[mattyd]

A few weird things going on...

The other day I tried erasing a volume on an external Firewire drive using Disk Utility, but when I clicked on the Erase button nothing happened.

Then I noticed that I couldn't erase Junk Mail or Deleted messages in mail. Again, nothing happens. No dialog boxes or anything.

I've also noticed that when choosing to quit some apps, they "unexpectedly quit" or apps "unexpectedly quit" when they're done with a particular task (like Popcorn will quit after burning a DVD, for example).

Seemed like a permission thing. I repaired, still no go.

Anyone have any ideas? Running 10.3.7 on an iMac G5.

Thanks.

Edit: Now I noticed that I can't send mail from one of my accounts in Mail. I click on the send button and nothing happens.

[mattyd]

Ok, I booted from an install disk and tried to repair my startup disk. It couldn't complete the repair, giving me an error that said "The underlying task reported failure on exit".

Can anyone tell me what that means or how I can fix it?

[mattyd]

Please forgive the bump, but I'm really in need of a little advice here.

I think I've narrowed down the issue... apparently apps are having trouble overwriting existing files. If I try and do a "Save as..." and name the file the same as an existing file, instead of asking me if I want to replace the existing file, the app unexpetedly quits.

There seems to be a general problem with apps displaying warning notices. For example, if my roomate's iPod is plugged in and I launch iTunes in MY account, instead of the warning box asking me if I want to associate the iPod with my Library, iTunes just quits. If I unplug his iPod, iTunes launches fine.

Thanks.

[hoopz]

Do you have enough functionality to create a new user? Try it if you can and log in as the new user to see if the problem goes away.

If it does, that opens several promising lines of troubleshooting. If it doesn't (or your problem prevents you from creating a new user), you may wish to consider an Archive And Install, which is actually comparatively painless.

[mattyd]

Yep. I was able to create a new user (and there's actuallu already another user account on my computer).

Don't have time to see if the prolems exists accorss users, but I'll try later.

If I archive and install, will I be able to preserve the Shared user folder? We keep all our music and some other shared files there. Also, will an archive and install fix the disk errors I'm getting?

[bergy]

Hello ..

This is a really great app to have around in times like this ...

Disk Warrior
http://www.alsoftinc.com/DiskWarrior/index.html

If you can get the cd as soon as you can ..

You cannot do an archive and install on a corrupted disk ..

Here is some info ....

X-lab: Advice on Archive & Install
http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/archiveinstall.html

Apple - Archive and Install
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=107120

[mattyd]

Thanks! I thought I might have to go the Disk Warrior route, but was hoping there might be a solution that cost less than $80 and/or didn't involve erasing my drive and starting all over again.