Author Topic: Beyond Leopard's Blue Screen of Death (Read 5473 times)

hingyfan · « **on:** November 26, 2007, 01:31:49 AM »

Thought I would start a new topic since this appears to a be a new world of Leopard problems.
Ran fsck to get rid of "Application Enhancer," got it to "start up" and I'm getting quite a mess. On it now, by the way despite no hard drive appears on the desktop, which is the same old picture of my cat and my guitar. Firefox won't run but Safari, Sa good, at least for net access.
There are many alarms that such a file has quite unexpectedly but the main one is Spotlight and the notice will not go away, not be ignored.
Did i say there is no HD? There is no HD. I can't get at the files, i would trash all remnants of Application Enhancer if i could but i cant get the applications. This is a Power PC G5. I tried Disk utility but it seemed to stall when the "Quit unexpectedly" signs kept reappearing (for other apps).
I really feel stuck now. At least I had company at the blue screen.
Thanks for reading this far.

hingyfan · « **Reply #1 on:** November 26, 2007, 01:51:50 AM »

This is similar to my case:
http://www.maclife.com/forums/topic/102067
Basically the finder is not working. I see there's a little flashing light under it in the dock.
I guess i managed to muck it up with my fsck commands. The first try was not successful, maybe missing a space or something. The second brought me here.
What is "archive and restore." Do i need HD space to do it? i have very very little. This was all part of my reorganization plan that has gone to heck.

krissel · « **Reply #2 on:** November 26, 2007, 08:30:12 AM »

When you boot to the desktop, can you use Command+F to get the find and then do a search for Application Enhancer. You can trash things from the find results.

But you may have done further damage earlier and may need to do an archive and install from your system CD.

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=107120

However it needs an amount of space equal to the system it will be installing. It saves your old system as "Previous System" so unless you have at least a few Gs of space you may not be able to do it. Having too little space may be part of your original problem.

Do you have an external hard drive with an OS on it that you can boot to? Another Mac that you can connect via Target disk mode?

At the very least, boot to your system CD and try to run Disk Utility to do repairs and permissions. Disk Utility has a command for mounting drives. If it does, connect an external and copy off as much as possible. Worth a try.

Paddy · « **Reply #3 on:** November 26, 2007, 08:44:20 AM »

When you say "very little" hard drive space left, exactly what do you mean? Anything under 5GB is considered dicey. See:
http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/lackofram.html

Info on how to free up space:

http://creativebits.org/2004/11/os-x-free-...disk-space.html

Temporarily turning off journaling may help while trashing things:

http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?sto...071018123114713

Generally, it's best to do all clean-up before trying to install a new OS.

(Nothing like learning the hard way...)

At this point, I'd use your Powerbook, or an external drive to back up your documents, mail, bookmarks etc. (which you should always do prior to a new install) and then either do an archive and install, if you have sufficient space on the HD OR wipe the drive and start over again. Trying to fight with an unstable system is probably not worth the effort. However, if the lack of disk space is the culprit, then that needs to be addressed first - either by reducing the amount of space used by files on your Mac or by getting a new, larger HD. Hard drives are ridiculously cheap these days - just as an example, a 500GB Western Digital Caviar, with three year warranty, can be had for less than $100:

http://dealmac.com/prices/31169047.html

hingyfan · « **Reply #4 on:** November 26, 2007, 10:17:07 AM »

I have three ext. HDs. One is 600 gigs. I did back up a copy of the HD there and it was bootable. However, i had not partitioned the ext and i realized I had no space to use as pure storage. I tried something a friend said (i forget what it was) and became nonbootable. The files are still on there so this would not be a total loss, but it's hardly up to date. But i did not want to lose that copy.
I will try to reboot in target mode using the PB. I have found that divx is a big culprit in this no-finder situation. Try to get rid of that and APE. Also in that mode i should be able to save some stuff. I have 16 gigs left on this machine. The "update" took about six.
The control-f did not work, that would have been nice. Thanks.
By the way, the Apple boards are filled with these complaints, including from some serious users. I feel that Apple is trying to serve two masters by running the WIn and Mac chips at same time.
They parodied the IBM blue screen but have bought into it.

hingyfan · « **Reply #5 on:** November 26, 2007, 04:00:58 PM »

Day 3.
Ok, i tried the target mode and got it to work and deleted a lot of suspect files, but as they say on Mac message boards, no joy.
I am giving up on Leopard and will rescue some files and folders and start over, in Jaguar, or whatever the heck it is. Leopard can wait. It's too spotty!
Now where did i leave that Photoshop serial number?

Xairbusdriver · « **Reply #6 on:** November 26, 2007, 07:07:59 PM »

Have you perused the following from Apple?

<Installation/startup problems in Leopard>

I think it behoves us to stop blaming Apple for problems we cause by installing apps/hacks that use hooks that Apple has always said may change or that it may not support in the future. Many of these things are extremely useful but we use them at our own risk. Upgrading without first disabling them is asking for trouble, IMHO.

