[bOOzo]

From time to time the last two weeks an app would stop responding and display the beachball of death. When I tried to go into an other app, that app too would get stuck and eventually all apps lock up, except for iTunes which kept on playing.

The solution was to do a reboot each time it happened.

But yesterday when the same thing happened and I rebooted, the whole OS X partition vanished and I got booted into OS 9. It asked me if I wanted to reformat the partition because it could not be read. This exact thing have happened along time ago, and I knew the solution: Diskwarrior. I repaired it and the volume worked again.

This must have been what caused the partition to disappear:
"• Incorrect values in the Volume Information were repaired.
• Critical values in the Volume Information were incorrect and were repaired."

When I booted into OS X again, it took a while for the Finder to get started but then everything was working again.

After that I've noticed that Explorer and Camino crashes on startup. Explorer is working again after I reinstalled it though. I suppose I will do the same for Camino.

Sow hat can be causing this? I thought it was a virus, but Norton AntiVirus with the latest def does not find anything.

Alterations that I've done to my computer in the latest time is that I had the Panther beta installed on the same partition a while back, but I removed it and reinstalled 10.2 again.
I've added an old 40 gig IBM stock disk that I thought was broke, but seems to be working again after I updated the firmware. I've also just got ADSL instead of modem and I've been downloading a lot of stuff.

Even if you might not be able to tell me what is wrong, is there a good way to get everything working properly?

Thank you in advance.

[soul searching]

Originally posted by bOOzo:
I've added an old 40 gig IBM stock disk that I thought was broke, but seems to be working again after I updated the firmware. I've also just got ADSL instead of modem and I've been downloading a lot of stuff.

Even if you might not be able to tell me what is wrong, is there a good way to get everything working properly?

Thank you in advance.

I've had bad experiences with the stock IBM HD's. My HD's (multiple drives with the same machine - I had two of them replaced) would get messed up at 20th gig of 30. So my problems were I couldn't receive new mail because whenever it tried to write to the disk, Mail app would "beach ball" on me. I couldn't use the copy command in the Finder because it would "beach ball". Anything that required writing to the disk would "beach ball".

I reformatted the drives a few times. They worked for a while, 'til I got to the 20th gig or so. So I say it's your drive. Then again, I'm a bit biased.

[bOOzo]

Originally posted by soul searching:
I've had bad experiences with the stock IBM HD's. My HD's (multiple drives with the same machine - I had two of them replaced) would get messed up at 20th gig of 30. So my problems were I couldn't receive new mail because whenever it tried to write to the disk, Mail app would "beach ball" on me. I couldn't use the copy command in the Finder because it would "beach ball". Anything that required writing to the disk would "beach ball".

I reformatted the drives a few times. They worked for a while, 'til I got to the 20th gig or so. So I say it's your drive. Then again, I'm a bit biased.

Sorry, I was not clear. The IBM is acting Slave. My main HD is a Seagate Barracuda that works well, and I have all my main files on that drive. The IBM slave is used for movies that I also have on CD in case it messes up.
So I doubt that it would be possible for it to mess up my computer.
Although.. When I think about it, the last time I had the problem with disappearing drives, it was also when this hd was used, but now it's a slave so..

[:XI:]

Disconnect the IBM to find out.
Slave and master might not have anything to do with it. If the drive is broken, it's broken.

[iFix Rene]

you can try apps like Cocktail to remove caches, logfiles etc

also run Repairpermissions in Disk Utility


worst case back up, do a zero all data and
reinstall OSX

[suthercd]

Here are some things to do to try to isolate the problem.

Iff you have any startup items in /Library/StartupItems or /Users/yourname/Library/StartupItems, move them to your Home directory for now. The same with any preference panes and contextual menu items- from both Libraries.

Restart and see what happens with the symptoms.

Then restart with the shift key down and use the machine again noting any changes.

Do that again, this time holding the shift keep down after entering your password at the login screen.

Depending on what has happened in the preceeding steps, you could create a new admin user and login to that account to see if that makes things more stable.

Make sure any peripheral devices are disconnectd for these steps. USB,Firewire, Bluetooth, whatever.

If there is no change, you have eliminated a lot of possibilities. You know you can boot while holding the T key down and the machine goes into Target mode- and is basically a dumb firewire drive. You can copy all the data onto another machine so you have it before re-installing OS X.

If you have access to a Firewire drive you can use Carbon Copy to make a mirror of your drive onto the Firewire, then use the Startup Disk pref pane to set that drive as the startup device. You could do some pretty extensive disk diagnotics at that point.

Each step will remove on aspect of the boot, so you can evaluate and decide.

HTH
Craig

[bOOzo]

Ok, I've taken out the IBM slave HD, no difference.

I took out all APEs, Prefpanes and Context menus, no difference.

I restarted with shift held down, no difference.


Just to be clear, the only problem still remaining is that Camino fails to launch, even though I reinstalled it.
And it also crashes when I try login in with a fresh admin account.

Just noticed that Icy Juice also crashes on launch..

So what should I do next?

[booboo]

What happens if you creater a new User account?

Is this free of all the problems? (It was for me...)

Another thing that messes up browsers is a corrupt QuickTime preference. (in your User/Library)

(I guess the main QuickTime preferences also has some info pertaining to the QuickTime plug-in - at least this is the only explanation I can think of...)

Anyway, trash it

Does that fix it?

[iFix Rene]

yeh to create a test user is a very good idear

must be an admin

just call it test with password test

then run the apps that failed, if they work
the problem is in your user folder
(most likely app support or prefs folder)

if it is still the same, then its a systemwide
problem and you should back up/reinstall

[bOOzo]

I've tried making a new user, Camino still crashes.
Although, I had some success to other day. I logged in as root and deleted all camino/chimera/mozilla preferences and moved out some folder in Computer/Library and then logged in in my regular account and Camino launched. Then I tried moving some folders back and Camino started crashing again.. And I've not been able to get it to work.

I've also tried trashing preferences but it did not help much either.
And I ran DiskWarrior again yesterday and it found problems again so there is something strange..



I also tried the hardware test on both my harddrives, and it said that the SMART system reports that the hds are working normally.
Is SMART accurate?

Because now I'm thinking of reformatting my main HD and reinstall everything, but I really don't have any place to backup too, except the Slave HD which might be broke.


Also, what is the best way to partition a HD? I thought that it might be smart to have the System on one partition, and the Users and Applications on an other. Is that possible with OS X?


I know I am asking many questions, but I really appreciate all your help!