date). Alongside that I have running eTrust Antivirus. That does not pick up trojans.

Sorry this is turning into a rant. But seriously if you cannot handle a minor (fixable by trashing the translator.plist file) and haven't bothered to take it in to a Mac store as it does not shut down maybe you are deserving of Windows.

[/RANT]

 

[Applespider]

How do you Archive and Install with Tiger? I never saw the option.

When you say you want to install, there's a small button that says 'Options' on the installer box. You click in there and change the setting to A&I

 

[Palad1]

...
did you check your disks?

=> Boot with the hardware test disk (press command-C while booting and select hardware test / hard drive test.

My powerbook had something stuck in the ventilation unit, which overheated and caused lots, lots and lots of problems, biggest of all was a hard drive failure...

Although once it crashed for good, I got a spankin' new hd/sd in 48 hours thanks to APP.

Good luck!

 

[0098386]

[RANT]
If you are sick of it, I would urge you to move on to (or back to) Windows or Linux.

If it truly is unbearable...because if you find these smallish bugs making you sick of it, what does Windows and Linux make you feel, you must want to kill yourself with the bugs in Microsoft.

One Spyware sweeper? I have 3 on my PC, not each on picks up the others do.. (Adaware, Microsoft Spyware Sweeper (or whatever its called), and SpySweeper - all up to date). Alongside that I have running eTrust Antivirus. That does not pick up trojans.

Sorry this is turning into a rant. But seriously if you cannot handle a minor (fixable by trashing the translator.plist file) and haven't bothered to take it in to a Mac store as it does not shut down maybe you are deserving of Windows.

[/RANT]

its far from minor. the machine doesn't shut down normally forcing a hard shut down. the widget? fine. its only a widget. Applications losing their settings? oh yea thats minor. having to waste precious minutes just getting everything in the right order again. I'd love to see you put up with that for a month or 2.
and dont get me started on trying to set up my wireless router! seriously i posted this in my blog and its been the most commented on thread so far, that there is a major problem. I've contact Apple and urged others to do the same but even in .2 of Tiger they still haven't fixed it. I have to manually configure pretty much every part of what was automatic in Panther in the wireless area.

But on a nicer note to the people telling me to go to an Apple store... the closest to me is in Birmingham. which is far (im 20 miles above Manchester), very far. unless I can go to Micro Anvika in Selfridges? they sell macs but i dont know about AppleCare with them.

I will be going back to Panther i think. maybe until 10.4.4. at least until its as solid as 10.3.9

I have a little app called YASU. I haven't used it yet but i hear its a little maintenance program. hope that fixes something.

 

[Applespider]

and dont get me started on trying to set up my wireless router! seriously i posted this in my blog and its been the most commented on thread so far, that there is a major problem.

Obviously, I don't know the details of the router problem but my adsl modem stopped working with the last Airport update; or at least stopped communicating via Airport. I reverted to the old Airport firmware and all was well again. Still running 10.4.2 though.

Before you revert to Panther (which if you use Mail, might be a mildly torturous process since the mailbox system changed when it moved to Tiger), I do strongly recommend an A&I. You lose nothing but an hour and it might just solve the problem.

 

[John Jacob]

Wait for 10.4.4

I'd wait also for the next Tiger update - the biggy that keeps being mentioned but never released.

In my experience with OSX there is always a solution so it is worth persevering if only to prove that OSX is worthy of the thoughts we all attribute to it.

I didn't upgrade to Panther till 10.3.5. Mebbe I was overcautious - I plan to upgrade to Tiger the moment 10.4.4 is released!

I value stability above having the latest and greatest features. YMMV.

 

[0098386]

I thought AppleCare only lasted 3 months? or am i wrong?

 

[iMeowbot]

I thought AppleCare only lasted 3 months? or am i wrong?

Free phone support is 3 months, standard warranty is a year, both get bumped to 3 years if you paid for Applecare.

 

[RedTomato]

Cleaning out catches is a good idea, I use SterMachine which is free. For a production machine, I might use Cocktail (non-free).

Also definitely remove anything that modifies the OS. I used to run APE and various other things that made various tweaks to the OS. My PB started crashing or freezing more frequently, so I took them all out (was a bit of a chore in the case of APE haxies) and my PB is far, far more stable now, and to be honest, I don't really miss them.

The only OS tweaks I run now are Butler, which is a sort of fast app launcher and doesn't mess about with anything visual, and DoubleCommand which remaps one single key on my keyboard (it disables my CapsLock key).

Recently I added a virtual desktop window manager, which the coder promised would never crash my machine - if the app crashed, it would invisibly restart the Dock that's all. Bollocks. My PB froze HARD when switching between desktops. Out it went. Never had the problem again.

If you add tweaks to your favourite apps too, you run the risk of making them less stable.. I've had iMovie degrade in stablity from adding various third party plugins. Chuck out the ones you don't really really need.

cheers

RedTomato

 

[0098386]

making my backups now.
just wondering about Apps though... can i just copy the apps straight to my external HDD and copy back onto a fresh instal to have them work fine? or am i just wishing.

 

[razorme]

infact i'd say this machine is more problematic than my windows machine. at least a single App will wipe all the spyware probs...

Just now my Translate Widget has stopped working all together. re-opening it says Japanese in both language selections, only you cant change the lower box. it always says Undefined or English if you select English in the top box.

OS X will not shut down. its had hard-shut downs for months now. It just hangs with only the mouse and desktop image. no fading out to blue or anything.

