Major system (or user) problems. Help!!

[moonbeaver]

Well, I'm not sure exactly where to start. I believe this all started when I downloaded and installed the 12/17/03 update to Panther, 10.3.2., which I did this morning.
Maybe a coincidence, but up to that point everything ran like a champ. I have a 2000 edition iMac, Power PC 750, 500mhz CPU speed, 1GB RAM.

The first problem I noticed was with iTunes. It would not play anything in the library because it recognized the library as invalid. Pardon my ignorance of the exact message, I should've written it down. However, Quicktime will play all of these file without a hitch and all of these files (songs) in the iTunes library have Quicktime icons next to them now rather than iTunes now. After several attempts, I trashed iTunes and just tried to reinstall it. I can't do that either. The .dmg file downloaded without incident, and the iTunes installer disk is on my desktop. When I click that to install, I get a new window with the iTunes4.mpkg. Clicked on that. I selected 10.3.2 as the volume to install (which has 19.2 GB free space). This is where things start to look funny. It indicates that "Installing this software requires 0 bytes of space." Why is that? When I click continue, the package names: iTunes for Mac OS X and iPod Driver for Mac OS X are greyed out, the action on both is disabled, and both files have a size of 0 bytes. The "easy install' and "install" buttons  are greyed out and I've hit a brick wall. "Go Back" is the only option I have at this point. I just CANNOT install iTunes!!

Also, all the favorites and preferences saved in Explorer have vanished and it appears now that Explorer has just been installed. I saved everything, all the links and preferences all over again and after I verifyed and repaired the disk permissions and restarted her. When I log back in, I discover everything has vanished again. A neat little trick, but frustrating to say the least.

Every time I log out now, Limewire needs to be reinstalled and the entire library in Limewire has vanished, with the exception of a msnmessenger.dmg file which I have no idea why it's even there.

I have no idea what's going on here and would like to do everything I can before I wipe everything out and reformat. The little iMac does not have a CD-RW drive, and I can't back anything up. There's so much I consider vital to keep.

If anyone can help, I'll be forever in debt.

Thanks in advance.

[RHPConsult]

Moonbeaver:

The holidays have slowed TeeEss participation, not unexpectedly, so even though I'm not in the wildest stretch of anyone's imagination a Panther "advisor", I'll chime in here in hope these references can help you, immediately, before the certified experts show up.

One of them with respect to Panther upgrading is Pendragon, who I know is away from the Forum for a few days of vacation. He recently assembled for me a roster of what he thought were the most useful threads/articles on Panther, which I then referred to a friend who is planning such an upgrade endeavor.

Here are some of the best from that roster. I hope you find them helpful . . .

http://www.tidbits.com/takecontrol/

http://www.techsurvivors.net/forums/index....t=ST&f=1&t=3886

http://www.techsurvivors.net/forums/index....t=ST&f=1&t=3907

Randy Singer, another TeeEss contributor is a major figure in the Macintosh community by virtue of his past Mac publications and his leadership of a large assemblage of Mac-using attorneys. He has recently published this seminal document . . . and has given TeeEss the right to cite it here. I am certain you'll find it helpful.

http://www.macattorney.com/panther.html

 

 

[krissel]

That's a scary position to be in without backup.

If Santa paid you a visit recently and left a few greenbacks in your stocking it might be a good idea to invest in an external firewire drive or CD burner.  

[moonbeaver]

Well, it turned out to be pretty simple, really. Of course. Viva la Mac. Trashing some receipts and downloading iTunes 3 first seemed to do the trick. Disabling the filevault made life easier, too....duh.
Limewire doesn't run as smoothly still, but overall things run well and I didn't lose anything. External CD burner is on the list just in case.
RHP, the links were all I needed, especially macattorney. Took a few hours and now we're golden. Thank you friends.

-Dylan

[RHPConsult]

Dylan:

"You are, of course, quite welcome", sez RHP, acting as an "agent" for Sir Pendragon

Thank, Randy Singer for his MacAttorney endeavors . . . we're very happy to have him hang out here from time to time.