[jbotts]

I installed the new AIM beta yesterday and I've experienced nothing but trouble since. All my applications took forever to launch and then each had the spinning cursor of death after they diod launch. Force quitting sometimes eventually worked, but sometimes not. I botted into classic and ran Disk First Aid and I checked out fine. If I try to open the Applications folder in 9.1, the system freezes, even after a desktop rebuild. Any suggestions to repair my Applications folder? Any ideas about how it got messed up in the first place? I'd really like to go back to X, but I can't possibly do it until it starts working again. Help would be very greatly appreciated.

[starfleetX]

Very unusual.

I'd suspect your hard drive has gotten corrupted somehow. That's the only explanation I can think of. Disk First Aid doesn't really check much; so, I woudn't rely too much on its little "okay" result. I'd suggest finding a copy of Norton's Utilities (6.0 or higher) to try to fix it.

[ 07-15-2001: Message edited by: starfleetX ]

[Gregory]

Remove the Preference folder in case it is pref related. Prefs overload is suppose to try to detect possibly damaged pref files. CC8 can scan any folder and try to spot damaged files like System etc and any extensions. Drop a file on ResEdit and use it to verify - very reliable. TechTool Lite and Pro.

Replace the System file from virgin system. When I hear "Classic" I think OS X and running Classic, not 9.1. Classic is "Mac-on-linux" kindof.

Disk Warrior 2.1 is your best bet, but backup, reformat, restore is much faster if you can't find it right off. Good time to do it anyway with (hopefully) 9.2 and updates to 10.04 due RSN.

And it may require rebuild desktop, though that is rare. TechTool Lite can check the Desktop for repairs.

And get a copy of "Sad Macs" to help you with trouble-shooting and upgrades etc.

[jbotts]

I managed to get into OS X again and delete AIM. I went to the process viewer and it said that rott had a Finder process running "zombie." What does this mean? I disabled root under NetInfo Manager, but when I tried to restart, I got a flashing question mark disk. I'll have to go back to Gainesville to try to boot from a CD-ROM. The same thing happened before (except without the infuriating slowdowns) a couple weeks ago and I ended up reinstalling the OS. What causes the computer to "lose" both the OS X and OS 9.1 System folders? I've taken to explicitly openning the System Preferences>Startup Disk pane and selecting 10.0.4 <everytime> I start up. Once I start up again, I'll be able to see if disabling root helped at all or whether I need to start from scratch. Thanks for all your help!

[jbotts]

After a complete uninstall of OS X and a copmplete reinstallation, I discovered that OmniWeb and not AIM was the cause of the interminable slowdowns. I couldn't even get OS X work after launching OmniWeb. I guess I'm a forced convert to IE. Using top -u, I notice that AIM is consistantly the process with the heaviest CPU usage - its virtual memory allocation is 58 Megs and its taking 33% of the processor time. Does this seem strange to anyone else? I'm running iTunes and Classic at the same time, but they both use a far lower share of the machine's resources (PowerBook G4 w/ 256 RAM). Is this an example of superior Apple software and AOL's ineptness? So much for my _nice-looking_ browser...