The only sure-fire method of painless upgrading is to return the System to as stable and stock condition and creating as much free space as possible. Those and other successful steps can be found at many forums. Recovering from not so stock, limited disk space is possible, but not without more work than it would have taken by doing it first.

Also, remember that 'help' sites will always have more reports of 'problems' than successes. People who have no problems seldom ever bother to report such, it ain't interesting news!

It's the reports of problems that provide the fodder for the Help sites. Thus 'problems' appear to be more wide-spread than their actual numbers. Secondly, most 'reports' are anecdotal and slim on facts and specific actions taken by the reporter. It is nearly impossible to supply a single fix for the almost infinite possible causes of the users problem, especially, when those causes may be unknown even to the user.

In particular, hingyfan would be best advised to return to the last viable, stable backup and start over with all the knowledge now available. It may mean buying a new external drive to off-load extra files and even a complete re-install of a previous OS. At that point, the need to upgrade may actually disappear!

hingyfan · « **Reply #7 on:** November 26, 2007, 08:18:39 PM »

Well I've updated many a Mac since my performa and have never seen anything like this. Many seem to report the same symptoms but i seem to be unique in suffering from both of the big problems.

krissel · « **Reply #8 on:** November 26, 2007, 10:23:35 PM »

Why don't you just do an archive and install? I think you might have enough space for that according to what you wrote regarding the update and previous space. That way you don't have to wipe it all. You will have a spanking clean system and all your files. Then you can dump the old system after moving anything of importance out of it that you may want to keep.

BTW, it's Command+F to get Find.

hingyfan · « **Reply #9 on:** November 26, 2007, 10:59:36 PM »

QUOTE(krissel @ Nov 27 2007, 04:23 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Why don't you just do an archive and install? I think you might have enough space for that according to what you wrote regarding the update and previous space. That way you don't have to wipe it all. You will have a spanking clean system and all your files. Then you can dump the old system after moving anything of importance out of it that you may want to keep.

BTW, it's Command+F to get Find.

The finder does show not up with that command. The computer just beeps.

I have 16 gigs left, after the Leopard install. Is that enough to archive and install? i would be happy if it was. I read you cannot use an ext. HD for this process.
Thanks.

krissel · « **Reply #10 on:** November 27, 2007, 01:17:45 AM »

A full install of Leopard is supposed to take as much as 11G if all the extras are included. You should be able to customize the archve and install to eliminate a ton of languages and possibly printer drivers. I'm guessing it may be around 5-6 G for the basics. If you can boot to the DVD it may be worth a try. If it fails you always have the option of the erase and install. In your case you may not want to select the option to save networking prefs, etc as that stuff may be corrupt. You will have to reenter that info yourself. Whatever you choose, just be sure you have off all the important data.

hingyfan · « **Reply #11 on:** November 27, 2007, 07:16:32 AM »

QUOTE(krissel @ Nov 27 2007, 07:17 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

A full install of Leopard is supposed to take as much as 11G if all the extras are included. You should be able to customize the archve and install to eliminate a ton of languages and possibly printer drivers. I'm guessing it may be around 5-6 G for the basics. If you can boot to the DVD it may be worth a try. If it fails you always have the option of the erase and install. In your case you may not want to select the option to save networking prefs, etc as that stuff may be corrupt. You will have to reenter that info yourself. Whatever you choose, just be sure you have off all the important data.

I read in one of the posts by the many people affected by this you need as much room as hard drives take up.

Gregg · « **Reply #12 on:** November 27, 2007, 07:34:04 AM »

QUOTE(krissel @ Nov 27 2007, 01:17 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

A full install of Leopard is supposed to take as much as 11G if all the extras are included.

That's 11 GB?

I remember when we were told to put OS9 on the first 8MB of the boot drive!

hingyfan · « **Reply #13 on:** November 27, 2007, 08:34:30 AM »

THANK YOU!
The archive worked great. Basically everything is the same but a few apps will need tweaking (and serial numbers).
THANKS AGAIN!

Funny thing is this does not seem like an Archive and install, not that i know what that is. I selected the carry over settings. There is no Previous System folder. Everything is where i left it, with only cosmetic changes. I thought i would be digging stuff out of some folder.
Anyway, thanks again not only to Krissel but to all who put up with me, however reluctantly!

krissel · « **Reply #14 on:** November 29, 2007, 02:08:12 AM »

Good to hear it all worked for you. I'm wondering if when you have a fresh system with no updates that an archive and install merely overwrites the previous files. That would explain the lack of a Previous System folder.

Gregg: that was 8 GB for X. Many of the Macs built at a certain time had to have the boot system installed within the first 8 GBs of the disk. My Wallstreet is one of them. It did not apply to SCSI drives though.

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106235

The day the Mac OS would fit in less than 8 MB was a loooooong time ago.

http://applemuseum.bott.org/sections/os.html

The system file alone for 9 was over 13 MB and the full folder was in the 200 MB range. I remember thinking my Performa 6300 had a ton of space with 1.2 G and I'd never fill it up.

News:

Author Topic: Beyond Leopard's Blue Screen of Death (Read 5473 times)