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webcookie · Nov 28, 2004, 10:37 AM

Last night, both Safari and Word unexpectedly quit, which is fine. But this morning, everything was acting weird. iCal deleted all my stuff, but it came back. Mail wouldn't load, but it came back. Sys Prefs wouldn't load, but now it does. And sometimes the address bar in Safari flashes away (to be replaced by brushed metal) for a second. That's fine now. The dock also wouldn't magnify or show the name of the program, but it is fine now. But what happened. The SMART status of my drive is Verified. I'm really worried!! Oh please help me!! :'(

Catfish_Man · Nov 28, 2004, 10:52 AM

Very curious. You could look in Console for anything suspicious (tends to take some knowledge to filter out the suspicious stuff, unfortunately), and I would also recommend rebooting.

Dr. Smoke · Nov 28, 2004, 10:57 AM

As a general check, run the procedure specified in my Resolving Disk, Permission, and Cache Corruption FAQ. Perform the steps therein in the order specified.

webcookie · Nov 28, 2004, 12:44 PM

Thanks guys. I called Apple Care and they had me do an Archive & Install. Everything *appears* to be fine now, but I don't want to jinx it. The tech said he recommends rebooting once a week. I hadn't rebooted in about two months. Could this cause serious problems? This was a very stressful morning. I wake up and first thing the iBook is acting wonky. Kudos to Apple Care for being helpful and for speaking English that I can understand.

Now, to buy an external drive so that I do not have any more backup panics..

Big Mac · Nov 28, 2004, 06:42 PM

Were you perhaps low on disk space? Weird things sometimes happen when the Mac is low on disk space, due to VM files getting squeezed.

webcookie · Nov 28, 2004, 06:54 PM

Originally posted by Big Mac:
Were you perhaps low on disk space? Weird things sometimes happen when the Mac is low on disk space, due to VM files getting squeezed.

I have 11gb free on my hard drive.

SMacTech · Nov 28, 2004, 07:37 PM

Originally posted by webcookie:
I have 11gb free on my hard drive.

I wonder how much you had before reinstalling OS X. Did you check your disk space when you had problems? Do you use any BitTorrent apps? It sounds as Big Mac suggested, low disk space.

Definitely get an external hard drive for backup.

webcookie · Nov 28, 2004, 07:49 PM

Originally posted by SMacTech:
I wonder how much you had before reinstalling OS X. Did you check your disk space when you had problems? Do you use any BitTorrent apps? It sounds as Big Mac suggested, low disk space.

Definitely get an external hard drive for backup.

I had around 13gb before the archive & install, last time I checked, which wasn't too long ago. No, I don't use anything like BitTorrent. All I have installed on my iBook is:

Safari, Mail, iTunes, iCal, iMovie, Word, Excel, Entourage, Power Point, Photoshop Elements, iJournal, Text Edit, Address Book, Adium, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, The Sims (Livin' Large, Hot Date, Vacation, Unleashed), Fetch, Firefox, Frogg, iChat, iPhoto, Internet Explorer, Ircle, Mail Factory, Photosite Timesaviour, Thunderbird, and whatever else came installed on it.