Mac OS 10.3.8 issues

[supergod]

I upgraded to os 10.3.8 on my powermac 1.6ghz when it came out and have had nothing but grief since. Performance has been markedly stunted, especially using Safari. Crashes have become a regular occurence when doing simple things such as loading webpages and even applications like Adium have started to go on the fritz. Garageband will not even open anymore, which is not a horrible issue because I use Logic Express, but it's still quite annoying. This is even more of a pissoff because I had gotten my computer into "the zone" with os 10.3.7: everything was running as close to perfect as it ever had. I've gotten to the point where I'm deciding whether to reinstall os10.3 and upgrade until 10.3.7 without getting 10.3.8.
Is it worth going through the process if os 10.4 is on the way. Are the rumours of an April launch valid?
Assuming that 10.4 is not coming out so soon what is the best way to go about installing 10.3. I have access to an External HD for backing up files, but is this really necassary? Will I lose my applications and files if I reinstall, and if I have to back everything up, is it worth the effort? Any help would be appreciated.

 

[ct77]

Create another user account

... and see if the same problems persist.

If you create another user account, and try to use the same applications, and they work flawlessly, it suggests the problem is with corrupted preference files in your "main" account. 10.3.8 may have done the dirty work on your preference files.

If that is the case, you can try "trashing preferences" for the problem apps in your main account.

I empathasize because nothing about this type of problem is ideal -- it shouldn't happen -- just passing along what troubleshooting advice I know.

EDIT: "Trashing preferences" means going to your Home folder, then Library, then Preferences, and deleting the preferences file for the application in question. The fastest way to find the file is to use the search field (if you have Panther, in the top right corner of Finder). Say for example you want to trash preferences for Mail.app, then search for "mail", you should see the file.

 

[PlaceofDis]

a few other things for you to try....

1. repair permissions
2. make sure the cron jobs have been run
3. reinstall the 10.3.8 update, download it from apple's side and reinstall, might fix the issues


if none of these work.....then you might have to revert back to 10.3.7

 

[supergod]

I fix my permissions every day along with cleaning out caches and such. I've tried reinstalling 10.3.8 and got the exact same issues. Recently I got a program that checks for faulty preferences and ran it but it didn't find any. I really do take very good care of my computer to the extent of keeping it's hardrive at the minimum and never running any sketchy programs, so this is a real pain.

 

[daveL]

Some people on MR have had success by installing 10.3 and then installing the *combined* 10.3.8 update, i.e. don't install all the incremental updates, just the one big combo update.

 

[Bear]

Some people on MR have had success by installing 10.3 and then installing the *combined* 10.3.8 update, i.e. don't install all the incremental updates, just the one big combo update.

Actually before going to that extreme, try downloading and installing the 10.3.8 Combo Update over your existing installation and then repair permissions. A lot of times this will fix whatever the incremental updates broke.

Although in truth I only noticed issues when getting the smaller patch update during software update.

 

[Blue Velvet]

Some people on MR have had success by installing 10.3 and then installing the *combined* 10.3.8 update, i.e. don't install all the incremental updates, just the one big combo update.

I did that last night on a separate partition to run some temporary apps that I didn't want affecting my main system.

This worked perfectly unlike my main boot drive which had gone from 10.3.3 to 10.3.4 up to 10.3.8... this system has been plagued with a number of small but annoying problems, all of them fixed with the help of this forum.