On 08/04/2005, at 12:50 AM, Vladimir James wrote:
Suddenly, some applications will no longer open - Safari, Disc Utility,
System Profiler, Intego VirusBarrier X, uCalendar, TinkerTools. Similar
syptoms - the eternal pinwheel, but no new window or other execution.
App appears in dock with message "Application Not Responding", which
necessitates a forced quit.
Other apps working okay - Internet Connect, GraphicConverter,
PowerMail,
FireFox, YASU. Was able to repair permissions once with Disc Utility,
but
subsequent attempts only got the pinwheel. Repaired permissions with
YASU. Rebuilt the directory twice with DiskWarrior. It always finds
something to repair, but it was unable to rectify the problem. Trashed
some preferences, but no good done.
Can't account for the sudden failures - no outages, no new software.
Noticed the odd, unexpected flicker/flash on restarts. Running a
G4/800,
512RAM, OSX 3.8. 80GB HD half full; 120GB external FireWire HD.
Anyone have any clues or suggestions?
Vlad James
FIRST THING TO DO...
Log into as different user account if you have one, or create a new one
if you don't and log into that. Test your apps in the new account to
see if they still misbehave. If this test passes, log back out, and
back into your own account. If it doesn't, you've got some deep seated
problems and a clean install with archive might be in order.
SECOND THING TO DO...
Check your login items, if you have any (if not, it's something more
sinister). Make a note of them, and delete them all. Log out and log
back in, then check your apps again. If the problems have gone away
start adding back your login items one by one, logging out and back in
again each time. If you're still having problems...
THIRD THING TO DO
Go to Home > Library > Preferences and sort by date. Delete the .plist
files with modification dates within the last day or so, or since the
date the problems started happening. Delete them, or move them to
another folder if you think they are important (such as Mail) and try
the apps again.
After this, it starts getting a bit beyond the scope of an email. This
happened to me last year, and it took me several months of this malarky
to sort out, because pinpointing the actual cuilprit became very
difficult. From memory, I think it turned out to something seemingly
innocuous, like iCal Scheduler or something. Once I discovered that, I
tune off the alarm feature in iCal and everything has been fine ever
since.
--
Peter Hinchliffe Apwin Computer Services
FileMaker Pro Solutions Developer
Perth, Western Australia
Phone (618) 9332 6482 Fax (618) 9332 0913
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Mac because I prefer it -- Windows because I have to.
