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Why is Panther so buggy?

scem0

scem0

macrumors 604
Original poster
Jul 16, 2002
7,028
1
back in NYC!
I'm kind of dissapointed. My mom gets my Dad a new computer for christmas, and I'm all excited because it has Panther.

But to my dismay, my old PC was more stable than my new iMac... It has already crashed 3 times! 2 times when it was waking from sleep. Nothing would respond, including keyboard and mouse. And it crashed another time, but I forgot why.

What about Panther makes it so buggy?

Why is it only buggy for some people? I've been reading some of the posts in here, and some people are problem free, while others are having experiences similar to mine.

Let's hope Apple releases an update which fixes the main problems.

scem0
 
I know I know......

I'm just saying that I didn't have to do that with my PC, or any previous mac.

scem0
 
from what i remember, people were having problems with only certain apps running on panther, or the installation of panther. whats more annoying is that this is happening on a new mac.

all computers are bought generally with tech problems. check out the support boards on dell sometime - there's a sad group.
 
new imac...crashes...check your ram, might have something to do with that, especially if you installed third party ram.

Otherwise, yeah, Panther is rather buggy, in my opinion. FYI, don't turn on File Vault, then try to turn it off, but stop the 'turning off' process mid way through. It fubar'd my home folder.
 
i was pretty happy with Panther until 10.3.2, then everything went to hell. sleeping for no reason, hangups, crashes, icons getting all messed up. hopefully the next point release will help.
 
*fingers crossed* other than samba not working at first (which I fixed) I havn't had any problems with it so far.

(Clean install on a DP1GHz Quicksilver)
 
Don't you think if 10.3 was that bad for everyone we would have overflowing threads of despair. Must be something done differently than most people.
hmm, my only problem is sending faxes, everything else is hunky dory, plus maybe the dialup internet connect is much less reliable.
 
It sound to me of an isolated case, I haven't heard of or seen many problems with Panther. The only problem I have is safari crashes about twice per week.
 
My first install of panther on my powerbook, I made the mistake of doing an "upgrade" install. Though i had done this type of install with both previous updates to OS X for some reason, the panther one did not go well and i had lots of issues with preferences and performance on my powerbook. I cold not install my adobe apps, i had loads of permission issues. Just awful....

I also did the upgrade install on my g5 at work, though this one has had only minor issues. Ones that may not be related to panther. Some preference problems in specific software.

I reinstalled panther on my powerbook using the archive and install and used my usual parition scheme of keeping my documents on one partition and my OS on the other (been doing this since OS 10.1) and now LOVE panther.

Seems the upgrade install from jag to panther does not go smoothly. Possibly due to the large amounts of changes made to the system. Somethings bound to corrupt something else.
 
Re: I second that

Sounds like you got lucky with the PC and unlucky with the Mac. Why, just this AM, my dad's wireless network quit working on his factory installed XP on a Dell. Turns out XP decided to turn of DHCP and set his IP address to 192.168.0.1. And before I got tired of rebooting my factory-installed XP, it was physically locking up 3 times a day. I'd loose work. I'm not saying OSX is better in every way than XP, but I'm certainly implying it.


--
edit: i quoted the wrong post, so i just deleted the quote.
 
One thing I found that turning on idisk syncing really screwed with 'Save As..' in both word and photoshop. They'd both beachball for twenty or so seconds before the dialog came up. Turn off idisk syncing and everything works peachy. So we can add that feature to Filevault in the list of flakey things...

Otherwise I hadn't noticed any more kernal panics (or lock-ups) than under Jag. In fact I haven't had a panic on either of my machines since I installed Panther.
 
Originally posted by edesignuk
*fingers crossed* other than samba not working at first (which I fixed) I havn't had any problems with it so far.

(Clean install on a DP1GHz Quicksilver)
Click to expand...

Hey, I seem to be having the same problem. I used to be able to connect to my backup machine (Win2000) when I had 10.3.1. I went out of the country and while I was away I upgraded to 10.3.2. Now I'm back and I'm unable to access the machine.

Can you tell me how you solved the problem? Thanks!
 
I did an upgrade install and haven't had a single problem with Panther with the exception of having to use older drivers for my printer to get it to work.
 
