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System apps keeps freezing and other weird stuff

M

Molnies

macrumors member
Original poster
Jun 7, 2006
90
0
Sweden
I've been experiencing some weird problems on my Mac Pro for the last few days. It's a Xeon quad 2.8, 6GB memory and running 10.5.6, never had any problems with it before. So the problems I'm having is that some system applications becomes unresponsive (freeze and fun beach ball spinning). In most cases I'm not able to force quit the frozen apps either. Also, in the dock it says "Application Not Responding" when I right click on them (like it should), but when I check the "Force Quit Applications" window there is no such text (there should be some red text after the application name if I'm not mistaken).
These are the apps that has frozen the last few days: System preferences, Disk Utility, System Profiler, Software Update, the main menu has also frozen at times.

When I try to shut down the Mac Pro it quits all the applications as usual, but then just stops and shows the wallpaper and nothing else (so I have to use the power button on Mac Pro itself to completely shut it down. When I want to put my Mac to sleep it takes way longer than usual as well. Today after I had been away for a while I came back to see the screen saver active, but in my Energy settings I've set it to shut down the displays before the screen saver would activate — so I have no idea why the screen saver was on...
I have locked my System Preferences (with the little lock in the lower left) but when I click on the lock it just says "Authorizing..." next to it and System Preferences freezes (no password window pops up).

I'm lost. I can't for the life of me figure out what could be wrong. I've used Repaired Permissions without any luck. (There was some error messages, but now I can't even open up Disk Utility again without it freezing directly at start up.)

All I can think about is that something I've installed would have messed something up, not sure. The last days I've installed: Grammarian Pro X (trial), iWork '09 (retail) and Handbreak. (and I've updated other software like Adium, but I doubt that's the problem)

Any help would be greatly appreciated, I've never seen anything like this before. Tried to search around but I'm guessing I'm not using the right keywords because I haven't found any useful information.
 
Is Grammarian Pro X a drag-install application, or does it use an installer? If it uses an installer, odds are one of its components is incompatible with your system. iWork '09 and Handbrake shouldn't cause problems... as far as I am aware.
 
wrldwzrd89 said:
Is Grammarian Pro X a drag-install application, or does it use an installer? If it uses an installer, odds are one of its components is incompatible with your system. iWork '09 and Handbrake shouldn't cause problems... as far as I am aware.
Click to expand...

Grammarian Pro X itself is a drag-install, but it does install an Input Method Component. I'm guessing that might be the cause to the problem then? I suspected Grammarian at first, but didn't find anything after I searched around a bit (here and Google) so I figured it was something else...
 
Yeah, that input method might be causing problems... though you won't know for sure until you remove it, then log out then back in.
 
Thanks wrldwzrd89!
That did the trick. I used the applications Uninstaller and restarted the computer. I've done a permission repair, changed System Preferences settings, checked around the System Profiler and done a Software Update without any problems. When I set it to sleep it took 1 sec, instead of close to a minute as it did before. So again, THANKS!
 
Well... I think I was a bit hasty in my happiness.
The problem has come up two times today. Uninstalling Grammarian seemed to help, but now I'm wondering if there's still traces of the program in my system? A quick spotlight search doesn't show anything and it's no longer listed under input methods, but is it possible?
Or what else could be causing this problem?
 
This is most odd. I suppose repairing permissions can't hurt - to do this go into Disk Utility, select the disk Mac OS X is installed on, and click Repair Permissions.
 
Just completed a permission repair and got the following error messages:

Code: 
Permissions differ on "private/var/log/secure.log", should be -rw------- , they are -rw-r----- .
Warning: SUID file "System/Library/Filesystems/AppleShare/afpLoad" has been modified and will not be repaired.
Warning: SUID file "usr/bin/setregion" has been modified and will not be repaired.
Permissions differ on "Developer/Examples/JavaWebObjects/DataBaseSetUp/dbdump.sh", should be -rw-rw-r-- , they are -rwxrwxr-x .
Permissions differ on "Developer/Examples/JavaWebObjects/DatabaseSetup/dbdump.sh", should be -rwxrwxr-x , they are -rw-rw-r-- .
Warning: SUID file "System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Install.framework/Versions/A/Resources/runner" has been modified and will not be repaired.
Warning: SUID file "System/Library/Printers/IOMs/LPRIOM.plugin/Contents/MacOS/LPRIOMHelper" has been modified and will not be repaired.
Group differs on "private/etc/cups", should be 0, group is 26.
Permissions differ on "private/var/spool/cups/cache/rss", should be drwxr-xr-x , they are drwxrwxr-x .

Seeing as I'm new to troubleshooting on the Mac (never needed to know anything before since everything has been so smooth) I have no idea what the above warnings mean...
 
Molnies said:
Just completed a permission repair and got the following error messages:

Code: 
Permissions differ on "private/var/log/secure.log", should be -rw------- , they are -rw-r----- .
Warning: SUID file "System/Library/Filesystems/AppleShare/afpLoad" has been modified and will not be repaired.
Warning: SUID file "usr/bin/setregion" has been modified and will not be repaired.
Permissions differ on "Developer/Examples/JavaWebObjects/DataBaseSetUp/dbdump.sh", should be -rw-rw-r-- , they are -rwxrwxr-x .
Permissions differ on "Developer/Examples/JavaWebObjects/DatabaseSetup/dbdump.sh", should be -rwxrwxr-x , they are -rw-rw-r-- .
Warning: SUID file "System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Install.framework/Versions/A/Resources/runner" has been modified and will not be repaired.
Warning: SUID file "System/Library/Printers/IOMs/LPRIOM.plugin/Contents/MacOS/LPRIOMHelper" has been modified and will not be repaired.
Group differs on "private/etc/cups", should be 0, group is 26.
Permissions differ on "private/var/spool/cups/cache/rss", should be drwxr-xr-x , they are drwxrwxr-x .

Seeing as I'm new to troubleshooting on the Mac (never needed to know anything before since everything has been so smooth) I have no idea what the above warnings mean...
Click to expand...
The SUID messages are safe to ignore - they're harmless. The other messages indicate permission errors Mac OS X found and fixed.

Something looks fishy in that output though... it appears that those first two messages contradict each other. Not sure what significance that has, if any, to the problems you're having.
 
So what to do now? Is my best bet to re-install Leopard with the DVD that came with the Mac Pro — and use TimeMachine to restore all my stuff? Or is there a possibility that the problem (component or whatever it is) would also be "restored" then, i.e. still causing problems?
 
Could be bad ram or CPU

monlies, you have a hardware issue. I had he same problem and it turned out to be bad ram. I was going crazy trying to figure this out. If you have old ram I would suggest upgrading/replacing your old ram.

www.ryanhalasz.com
 
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