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Zimwy · Feb 13, 2003, 01:48 AM

Hey all,
Has this happened to anyone yet? I was doing nothing out of the ordinary on my DVI 800, when things started getting a little funky. I noticed in System Preferences, under "other", i had 3 "keyboard" control panels, as well as the usual one up under hardware. They all worked too! Anyway, I tried to log out to see if this would fix it, when blammo, kernal panic. "Okay," i thought...I've had kernel panics before, no big deal. I restarted, logged back in, and DISASTER.
All of my icons were different, if not gone completely, the button bars in my finder windows had defaulted back to normal, all of my icon sizes were reset, any windows that had pictures set as their backgrounds are now gone. I'm finding more and more things every day that were killed.
The MOST annoying of all was the icon sizes, because I can not set them back. No matter what I do, the "My Computer" folder refuses to have human-readable-sized icons. Every other window on the entire computer has the icons set to HUGE aswell. I'm absolutely stumped. Any ideas how to tame my icons back into place?
If I just change their size, all i have to do is close the window and open it again and they'll be huge (or tiny if it's the computer window).

Thanks,
Gabe

pat++ · Feb 13, 2003, 04:06 AM

did you run fsck in single user mode to repair the disk?

normyzo · Feb 13, 2003, 12:55 PM

Can you post the kernel panic?

Dan

kcmac · Feb 13, 2003, 01:09 PM

Can you install your latest version over the top of what you have? Not really a reinstall because you won't be erasing the disk. You shouldn't lose any files and it should compare things that may be missing and reinstall them.

If you are losing so much, have you trashed your prefs?

K++ · Feb 13, 2003, 01:30 PM

This is so wierd. First of all do you have any themes or haxies installed?

Because I have always felt one day someone would write a bad one capable of doing something like this. If not then where are you getting this My Computer folder from? Is it your hard drive and your just used to windows speak?

Uncle Skeleton · Feb 13, 2003, 01:59 PM

something similar happened to me once and it was because my hard drive was absolutely filled with something and no apps could save their preferences. I never found out what though, because I had to reboot because nothing would run, and after that I had 13 GB free and everything was better

Zimwy · Feb 13, 2003, 05:50 PM

Hey all,
Thanks so much for all the replies.

First, how would I post the Kernel Panic? Would I just tell you the info that was on that little window that popped up?

Maybe I wasn't exactly clear in my description of what happened. This "my computer" window, I meant the window that shows all the drives, cds, and mounted networks that are connected to your computer. Under finder preferences you have a choice upon making a new window to either show "Home" or "Computer". I have it set to computer. That's what I'm talking about when I talk about the "My Computer" window. Windows speak?! I have yet to use a PC in my entire life!

I have not run fsck in single user mode. I thought it automatically does that when you restart after a kernel panic. No?

I had no 3rd party sketchy things installed. All I have installed that's remotely sketchy is PTHiTunes which just puts a Play Button in the menu bar.

Yeah, so no icon sizes can be remembered, the button bar thing that defaults to the "Computer" "Favorites" and other stuff buttons, was back to the default. I had to log out and in again just to get the icons halfway back to normal. i still find things that don't open with what they should.

I'm installing OS 10.2.4 right now, so hopefully that will fix whatever was killed. here we go: if I never post anything again, it means my computer has exploded and my house is a smouldering pile of rubble.

Spheric Harlot · Feb 13, 2003, 05:51 PM

Originally posted by Uncle Skeleton:
something similar happened to me once and it was because my hard drive was absolutely filled with something and no apps could save their preferences.

Bingo.

OS X gets ugly if it has no space on the boot drive left.

I wish it were a little more graceful and just *warned* you ahead of time, so you could quit apps/restart to free up virtual memory.

If it helps any, know that Windows NT is totally graceless as soon as it runs out of *real* memory. It will swap, but graphics will start to disappear and the waiting is LONG.

-s*

Zimwy · Feb 13, 2003, 06:35 PM

Nope, I definitely have enough space left, and always did. I usually have around 15 to 20 GBs free. I installed 10.2.4 and booted into single user man and ran fsck, here's what it got me:

First time around:
Checking Catalogue File:
Overlapped Extent Allocation ( x 3)
Checking Multi Linked Files
Orphaned Indirect Node ( x3)
Checking Catalogue Heirarchy
Invalid Directory Item count ( x 2)
Checking volume Bitmap
Needs minor repair
Checking value Info
Invalid volume free block count

2nd Time Around:
Checking Catalogue file
Overlapped Extent Allocation x 2
Checking Volume Bitmap
Needs minor repair

I then ran fsck about 6 more times and everything was fine, except for the overlapped extent allocation. Files 1078670d and 1078671d would both have "overlapped extent allocation." after those 6 more fsck runs, and then still not being fixed, I gave up and just finished booting. Any idea how I can figure out what those files are? Is it bad that they're not fixed? What does "Overlapped Extent Allocation" mean anyway?

Thanks,
gabe

malvolio · Feb 13, 2003, 08:04 PM

The "overlapped extents" error message indicates a directory problem. It will eventually cause you some degree of grief.
If repeated runs of fsck can't cure it, you should get a good 3rd-party utility (preferrably DiskWarrior) to use to make the repair.

Zimwy · Feb 13, 2003, 09:38 PM

Some amount of grief?

What exactly does that mean? You think that disk warrior will be able to repair it? Will I have to reformat?! Ahh! I just want to know my options.

Thanks,
gabe

King Bob On The Cob · Feb 13, 2003, 09:50 PM

I think apple killed all your resource forks and cleared your caches... I know there is a command line code that strips resource forks, and cron tasks clear caches, but some of your preferences being lost is just weird :-\

malvolio · Feb 13, 2003, 10:07 PM

Originally posted by Zimwy:
Some amount of grief? What exactly does that mean? You think that disk warrior will be able to repair it? Will I have to reformat?! Ahh! I just want to know my options.

Thanks,
gabe

Means I can't be sure, because I don't know what exactly those files are, either. But sooner or later, you will have problems.
Yes, DiskWarrior is 99.9% likely to repair the problem. You should be able to escape without a reformat.