Installer problems

[osprey76]

I've been having a lot of problem installing things lately. I'm starting to think the Vise X installer or installer engine has issues. Apple's Installer seems to work okay, but I can't install the Tech Tool Pro 4.03 update, the ATI utilities 4.4 or the MS Office Updater update. All of them say they are powered by Vise X in one way or another. All of them hang in the searching phase of the install and bring the system to a crawl. I feel lucky to be able to force them to quit. Last night, the MS update crashed the Dock and I had to cycle the power.

I have used Cocktail to run all of the system maintenance tasks and I found the Vise preference file and trashed that (and emptied the trash) and there was no difference (though, I didn't reboot before trying again.) Does anyone have any thoughts? This is really getting frustrating, but I'm not sure what else to do.

Edit: Also, I'm running a Gigabit machine with Panther and all of the updates. I hear disk activity like it is indeed searching, but this continues for over 20 minutes with no productive activity. The SuperDrive upgrade I bought awhile back is slow to wake up (to eject after it goes idle, I have to eject once, let the disk reappear on the desktop and then eject a second time and it comes right out, this is via software, not the Apple keyboard as I'm using a Logitech one), but I don't think that's the root issue.

Edit 2: The Ford Racing demo was made with a Vise installer and it installed fast and without incident. Also, reran the ATI 4.4 installer with the SuperDrive empty. Had to do a hard reboot. I wish I could ssh in from another local machine, but this one is all I have.

 

[MisterMe]

I've been having a lot of problem installing things lately. I'm starting to think the Vise X installer or installer engine has issues. Apple's Installer seems to work okay, but I can't install the Tech Tool Pro 4.03 update, the ATI utilities 4.4 or the MS Office Updater update. All of them say they are powered by Vise X in one way or another. All of them hang in the searching phase of the install and bring the system to a crawl. I feel lucky to be able to force them to quit. Last night, the MS update crashed the Dock and I had to cycle the power.

I have used Cocktail to run all of the system maintenance tasks and I found the Vise preference file and trashed that (and emptied the trash) and there was no difference (though, I didn't reboot before trying again.) Does anyone have any thoughts? This is really getting frustrating, but I'm not sure what else to do.

Edit: Also, I'm running a Gigabit machine with Panther and all of the updates. I hear disk activity like it is indeed searching, but this continues for over 20 minutes with no productive activity. The SuperDrive upgrade I bought awhile back is slow to wake up (to eject after it goes idle, I have to eject once, let the disk reappear on the desktop and then eject a second time and it comes right out, this is via software, not the Apple keyboard as I'm using a Logitech one), but I don't think that's the root issue.

The Vise X installer seems to be a crappy Carbon app--not because its Carbon, but just crappy. At any rate, it seems not to be terribly robust. When I had problems with Vise X, they seem to have been caused by a damaged file system.

Possible solution: You need to run File System Check from the Darwin command line in single-user mode. Reboot into single-user mode by pressing [Apple]- as you restart. At the command prompt, type fsck -f. After fsck does its thing, type exit or another command to return to the MacOS X GUI.

 

[osprey76]

The Vise X installer seems to be a crappy Carbon app--not because its Carbon, but just crappy. At any rate, it seems not to be terribly robust. When I had problems with Vise X, they seem to have been caused by a damaged file system.

Possible solution: You need to run File System Check from the Darwin command line in single-user mode. Reboot into single-user mode by pressing [Apple]- as you restart. At the command prompt, type fsck -f. After fsck does its thing, type exit or another command to return to the MacOS X GUI.

I'll try that now.

 

[osprey76]

This isn't a good sign, fsck failed. I booted into single user mode and did fsck -f. It ran through its routines and report a hundred or so orphaned nodes. After another short time, it came back that a slew of values were 0 and should be 1 (I don't remember the attribute). The it reported disk (or volume) check failed.

My boot drive is a 180GB drive connected to a PCI card for large drive support. I've never had a problem with this setup, but I do have to boot from something else if I clear the PRAM.

I think running TTP4 would be a good thing, but I can't find the CD at the moment. (I'm moving on Sunday.) The failed updater screwed up the installation. Any other suggestions? Any other tags to use with fsck that might help? I'm only generally familiar with it being a repair utility.

 

[MisterMe]

This isn't a good sign, fsck failed. I booted into single user mode and did fsck -f. It ran through its routines and report a hundred or so orphaned nodes. After another short time, it came back that a slew of values were 0 and should be 1 (I don't remember the attribute). The it reported disk (or volume) check failed.

My boot drive is a 180GB drive connected to a PCI card for large drive support. I've never had a problem with this setup, but I do have to boot from something else if I clear the PRAM.

I think running TTP4 would be a good thing, but I can't find the CD at the moment. (I'm moving on Sunday.) The failed updater screwed up the installation. Any other suggestions? Any other tags to use with fsck that might help? I'm only generally familiar with it being a repair utility.

You know that you have a file system problem. My suggestion is to fix it. TTP4, Drive 10, or DiskWarrior may do the trick. You should boot from a CD to run the utility. However, the OS on the CD should be newer than the one that shipped with your computer.

 

[osprey76]

You know that you have a file system problem. My suggestion is to fix it. TTP4, Drive 10, or DiskWarrior may do the trick. You should boot from a CD to run the utility. However, the OS on the CD should be newer than the one that shipped with your computer.

Agreed. I will be able to do that in a couple of days after I get set up in the new place. I have Drive 10 and TTP4, but both CDs are packed somewhere.

Your comment about the OS is a good one. Once I get it reinstalled, I'll use TTP4 to create an eDrive and that will use the same OS that runs from the HD. I had one set up but the HD it was on crapped out. That's two IBM HD's that have failed on me. The one in question here is a Western Digital.

Now that I reread your comment, my machine shipped with 9.0.4, I believe. So, that will easily be surpassed.

 

[osprey76]

Wow, I'll definitely know to look more closely if I see these problems again. The Mac eventually wouldn't boot from that internal drive. I have an external HD that I'd loaded with OS 10.3 just as a usable backup. I could still access the ailing drive, so I copied my home folder and music (I don't keep it in the home folder) over to the external drive. Not long after that, I couldn't access the internal drive. So, I did a zero all reformat (TTP4 found a bad block or two) and reinstalled 10.3.0. Three iterations of Software Update and installing Office 2004 have me functionally back to where I started. Getting iPhoto will take some time and I just need to tell iTunes where to find the music.

Quite an experience! I have never needed to do a wipe and reinstall with a MacOS before. I'll activate the protection features on TTP4 this time around. On the plus side, the computer feels much snappier booting from the internal drive than it did before. So, cleaning out the cobwebs probably was a good thing.

P.S. I ran a couple of the installers I had problems with before with very quick results this time. Both on the external drive and the reformatted internal drive.