[yoyo52]

I've been having very very strange problems since I updated my G4 to 9.04. The first time I rebooted after installation nothing was wrong. But then, on the next day I turned on the computer and the computer would not send a signal to the monitor. I tried the reset button, and when I pressed it, a momentary line came across the monitor screen, but then nothing else happened. So I actually unplugged the machine--first time ever. When I turned it back on, everything was fine and dandy.

Yesterday I had no problems. Tonight, however, strange things happened. First, I tried to print to my Epson 740 and the computer crashed. When I rebooted, the print monitor window came up and the document printed. I tried printing a couple more times without problem, but then I crashed and I kept crashing after rebooting. As soon as the control strip icon came up, crash. So I ran the CC conflict test. It determined that several extensions were conflicting.

But the more I went through the tests, the more convinced I was that it couldn't be an extension conflict. First, the nature of the crashing would change. The crash taht I started out with brought up the MacsBug window. Every so often, though, the crash came when I double clicked on the CC application. Then what happened was more a hard freeze than a crash. The icon emptied out as if the application were opening, but then everything froze.

Eventually it got to the point that the REALLY odd things started to happen. I'd reboot and everything would go fine until the desktop came up. Then, after the desktop icons appeared, they'd disappear, reappear, and then the computer would freeze. That happened a couple of times, and it scared me a lot. Once, however, the freezing led to a completely grey screen, which I'd read about in some forums as having to do with a USB hub. So I disconnected my Interex hub, which had been working great until I upgraded to 9.04. Now there seem to be no problems.

Am I right that the USB hub presents a hardware conflict of some sort with the OS 9.04 USB extensions? If so, is there any way around the problem? I've read that disconnecting the hub from the USB port until the smiley face comes up on rebooting the computer will solve the problem--but that sure is an awkward thing to have to do!

Anyway, any suggestions are welcome. Thanks!

[wlonh]

i note that you mention Conflict Catcher... i just had a thought: i read a report at macintouch about how there is a known issue with the System Merge feature in CC, that this System Merge can cause much trouble.

it would not be possible to use this feature of CC for the 9.04 update and therefore could not be the cause of 9.04 trouble, but i am wondering just how many people used this System Merge feature when they upgraded to MacOS 9.0 from 8.6 or whichever OS they upgraded from...

from MacInTouch:

"Date: Fri, 31 Mar 2000 13:40:04 -0500
From: Tom Sheppard
Subject: Warning on default option in Conflict Catcher

"I'd like to offer this warning to your readers about the dangers of accepting a default option called "Merge system resources" in Conflict Catcher (CC).

Over the years, through multiple system updates, I've always been careful to do a clean install of any new Mac OS version. To restore my other needed System Folder files I used CC's excellent "Clean-Install System Merge" feature. Worth the price of the product just for that feature. There is an option to merge the resources from your old System file to your new one. This option is on by default and that's the way I left it. I was expecting items like sound resources would be moved over. But apparently more than that is happening.

After upgrading my low end 7100/66av to Mac OS 9 I noticed severe performance degradation. In trying to execute a "Hello World" CGI written in MacPerl using either Microsoft's Personal Web Sharing or Apple's Web Sharing the time from invoking the URL from a browser on another machine until the text appeared back was a whopping 11 seconds! (This is not the problem with IE 5.0 Chuck Shotten reported today on MacInTouch). I know the 7100/66 is slow, but it's not _that_ slow. File launches would also take much longer and menus weren't as snappy.

My first thoughts were about the bloated features in Mac OS 9 and how nobody knew how to write lean code anymore. I was disappointed in Apple because the promise was that Mac OS would get faster as more code was converted from 68k emulation to native PowerPC code. I was on the right track, but didn't know it.

Another real possibility was an extension conflict. Turning off all but the essential extensions and control panels resulted in a modest improvement. But it was still way too slow.

I installed a clean version of Mac OS 9 on another volume. The result was sub-second response time to execute the CGI, as expected. Now I _knew_ it was an extension conflict, but I wasn't sure why turning off all the non-essential extensions didn't help my original system.

Replacing my old System Folder with the newly created one worked fine. I then manually added the features I needed to continue with my problem resolution, such as CC itself. Performance was still snappy. Now it was time to do the merge. This time I only added in the bare essentials to allow me to operate the 7100 as a server. I invoked CC's "Clean-Install System Merge" to do the work and left the "Merge system resources" option defaulted to checked. The result was a CGI that now took around 5 seconds to execute. <bleep!>

Looking at the small number of extensions I'd added in, I found it hard to believe they could be the problem. I started wondering about the System file. I replaced the "merged" System file with a clean one from Mac OS 9. Rebooted and, voila, sub-second response time again for the CGI.

I remember reading a long time ago about how the Mac OS switches into and out of emulation and how this can take a very long time if it happens frequently, slowing down performance. Perhaps merging the resources from the old System file into the clean Mac OS System file, upgrade after upgrade, also brought along some old code debris which was doing the "emulation dance".

In future I intend to turn off the "Merge system resources" option in Conflict Catcher and do the merge of sound resources manually.

Hopefully this helps some of your readers restore the performance of their aging machines and breathes new life into them."

I too have had to revert to OS9.0. I could not get any of my usb devices to work, wether plugged in the hub or directly into the usb ports. I would have filed 'jump' in and out of my folders, like watching files on a screwed up NT server. IMOP 9.0.4 is junk.

When I upgraded to 9.0.4, I started getting getting startup freezes and other weird problems similar to the ones mentioned here. I tried to do a conflict test (no merged system) through Conflict Catcher and it did not find the problem.

One of the telltale signs that helped me fix it was the fact that I started getting errors about the quicktime plugin in Netscape when I went to sites that used it. It complained that I needed QUicktime 4.1 to use the plugin, but that was what was installed.

I trashed all the quicktime parts and reinstalled through the network installer from Apple's site and all my problems went away. Wierd, but maybe this could help.

[yoyo52]

Last night it seemed that unplugging the USB hub had solved my problems. This morning, however, starting up lead to crashes every time. I noticed again that the crash occured just as the control strip icon came on the desktop. So I disabled the Control Strip panel and extension, and so far the problmes have disappeared. I haven't replugged the USB hub, though, so I don't know if that still is a problem. Frankly, at this point I don't have the time to experiment, so I probably won't be plugging it in for a week or two. By the way, before I stopped the test, CC had shown that Quicktime, Open GL, and the Control Strip stuff were invovled in the problem.