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system acting unstable

excalibur313

excalibur313

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jun 7, 2003
780
5
Cambridge, MA
My powerbook running tiger has been acting weird the last couple days. I tried fixing the permissions but itunes crashes a lot and my clock also will get stuck and just pinwheel when I get near it. Other programs seem to be acting a little more crashy than usual too. Is there anything I can do since it isn't the system permissions?
Thanks,
Stephen
 
Woah, where to start...

Have you got third party RAM installed? Does Disk Utility (in the Utilities folder) tell you that your SMART status is verified? Do you have any third party theme changing apps or system hacks? Have you opened up Activity Monitor (also in Utilities Folder) to see if there's a specific process that is using a lot of your CPU or RAM? How much spare space do you have on your hard drive (the one you boot from if you have multiple drives)? Have you restarted recently?

Well?... :)
 
I do have third party ram installed but I got it from owc and i've had no problems with it for about six months. I am smart verified. I have no system hacks whatsoever. There are no processes that are using abnormally high amounts of ram. I have restarted recently. I did that as soon as it happened. I have 20 gigs free. Another thing I should mention is that I was working on a word document earlier today and it said that I didn't have enough space on my hard drive to save the word file that I was just making small changes to. Nothing was copy protected. I think it did then save the changes but it was unusual that it gave me that error.
Thanks,
Stephen
 
It could still potentially be bad RAM but I think it's sounding unlikely. There's a problem with some earlier releases of Panther whereby a certain log file (I forget which) would overnight grow to the point of filling your hard drive. I've heard of it occurring once in Tiger too. So, that might be something to keep an eye on. The obvious symptoms being no space left on your start up drive. In other words, do you have 20GB free right now or is that just from memory because this happens very quickly.

Sorry for all the questions but it's surprisingly rare for a system to suddenly clog up like that. Are you running FileVault? Is the system running particularly hot at the moment?
 
No file vault...I actually did a clean install of tiger on this because I heard complaints about that and I got paranoid. The weird thing was that when I saved it to an empty flash drive it gave me the same error so I don't think it was actually full. It just says that I have 20 gigs when I go to get info on the drive.
 
This is really weird. It screams of a system permissions discrepancy but obviously it's not. Maybe try starting from the OSX disks and repair the disk (not the permissions) from there. Sorry I'm not being very helpful. :eek:
 
I think I've pretty much covered all the basics. Sorry for making you answer all these questions though, I know exactly how frustrating these things can be.

What sort of non-Apple apps do you have installed or running that could potentially be causing this? :)
 
excalibur313 said:
Another thing I should mention is that I was working on a word document earlier today and it said that I didn't have enough space on my hard drive to save the word file that I was just making small changes to. Nothing was copy protected. I think it did then save the changes but it was unusual that it gave me that error.
Thanks,
Stephen
Click to expand...
No poo...
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/126233/

This kind of behavior is strange. When doing things, have activity monitor open and have the "System Memory" tab open. Do the Page ins/outs seem to be going up at high rates? Do you have a lot of widgets open!? :confused:
 
I found out that I think this only happens upon the second time of launching itunes on a particular boot session. At that point I'm unable to quit itunes and my clock remains frozen until I do a hard reboot because it hangs if I try to do it normally.
 
excalibur313 said:
I found out that I think this only happens upon the second time of launching itunes on a particular boot session. At that point I'm unable to quit itunes and my clock remains frozen until I do a hard reboot because it hangs if I try to do it normally.
Click to expand...

Hmmm... Try moving all the files in ~/Library/Preferences/ that start with com.apple.itunes out of it, and see if you can still reproduce the problem.
 
Wow! You're good! That worked perfectly. Can I do that with any files in the user library if I find it's screwing something up or do I have to exercise caution with some?
Thanks for your help!
 
excalibur313 said:
Wow! You're good! That worked perfectly. Can I do that with any files in the user library if I find it's screwing something up or do I have to exercise caution with some?
Thanks for your help!
Click to expand...

You can do it with any of the files in ~/Library/Preferences/, but you'll lose any preferences you've set for that application (it'll reset to the default prefs).

Just cause Mad Jew was so helpful, and I got all the credit, I'm sure he would have had the same suggestion had he read your last comment before I did. :)
 
So it turns out that it only works for a while. I tried deleting those again and it worked without error for maybe a week or so but it's back to the state it was in before where it keeps freezing upon launching itunes for the second time. Is there a more permanant solution to this?
 
lilstewart92 said:
Would that be a problem-maker?

Never heard of anything like that :confused:
Click to expand...

Well, there are all sorts of issues with iTunes widget being naughty (do a search in the forums for "iTunes widget") in various ways, but it seems to pretty much have been fixed under 10.4.3. I'm just trying to think up things that would cause the iTunes prefs file to consistently become corrupted.

OP, you are updated to 10.4.3, right? Cause if you're not, you might want to try that...
 
Just out of interest, is it now only iTunes having issues. I ask because last time around, it sounded almost like a system-wide issue. If it's system-wide again, I recommend fsck which is probably a better option for you than repairing the hard drive from the OSX disks.

It seems to be related to your systemuiserver process, so what exactly is in your menu bar? :)
 
ok. next question, have you slept with a prostitute before?

NAH don't answer that, that was inspired by an episode of LOST when Jack was screwing around with soyer when he's having major headaches. he asked some normal questions, and started asking stuff like that and Soyer got really pissed.

sorry i can't really help. :(

BTW, how do you repair the mac with the DVD Tiger disk?
 
steelfist said:
BTW, how do you repair the mac with the DVD Tiger disk?
Click to expand...


You can start form the disk by having it in the drive and holding down C. This will lead you to the Installer, which is not what you want. So, you select Disk Utility from the Installer menu (I think, one of them anyway) and select your disk and then press Repair Disk down the bottom right.

Alternatively, use fsck because it's more up-to-date (gets updated with your OS, unlike your disks). :)

Keep away from prostitutes, they make you go blind.
 
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