I thought this was a random incident of OS corruption and ended up resolving by doing a reload.
Initially the behavior was isolated to a single machine. Now, I have another and would like to figure out exactly what's happening instead of pulling out the nuclear arsenal for a cockroach problem.
Anyway, here's details:
Symptom:
OS hangs just as soon as desktop loads and menu bar begins to draw. Spotlight is the only thing in the menu bar, and there is no menu bar beyond the spotlight icon. When hovering cursor over spotlight, the beach ball of doom (aka the corporate wheel) is spinning. The machine will stay in this state indefinitely until it is rebooted.
Initially this was isolated to a "vintage" dual G4 MD running 10.4.x (all latest patches applied).
Tried following:
Now, I have a 17" G5 white iMac (also running 10.4.x with latest patches) doing the same thing in a different department.
Before I nuke it, was hoping to isolate the issue and hopefully prevent it from happening elsewhere in the environment.
As a side note, this environment is a commercial printing operation and the users receive a huge number of files from external clients. Is it possible this is some sort of virus/malware? We don't run antivirus software on our macs...
Thanks in advance!
Initially the behavior was isolated to a single machine. Now, I have another and would like to figure out exactly what's happening instead of pulling out the nuclear arsenal for a cockroach problem.
Anyway, here's details:
Symptom:
OS hangs just as soon as desktop loads and menu bar begins to draw. Spotlight is the only thing in the menu bar, and there is no menu bar beyond the spotlight icon. When hovering cursor over spotlight, the beach ball of doom (aka the corporate wheel) is spinning. The machine will stay in this state indefinitely until it is rebooted.
Initially this was isolated to a "vintage" dual G4 MD running 10.4.x (all latest patches applied).
Tried following:
- Reset PRAM
- Boot into Safe Mode (in attempt for OS self-repair utils to run)
- Boot from DiskWarrior CD and repair HD (found and repaired issues)
- Boot from System disk and ran repair permissions
Now, I have a 17" G5 white iMac (also running 10.4.x with latest patches) doing the same thing in a different department.
Before I nuke it, was hoping to isolate the issue and hopefully prevent it from happening elsewhere in the environment.
As a side note, this environment is a commercial printing operation and the users receive a huge number of files from external clients. Is it possible this is some sort of virus/malware? We don't run antivirus software on our macs...
Thanks in advance!