Welcome to the MacNN Forums.

Nathan Adams · Jan 23, 2003, 09:06 AM

something very odd happened
I went to print something from safari, and for some reason everything locked up - nothing I could do would get rid of the beachball (dock was frozen, and the force close: apple+option+esc menu would not appear)
So, I reset.
Now upon resetting - show info no longer shows info, except for the desktop itself, and worse - iTunes won't start, giving me an unknown error (-50). I was ripping a CD at the time of reset.

Anybody know what happened here, and how to fix it? I'm currently downloading iTunes3 again - so hopefully that helps. But any other suggestions, aswell as the 'show info' problem? And yes I have reset again in hope things would fix themself.

Running 10.2.3

Nathan Adams · Jan 23, 2003, 09:15 AM

eep!
reinstalling iTunes3 made no difference!
still getting unknown error (-50) on trying to start it.
Anybody have any idea what the problem could be??

Nathan Adams · Jan 23, 2003, 09:42 AM

more oddities!

selecting a file and going "open with" > "other", brings up the window. but the field with the column view in it is about 2 items high, and then there's a big empty space of aqua lines down to where the buttons normally are.

also - printing
in ANY program, selecting Page Setup shows a dialog with a drop menu - with ONLY summary in it. below that is an empty textbox (where summary should be I guess)
selecting "Print" results in a beach ball that doesn't stop for that app.

What the hell happened to my Mac???

Nathan Adams · Jan 23, 2003, 09:58 AM

arrgghh! ive notice some other display problems in some dialogs, particularly with fonts (% signs, some capital letters, are appearing as an A in a box.), plus some lines of text being half cut off, etc.

Nathan Adams · Jan 23, 2003, 10:15 AM

Some images of some of the problems:

Developer · Jan 23, 2003, 10:58 AM

Have you still been using the first Safari beta? Maybe you have to restore the symbolic link to your tmp directory then. Search the other Safari problems threads for more information on that.

Nathan Adams · Jan 23, 2003, 11:08 AM

nope, I downloaded the 2nd one very shortly after Apple made it available.

I just ran disk utility off the jag install disk

i kept repairing the drive, but the exact same things kept showing up everytime (ie. it wasn't repairing them). these are the lines in red:

missing thread record (id = 422843)
overlapped extent allocation (file 1357458d)
overlapped extent allocation (file 1441837d)
overlapped extent allocation (file 1441836d)
overlapped extent allocation (file 1441836d)
overlapped extent allocation (file 1441837d)
overlapped extent allocation (file 1441832d)
overlapped extent allocation (file 1441832d)
overlapped extent allocation (file 1441833d)
overlapped extent allocation (file 1441833d)
overlapped extent allocation (file 1441834d)
overlapped extent allocation (file 1441834d)
overlapped extent allocation (file 1441835d)
overlapped extent allocation (file 1441835d)

invalid volume count
(it should be 206301 instead of 206306)
invalid volume count
(it should be 206306 instead of 206301)

does anyone know what this all means?

Developer · Jan 23, 2003, 11:25 AM

Originally posted by Nathan Adams:
does anyone know what this all means?

I think it means "backup your home folder(s) and reformat your disk".

Nathan Adams · Jan 23, 2003, 11:28 AM

is there any other way?

I've got about 25gb worth of gear that would need backing up - all I have is a CD burner.

Gul Banana · Jan 23, 2003, 11:56 AM

Try:
sudo ln -s /private/tmp /tmp
This may or may not help.

Nathan Adams · Jan 23, 2003, 12:02 PM

gul, can you explain a little further?
I have little to no experience with unix.

Nathan Adams · Jan 23, 2003, 01:08 PM

ok, i've narrowed the problem down to it being related to my account (or home folder)

I remembered that I have a little account for my sister for when she wants to muck around on something other than her old win98 machine.
Well.... I logged into that instead, and not a problem. Nothing that I listed and showed above happened, and iTunes launched fine.

So then, what could be in my account that's causing these problems? I'm stuggling to make sense of what could be doing it.

