[beverson]

So, all of our Macs recently began exhibiting a very strange behavior. Almost every time one boots (or logs in, if auto login is off). This has happened since the 10.3.3. update was applied, but I don't know that it's necessarily related —_one machine I updated right after the update came out, and it was working fine right afterwards, while the others were all updated last week (not by me) and now they're all screwy, including the G4 I did two or three weeks ago.

Checking out the console, here's what I see that seems to be applicable:

Mac OS X Version 10.3.3 (Build 7F44)
2004-03-30 11:19:00 -0700
kextload: unable to register module with kernel
kextload: a link/load error occured for kernel extension /System/Library/Filesystems/AppleShare/asp_tcp.kext
load failed for extension /System/Library/Filesystems/AppleShare/asp_tcp.kext
(run kextload with -t for diagnostic output)
kextload: unable to register module with kernel
kextload: a link/load error occured for kernel extension /System/Library/Filesystems/AppleShare/afpfs.kext
load failed for extension /System/Library/Filesystems/AppleShare/afpfs.kext
(run kextload with -t for diagnostic output)

I ran the combo updater today on the G4 mentioned earlier, but it doesn't seem to help. This problem doesn't happen every boot, but most — it rarely happens on a subsequent login, but when it does only when it DIDN'T happen to the first login upon booting. Once it's happened, if I can recover from it (usually just by relaunching the Finder, but sometimes that doesn't do it all the way), things are fine afterwards and any subsequent login is problem free. I was put onto the network possibility because on one account only, the freeze would be accompanied by an incompletely drawn and unresponsive network login box — when this happened, relaunching the Finder again would typically allow login to progress, but the box remained floating on top of everything, logout would be blocked by the same box, and I would have to kill loginwindow to get out of it all. As usual, logging right back in with the same account, or another, works fine.

On a whim, I tried booting with the Ethernet cord unplugged. On two machines this allowed normal boot up 100% of the time.

So, I'm baffled. I realize it may be tough to troubleshoot without more info. I haven't been able to find anything on this problem, so I'm assuming for now that it's not widespread and somehow specific to our setup. However, we don't have any Netinfo servers or anything —_only one OS 9 server box that we have to manually connect to each time we want it. Could it be something with the network? We're one office in at a University, connected to a very large LAN. I'm stuck. Any assistance would be tremendous.

Thanks in advance.

[Dsigner]

Just went through the same thing this weekend. Solution was:

-Restart with ethernet cable physicaly unplugged (this should allow a full boot)
-remove all finder sidebar items that do not reside on the local machine (server volumes etc)
-reboot with ethernet plugged in
-replace network sidebar items (haven't tried replacing windows volumes yet)

Possibly the "randomness" you experienced is related to weather or not a window with a side bar was open in the finder and needs to be drawn/refreshed on launch. There is thread on apple.com about this behavior.

There have got to be a ton of people experiencing this, hope this helps.

[beverson]

Originally posted by Dsigner:
Just went through the same thing this weekend. Solution was:

-Restart with ethernet cable physicaly unplugged (this should allow a full boot)
-remove all finder sidebar items that do not reside on the local machine (server volumes etc)
-reboot with ethernet plugged in
-replace network sidebar items (haven't tried replacing windows volumes yet)

Possibly the "randomness" you experienced is related to weather or not a window with a side bar was open in the finder and needs to be drawn/refreshed on launch. There is thread on apple.com about this behavior.

There have got to be a ton of people experiencing this, hope this helps.

Wow, thanks. That does potentially help a lot. After posting, I tested it with my iBook, which has never exhibited this behavior before, and it also froze. But I don't see this at home at all with either my iBook or iMac. Odd....

Also strange, if I hold down shift during login, at least every time I tried (half dozen or so), the freeze didn't happen.

So does this include the sidebar shortcuts to Network and my iDisk?

Anyway, I'll give this fix a shot. Thanks again.