Originally posted by kettle
my only problem is sending faxes, everything else is hunky dory, plus maybe the dialup internet connect is much less reliable.
Click to expand...

I haven't tried with 10.3.2 but in 10.3.0 I could send a fax but couldn't receive one. Though I only tried faxing one time and didn't bother trying to figure out what the deal was.
 
Re: Why is Panther so buggy?

Originally posted by scem0
... What about Panther makes it so buggy?

Why is it only buggy for some people? I've been reading some of the posts in here, and some people are problem free, while others are having experiences similar to mine.
Click to expand...

I haven't had problems with any version of Panther - I'm running 10.3.2 now.

It would probably be more trouble than it's worth, but to really answer the question we'd probably all have to list the apps we're running (or at least the ones that launch at boot-up, plus the add-ons like MenuMeter).

I did run into one sporadic problem. I had the third-party app "SSH Agent" launching at boot-up, and my machine would lock up about once every 10 log-ins after waking up (I was logging off before putting my machine to sleep, if that's not clear). I took that app out of my startup items, and I haven't had a problem since.
 
Hmmmmm SSH agent, I'll look into that and see if that is what caused the 2 crashes after waking it up from sleep.

I bought the iMac off of eBay, and it has 768MB of RAM, and I'm betting the extra RAM is 3rd party.

I have done nothing with the computer since I got it. Here, I can list everything ive done:

Imported a ****load of CDs.
installed:
-konfabulator
-Starcraft Brood War (which crashes when about 20 minutes into a game)
-Synergy (although I deleted it immediately, because it caused me not to be able to use the 'a' key :confused: [even when I turned off the key functions], I now use the iTunes controller widget with Konfab)
-Mac OS X 10.3.2 update, but it had crashed once waking up from sleep before installing this.
-Cocoa Gestures

It had Worldbook, MS Office, Virtual PC (but no windows OS), and FC express installed when I got it.

I'm going to do a clean install and see if that fixes the crashes and the freezes in starcraft.

And I don't think I was lucky with XP. XP is very crash proof. I crashed about 4 times in the past year or more that I've used my PC. I've had to force quit a ton of applications.

I'm not arguing that XP is better than OS X, I'm just saying that I've crashed 3 times in a week with OS X and 4 times in a year with XP...

Oh and by the way, I'm trying to backup some files so I can clean install, but unfortunately when I get ~56% into a burn, it says 'error #(forgot numbers): disk cannot be used' and ejects the disk.

So, I am going to have to clear out some space on my PC hard drive and transfer the files I want to keep over my LAN to the PC and then transfer them back after the clean install.

:eek: Sigh... :eek:

scem0
 
Originally posted by tjwett
i was pretty happy with Panther until 10.3.2, then everything went to hell. sleeping for no reason, hangups, crashes, icons getting all messed up. hopefully the next point release will help.
Click to expand...

Same here.
10.3.2 brought major problems on my PMG4.
Mail won't launch and hangs the entire system. I have to do a hardware reset.

I'm pretty annoyed that Apple doesn't accept this as a problem. I have read hundreds of posts on Apple's discussion forums describing the same problem. Most of them - me included - also sent Apple feedback or bug reports.

I hope 10.3.3 will fix these things.
 
Originally posted by scem0

installed:
-konfabulator
-Starcraft Brood War (which crashes when about 20 minutes into a game)
-Synergy (although I deleted it immediately, because it caused me not to be able to use the 'a' key :confused: [even when I turned off the key functions], I now use the iTunes controller widget with Konfab)
-Mac OS X 10.3.2 update, but it had crashed once waking up from sleep before installing this.
-Cocoa Gestures
Click to expand...
See if it crashes as much with Konfabulator, cocoa gestures and the other extraneous stuff removed
 
I never use cocoa gestures, konfabulator or really anything but iTunes and Mozilla.

[I was just downloading them to expirement, but I won't use them till I get settled in]

scem0
 
Also try repairing permissions.

The results are very different according to who you ask. My Mac has crashed twice in more than two years while it has gone from 10.1.4 to 10.3.2 without any clean installs and several hacks installed.
 
Yeah, that is what confuses me so much...

Some people have no problems what-so-ever. Meanwhile I have to clean install, which may or may not fix it. :(

I had no problems from 10.1-10.2.

10.4 better fix all this.

scem0
 
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