Developer · Jan 23, 2003, 01:22 PM

Originally posted by Nathan Adams:
So then, what could be in my account that's causing these problems? I'm stuggling to make sense of what could be doing it.

It could be a preference file. Rename the Preferences folder in your home folder's Library folder, for example into "Preferences old". Then create a new empty Preferences folder (might not be necessary) log out and back in into your account.
If that fixes things, you can copy (not move) the preferences you absolutely need into the new Preferences folder. If you're lucky the corrupted overlapping files are all in the old Preferences folder and trashing it might also get rid off the disk errors.
If it fixes nothing, you can at least rename the old Preferences folder back into "Preferences" and you restored the old state.

Nathan Adams · Jan 23, 2003, 01:27 PM

Sounds like it makes sense
only problem is: i can't rename files. (clicking on the name makes icons behave funny... and of course, no show info).
Any variation of renaming that would work? (like just moving the pref folder to the desktop of something?)

Developer · Jan 23, 2003, 01:43 PM

Originally posted by Nathan Adams:
Any variation of renaming that would work? (like just moving the pref folder to the desktop of something?)

Yes, that should also work.

Raining Down in Texas · Jan 23, 2003, 01:45 PM

Originally posted by Nathan Adams:
nope, I downloaded the 2nd one very shortly after Apple made it available.

I just ran disk utility off the jag install disk

i kept repairing the drive, but the exact same things kept showing up everytime (ie. it wasn't repairing them). these are the lines in red:

missing thread record (id = 422843)
overlapped extent allocation (file 1357458d)
overlapped extent allocation (file 1441837d)
overlapped extent allocation (file 1441836d)
overlapped extent allocation (file 1441836d)
overlapped extent allocation (file 1441837d)
overlapped extent allocation (file 1441832d)
overlapped extent allocation (file 1441832d)
overlapped extent allocation (file 1441833d)
overlapped extent allocation (file 1441833d)
overlapped extent allocation (file 1441834d)
overlapped extent allocation (file 1441834d)
overlapped extent allocation (file 1441835d)
overlapped extent allocation (file 1441835d)

invalid volume count
(it should be 206301 instead of 206306)
invalid volume count
(it should be 206306 instead of 206301)

does anyone know what this all means?

From what I have read, overlapped extent allocations indicate possibly severe volume damage. I had repeated overlapped extant allocations a few weeks back, and none of Disk Utility, running fsck at boot time, or Disk Warrior fixed them. I did find that booting into OS 9 and using it's Disk First Aid tool (repeatedly) did fix the errors, however.

I would take the advice of others and back up your drive before you attempt any disk repair. Then boot into OS 9 and try Disk First Aid.

Nathan Adams · Jan 23, 2003, 09:49 PM

i do that as a last resort - since I really have way too much that needs backing up...

developer - I tried removing the prefs, but it made no difference. sure i logged in with a new dock, background etc, but none of the problems went away.
maybe I should just create a new user, admin them, pull all my stuff over and then delete this one?
Is there an easy way of ripping stuff out of one users home to another?

Developer · Jan 24, 2003, 01:00 AM

Originally posted by Nathan Adams:
I tried removing the prefs, but it made no difference.

Try the whole Library folder.

Nathan Adams · Jan 24, 2003, 01:08 AM

will give that a shot tonight
(i'm in the midst of backing up stuff. tried sending stuff over to the winxp machine on the network - since that has 20gb free, but bloody windows freaks out at japanese file names....grrrrr. thank god for disk copy and disk images!!)

thanks for your help by the way

Nathan Adams · Jan 26, 2003, 03:40 AM

OK - I just finished sending my disk image stylee backups to the win98 machine (which took a while, since it didnt like my 7gb iTunes one.. breaking into 3 though did the trick though). but anyways.

I was doing this through a 2nd account since I had no 'connect to' in my problem account. After sending, I logged back into the problem account to try moving the library as suggested..... well. When I logged back in - it was all fixed! iTunes is working again, show info is working, printing is working, and no silly much up dialogs.

ALL I had done in between was create some disk images, and them over the network. So it's magically just fixed itself. Go figure.

Anyways, thanks all for the help. much appreciated.