Head Scratcher

[Kashchei]

My friend (a technophobe) and his wife have a problem with their eMac that I thought I could easily fix. Little did I know . . . .

My friend has an eMac and his wife had and old iMac; both were running Panther. They have AT&T DSL and a Linksys WRT54GS wireless router. The eMac has an HP Photosmart C3100. All was working perfectly until the old iMac was replaced with a new iMac running Tiger. As soon as this happened, the eMac started randomly crashing. The iMac works fine and never crashes.

I have updated the firmware on the Linksys router and the HP print driver on the eMac. Neither update fixed the problem. To isolate the problem, I suggested that the eMac be started up in safe mode. When this is done, the random crashes disappear. I thought an upgrade to Tiger might fix the problem and I installed this on the eMac last night. It did not, and safe mode is the only way for him to get any work done (without printing or accessing the internet).

I am running out of ideas for how to troubleshoot this problem. Does anyone have any insight into this problem?

 

[apb3]

My friend (a technophobe) and his wife have a problem with their eMac that I thought I could easily fix. Little did I know . . . .

My friend has an eMac and his wife had and old iMac; both were running Panther. They have AT&T DSL and a Linksys WRT54GS wireless router. The eMac has an HP Photosmart C3100. All was working perfectly until the old iMac was replaced with a new iMac running Tiger. As soon as this happened, the eMac started randomly crashing. The iMac works fine and never crashes.

I have updated the firmware on the Linksys router and the HP print driver on the eMac. Neither update fixed the problem. To isolate the problem, I suggested that the eMac be started up in safe mode. When this is done, the random crashes disappear. I thought an upgrade to Tiger might fix the problem and I installed this on the eMac last night. It did not, and safe mode is the only way for him to get any work done (without printing or accessing the internet).

I am running out of ideas for how to troubleshoot this problem. Does anyone have any insight into this problem?

From reading your post, it seems you suspect the addition of the new computer to the mix as a possible culprit. Why?

I would, instead, ask the offending technophobes what EXACTLY they have recently done with the eMac.

 

[Kashchei]

My friend is such a technophobe that I know he didn't change anything on his computer. The only variable that coincided precisely with the beginning of the crashes was the change of iMacs.

 

[apb3]

My friend is such a technophobe that I know he didn't change anything on his computer. The only variable that coincided precisely with the beginning of the crashes was the change of iMacs.

I'm still VERY doubtful that that could have anything to do with the problem. And, they wouldn't need to know what they're doing to screw it up. In fact, that's usually the problem... You know, web surfing, a popup comes up and they just click away installing some crap without even knowing they've done so.

Anyway, if you're reallly convinced the new computer somehow screwed up the other one, simply disconnect one or the other from the network and see if you still get the crashes. I bet you still do.

 

[Kashchei]

I'm still VERY doubtful that that could have anything to do with the problem. And, they wouldn't need to know what they're doing to screw it up. In fact, that's usually the problem... You know, web surfing, a popup comes up and they just click away installing some crap without even knowing they've done so.

Anyway, if you're reallly convinced the new computer somehow screwed up the other one, simply disconnect one or the other from the network and see if you still get the crashes. I bet you still do.

Thank you so much for your input. Your point is well taken; it is quite easy to change the setup with a simple click, and my friend is certainly not technically saavy. I will follow up on this line of thought and thanks again for your input.

Your second point is well taken also. The iMac was using a wired connection while the eMac was using airport. I've asked them to change the iMac to use an airport connection to see if this machine develops the same problem. Alternatively, I've also asked them to set up the eMac with a wired connection to see if the problem disappears. I'll post later with the results of this experiment.

P.S. I should add that I've run DiskWarrior on the eMac and repaired the minor problems that were found. I've also checked for corrupted fonts with fontbook.