[Kaya]

Newbie to this forum, so I hope I'm posting in the righjt place where one of you good knowledgeable folks might have some perspective.

I'm on a G4 450, OS9. I'm stuck in a loop where my system freezes and the Finder is non-responsive, and cannot open any apps thus cannot run diagnostics or download any troubleshooting utilities.

Repro steps:
I'm frozen after I force quite Finder.
Reboot.
Happy Mac icon.
Disk First Aid scan; message saying computer wasn't shut sown properly. Click <Done>.
OS 9 startup screen as plugins load.
Desktop image and icons appear.
Network connection windows appear (I connect to 2 networked shares); I can't cancel them, so I enter passwords and <Connect>.
Mouse pointer moves when I move the mouse (tablet pen, actually), but Finder doesn't respond. Clicking on any menus does nothing.
<control><shift><option><appl e><esc> to Force Quit the Finder; click <Force Quit> when I get dialog box.
I'm frozen again.

Any suggestions for other keyboard commands to try, or alternate ways of booting up?


Kaya

[yoyo52]

Can you boot from a CD? If you can, then I'd try Diskwarrior to rebuild the desktop. If that doesn't do the trick, then a clean install of the OS is the next step.

[-Q-]

If you can boot up from a CD, I'd recommend a couple of other things before reinstalling the system software:

Boot up from the CD and delete the Finder Preferences. That probably won't work but you'd be amazed at what a corrupted prefs file can do.

If the above doesn't work, boot up from CD and remove any third party extensions from your extensions folder. Might be a conflict somewhere. If you can reboot with the base extensions of the OS, it was something you installed recently (or something that got corrupted).

Norton Utilities or TechTool Pro or DiskWarrior comes with a bootable CD and would probably be the quickest first step to take.

Good luck.

[a2daj]

Originally posted by Kaya:
<STRONG>Newbie to this forum, so I hope I'm posting in the righjt place where one of you good knowledgeable folks might have some perspective.

I'm on a G4 450, OS9. I'm stuck in a loop where my system freezes and the Finder is non-responsive, and cannot open any apps thus cannot run diagnostics or download any troubleshooting utilities.

Repro steps:
I'm frozen after I force quite Finder.
Reboot.
Happy Mac icon.
Disk First Aid scan; message saying computer wasn't shut sown properly. Click &lt;Done&gt;.
OS 9 startup screen as plugins load.
Desktop image and icons appear.
Network connection windows appear (I connect to 2 networked shares); I can't cancel them, so I enter passwords and &lt;Connect&gt;.
Mouse pointer moves when I move the mouse (tablet pen, actually), but Finder doesn't respond. Clicking on any menus does nothing.
&lt;control&gt;&lt;shift&gt;&lt;option&gt;&lt;appl e&gt;&lt;esc&gt; to Force Quit the Finder; click &lt;Force Quit&gt; when I get dialog box.
I'm frozen again.

Any suggestions for other keyboard commands to try, or alternate ways of booting up?


Kaya</STRONG>

Try booting up while holding down the shift key. This will start up your mac with Extensions and Control Panels disabled. If the Finder crashes in that situation, then you probably have a corrupt Finder, which would require a reinstall. If the problem doesn't happen with everything disabled, then you have an extensions conflict. You'll have to narrow down which extension is causing problems. It's usually a 3rd party extension. Sometimes, those 3rd party extensions are senstive to when they load during system startup. If an extension prefers to be loaded first, rename it with a space at the beginning. If it prefers to be loaded last, rename it with a ~ at the beginning.

[Cipher13]

Boot from a CD and remove the contents of the "Servers" folder in your System Folder (keep them some place safe), trash your System Preferences and Finder Preferences, and try rebooting now.

Tell us how it goes so far...

[milhous]

I've had similar problems to what you've been having on my Pismo500. Try these two things and it may do the trick for you.

1. ZAP THE PRAM - as soon as you hear the startup chime, quickly hold down APPLE KEY + OPTION + P + R simultaneously and wait till you hear the startup chime again. Then you can let go. This will clear and reset some preferences and will restore it to default.

2. REBUILD THE DESKTOP - after you see the Mac OS logo screen begin to finish loading the extensions, quickly hold down the APPLE KEY + OPTION key simultaneously. You should then see a dialog box asking if you wish to rebuild the desktop. Click OK and after it's done rebuilding, that should do the trick.

If these don't work, a clean install (boot from CD -&gt; reformat -&gt; reinstall) may be in your best interests. Good luck.

[Kaya]

I think I found the culprit extension that is causing my problem, having rebooted with extensions turned off, turning many of them off, and systematically turning some on/off and restarting.

The Open Transport ASLM Modules extension, when turned on, is at least partially responsible for the problem I am having. the dialog boxes for connecting to servers return, but the machine locks up after I enter the passwords and the G4 triues talking to the network.

I originally installed System 9.0.4. This OT extension came via OS 9 software update.

I haven't yet booted up from CD and re-installed the OS. I think I'll do that next.

Kaya