Automatic waking up, only at night though. Fans spin like crazy. have to do a hard reset.

Any solutions to these problems? or should i cut my loses and do a format. i thought i gave up on formatting when i left windows I've posted these probs before but now they're really getting on my nerves.

I was starting to have problems on my iMac G5 with Tiger as well. A black screen would be all I could get waking up from sleep, it hung on a reboot once, the mouse would just freeze, etc. But the system worked well most of the time. After about a week of this, I thought that maybe the OS had gone bad and I needed to reinstall - but I couldn't find my Tiger install DVD. I popped off the back of the computer, and sure enough, two of my capacitors were suffering from the known bad-cap problem. I had the motherboard replaced, and now Tiger runs perfectly again - there was nothing wrong with it at all! Don't rule out a hardware problem.

 

[0098386]

I was starting to have problems on my iMac G5 with Tiger as well. A black screen would be all I could get waking up from sleep, it hung on a reboot once, the mouse would just freeze, etc. But the system worked well most of the time. After about a week of this, I thought that maybe the OS had gone bad and I needed to reinstall - but I couldn't find my Tiger install DVD. I popped off the back of the computer, and sure enough, two of my capacitors were suffering from the known bad-cap problem. I had the motherboard replaced, and now Tiger runs perfectly again - there was nothing wrong with it at all! Don't rule out a hardware problem.

oh mate thats what i've been getting. i haven't mentioned yet but I've been getting mouse hangs too.
So what do i do? just go to an AppleStore and they'll replace it there and then or what?

 

[Applespider]

making my backups now.
just wondering about Apps though... can i just copy the apps straight to my external HDD and copy back onto a fresh instal to have them work fine? or am i just wishing.

If you A&I, the migration assistant will move all your apps over for you (you need to keep one Adobe Unit Types which will be in your Previous Systems folder if you have any Adobe apps installed).

 

[0098386]

right now i'm thinking along the lines of a clean install. all afresh. that way if the problem persists then i'm heading off to the Birmingham Apple Store.

will Apps work by dragging them to a HDD and back again after the clean install? and how do i get my emails off? i cant find an export button.

 

[QCassidy352]

Tiger's working fine for me. Clean install - didn't mess around. Went from 10.2 to 10.4 with a clean install and all is good.

I've never had a single problem with Tiger (been running it on 2 machines for months).

 

[emotion]

right now i'm thinking along the lines of a clean install. all afresh. that way if the problem persists then i'm heading off to the Birmingham Apple Store.

will Apps work by dragging them to a HDD and back again after the clean install? and how do i get my emails off? i cant find an export button.

I've just been through this as my 12" powerbook (1.33) had a hardrive failure (pick the machine up and if it makes light sabre noises as you move it it may be contributing to your problems....esp if it's a toshiba drive).

So, drag your 'applications' folder to a backup drive, also do the same for your personal 'Library'(you'll probs be backing /Users/raggedjimmi anyway right) and the system 'Library'. I IMAP so didn't need to worry about the email stuff but I'm sure all that is contained in your personal 'Library' folder anyway.

You should be able to get it all back from there.

Hope that helps.

 

[Mechcozmo]

making my backups now.
just wondering about Apps though... can i just copy the apps straight to my external HDD and copy back onto a fresh instal to have them work fine? or am i just wishing.

Yes, all Apps are self-contained. Only a few have issues... Adobe apps, and Stuffit I think are the only ones that you need to re-install.

Mail keeps its stuff in ~/Library/Mail
Address Book has an export command
Safari has an export command

Don't just drag out and then replace your entire Library folder-- there could be issues in there. Only save what you need from it. But backing it up can't hurt.

 

[Mechcozmo]

I've just been through this as my 12" powerbook (1.33) had a hardrive failure (pick the machine up and if it makes light sabre noises as you move it it may be contributing to your problems....esp if it's a toshiba drive).

Better idea: Check the SMART status of your drive in Disk Utility (near the bottom)

Or do a search of the forums for, "Is my hard drive failing?" You'll become an expert.

 

[emotion]

Better idea: Check the SMART status of your drive in Disk Utility (near the bottom)

Or do a search of the forums for, "Is my hard drive failing?" You'll become an expert.

good idea.

my drive passed all those tests though but was clearly on the way out (reads were stalling to the point that even writing a small web page from safari on it's launch would induce the beachball). the apple tech replaced the drive.

 

[Soulstorm]

It seems the last stable OS-X version was Panther.

I don't think so. I have used panther on both my iMac G4 and my G5 (see sig). The stability of Tiger is unquestionable imho.

I have never experienced any crash, nor any lockup. Everything seems to work as expected. And I've been using Tiger since 10.4.1 and OS X in general since the release of 10.2.4.

 

[razorme]

oh mate thats what i've been getting. i haven't mentioned yet but I've been getting mouse hangs too.
So what do i do? just go to an AppleStore and they'll replace it there and then or what?

The iMac G5 has a known problem of bad capacitors and bad power supplies - Apple extended the warranty for both to two years gratis. You can check google for more info. The first thing to do is rule out a RAM problem. If you have a couple of sticks, try running on just one, and then the other, and see if you can make the problem go away.

 

[dogbone]

Ouch, jimmi, sounds nasty!

How many system mods have you got installed? Any chance of things like Onyx, Shapeshifter etc that might be causing problems.

I can see how shapeshifter could be suspected (although I have no problems with it) but I am surprised about OnyX, I thought it was just an app that ran normal system repair routines.

How can it cause problems?