Applications quit on launch under Mac OS 10.4.3.

C

cyberhound

Registered
I have a PowerMac G4, 400 Mhz, 1.12 Gb Ram, 20 gig hard disk, running Mac OS 10.4.3. I have Adobe Creative Suite 2 installed on a PikaOne 200 gig external Firewire drive. My level of techie skill is probably intermediate. Sometimes the CS apps open properly, quite often they quit on launch. Currently, InDesign (updated to ver 4.02) will not open at all – the icon just bounces in the dock. I have repaired disk permissions, trashed preferences, deleted the Adobefont10.lst file, restarted the machine, turned it off, etc. The document icons are showing correctly as InDesign files. I ran Applejack in auto mode to see if I'd missed something in a system crash; I use Onyx regularly for maintenance and ClamXav for scanning for viruses. (I'm a bit reluctant to run Applejack in Deep Auto mode as the last time I did so it wreaked havoc with my email archive.) I haven't had this problem with other apps installed on the PikaOne, and the problem with InDesign can't be system overload as I have nothing else running. I work as a printer/graphic designer and I've got a deadline hanging over me, so if anyone has any suggestion, I'd be MOST grateful.

Catherine
 
Did your CS apps ever start from this drive?

Do you "Ignore ownership on this Volume"?

virius
 
Thanks, yes apps normally launch from the external drive as core files are kept on the HD – Having done all the usual things, including disabling fonts and reinstalling the system software, I've ended up reinstalling the whole suite and things are now working. But given the investment of time in all this, I'd like to know why I had the problem in the first place.
 
It's generally not recommended to run system-intensive apps like Adobe's from an external drive. All it takes is one improper unmounting to mess it all up.

Is it a drive-space issue keeping you from installing it on your main Hard Drive? It really isn't very expensive to buy a larger HD (even a 40 or 60 Gig would do well for your system and apps), and they're relatively easy to install in your tower. Running apps from your main disk will give you a noticeable performance increase due to IDE being a faster data bus than Firewire, and you'll avoid this problem recurring in the future.
 
Thank you. I',m embarrassed to admit the only reason I haven't fitted another internal HD is that I lost the Apple low-rise screws and haven't found a manufacturer who supplies them along with the disk . . .
 
I've never heard anyone suggest that it isn't advisable to run an application from an external drive, and I don't believe it for a second. Your external drive(s) should run applications just as well and as reliably as your internal drives. (With the possible exception of FireWire drives that have been bitten by the Oxford 911 bug, now, thankfully, squashed).

I've run one or two external drives attached to my primary desktop Macintosh for the last 20 years with no problems whatsoever.

Whenever an application starts quitting unexpectedly (or refuses to startup at all) in OS X, assuming that you aren't having a problem with *all* of your applications, the problem is most often caused by a corrupted user preferences file.

OS X 10.4 has been updated so that it ordinarly handles this problem for you if you immediately attempt to restart the application. If it hasn't handled it, or if you are running an earlier version of OS X...

I would first try:

Preferential Treatment (free)
http://homepage.mac.com/jonn8/as/html/pt.html

If that doesn't help, I would try manually uninstalling the ".plist" files for the offending application, found in:

~Library/Preferences/
(Note that this is in your Users folder, in the folder with your user name.)

You mentioned that you tried deleteing preferences files to fix the problem. In some, thankfully rare, instances applications keep resource files that can become corrupted somewhere other than in the user preferences folder. Just a few days ago I heard from someone who was running the program Comictastic, and it had started to suddenly quit. Comictastic stores support files in ~/Library/Application Support/Comictastic. Deleting the program's definitions file fixed the problem. You may want to look around to see what sort of support files the offending programs have and where they keep them.

Reinstalling a program from scratch usually does the job, as it did for you, as long as the program's installer replaces the corrupted support files.
 
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