[alphasubzero949]

First, this has nothing to do with the infamous QT 7.0.4 conflict that crashes DW upon rewriting the directory.

Second, I'm not sure if this is specific to PowerBook G4s as I saw a similar post over at MacInTouch.

Here is the setup: A LaCie HD is connected to the PowerBook. The LaCie has two partitions: one containing a bootable emergency "backup" of OS X and the other purely for data storage. I booted from the LaCie and was attempting to rebuild the main HD (PowerBook) with a copy of DW residing on the LaCie.

At step 8, "Making Preparations," DiskWarrior melts down and hangs. Force quitting DW obviously does not remount the main HD. Opening Disk Utility will hang that as well (stuck on "Gathering Disk Information..." with the spinning sundial). THIS HAS NEVER HAPPENED PRIOR TO THE 10.4.5 UPDATE. In fact, every other possible variable was constant.

To be sure that it was indeed the 10.4.5 update, I had to force a shutdown of the LaCie which also hung the system at the blue screen (since it didn't know what to do with the unmounted drive) and force restarted (power button salute). I selected my main HD as per the "Option" key method and was able to boot into 10.4.5 undamaged. I launched the copy of DW on my main HD and attempted to rebuild the LaCie partition (which I was also able to do in the past). Sure enough at step 8, it hung.

If one boots from the DW CD (either an original 3.0.3 copy or one made from the updater), rebuilding both drives is a successful operation.

This defeats the purpose of my setup (and I'm sure others have the same setup as well), as now I'm forced to carry the CD again in case something goes haywire with the file system.

Let's hope either Apple and/or Alsoft gets this sorted out, although I really can't put the blame on Alsoft in this matter.

[alphasubzero949]

Here is a console dump after launching DW and trying to rebuild my external's partition (this was the same case the other way around)

Feb 20 14:19:47 My-PowerBook authexec: executing /Applications/Utilities/DiskWarrior.app/Contents/MacOS/DiskWarriorTool
rm: /System/Library/Extensions/DiskWarriorATADriver.kext: No such file or directory
Feb 20 14:19:51 My-PowerBook authexec: executing /Applications/Utilities/DiskWarrior.app/Contents/MacOS/DiskWarriorRebuildServer
DiskWarrior App: Error attempting to repair preview kext. Error: 2

[bewebste]

Have you contacted Alsoft's tech support about this? What did they say?

[alphasubzero949]

Originally Posted by bewebste

Have you contacted Alsoft's tech support about this? What did they say?

They suggested that it was a third party process causing the problem and that I watch the Activity Monitor.

Eventually I found the problem: invoking Expose (which is what I did while running DW to do other things) because it appeared to lock up DW. Expose might not directly be responsible, but who knows. Either way, it seems like it's a bad thing™ to do that. I let DW run on its own without touching the computer and all seemed to be well. I don't know.

I never did figure out what really caused DW to hiccup, although I never installed any third party items between the last time I ran DW under 10.4.4 and currently under 10.4.5.

[steve626]

Originally Posted by alphasubzero949

They suggested that it was a third party process causing the problem and that I watch the Activity Monitor.

Eventually I found the problem: invoking Expose (which is what I did while running DW to do other things) because it appeared to lock up DW. Expose might not directly be responsible, but who knows. Either way, it seems like it's a bad thing™ to do that. I let DW run on its own without touching the computer and all seemed to be well. I don't know.

I never did figure out what really caused DW to hiccup, although I never installed any third party items between the last time I ran DW under 10.4.4 and currently under 10.4.5.

So are you withdrawing your claim of a "serious conflict between 10.4.5 and DiskWarrior 3.03" -- in other words your problem was due to some other process running simutaneously?

I am not surprised that invoking other processes might interfere with Disk Warrior. I have *never* done anything on either the target drive or the drive where the executable is running from when using Disk Warrior ... and have never experienced the issue you experienced.

Is that the lesson learned -- always run Disk Warrior by itself and invoke no additional processes or programs?

[bewebste]

Originally Posted by alphasubzero949

Eventually I found the problem: invoking Expose (which is what I did while running DW to do other things) because it appeared to lock up DW. Expose might not directly be responsible, but who knows. Either way, it seems like it's a bad thing™ to do that. I let DW run on its own without touching the computer and all seemed to be well. I don't know.

"Appeared" to lock up DW? I just tried doing an Expose with DW running, and I do see that if I click on the DW window while it's Exposeed, then the progress sheet kind of disappears when the window comes to the front (I'm guessing it's hiding behind the main window due to some Carbon window ordering bug), but the rebuild is still chugging along fine, even if you can't see the progress bars. If this is what you were experiencing, it looks like it's just a visual glitch and doesn't actually interfere with the rebuild process.