[Q27]

For the past year I have been fighting this issue on my iMac 27" i5. Most of the time there doesn't seem to been any rhyme or reason to why it pops up. I notice the issue first usually when trying to launch Mail, I will get the following error "Mail cannot save information about your mailbox because of a network problem. Click quit and check your network settings, and that you can still access your home folder. Then open mail again." When the issue is going on I cannot create a new file or delete files from the hard drive I get error "The operation can't be completed. An unexpected error occurred (error code -50)" Other apps like Firefox will tell me that another copy of firefox is open and to close that before launching this copy. Google Chrome will open but cannot go to any webpages. Safari seems to be the one application that doesn't have any problems when this is going on.

It seems permissions related. The errors are fixed by hard powering the system down and then turning it on again. I have repaired permissions on the disk. Repaired the disk with Disk Utility. I have created a new user and it still happened with that user. I reset the PRAM. I ran the hardware check from the MacOSX install disc. This issue first popped up when I was using Snow Leopard, and I am now on Lion and it still is occurring. Sometimes I can be running for over a week and it will not happen other times it will be multiple times in the same day that it pops up.

Has anyone heard of this and how to fix it, or are there any suggestions on what I can do to fix this?

[Spheric Harlot]

1. Make sure you have multiple complete backups. Whatever is happening may be corrupting data.

2. Use the Hardware test (boot the machine while holding the "D" key) to run the extended test.

3. If that doesn't result in a clear diagnosis, download Remember and run another extended test.

My first bet is bad RAM.

My second is a failing hard drive.

[Q27]

I do have backups, but nothing from before it started happening.

Extended hardware test shows nothing. Also a possible hint might be that I have found a way to reproduce it, if I play Diablo 3 when I quit out of the game my system is like this when I come back. This was happening long before I got Diablo 3

[ibook_steve]

First, try another user account. If you can't reproduce the problem, something is wrong with your main user.

Barring that, I agree that it's memory or (more likely) the hard drive, even if the hardware test doesn't find anything. Have you tried a repair in Disk Utility?

Steve

[Q27]

Still same problem with the other user account, and did use the repair with the disk utility with no change. I did try other memory tests besides the Apply Hardware test for multiple iterations and the RAM always comes back clean. Possibly a drive problem, but all hard drive problems I have seen in the past never reacted like this. I have been thinking about wiping the disk and reinstalling the OS fresh. Maybe with the long weekend I will finally get around to that.