freezes just AFTER startup

M

milesn

Registered
Hi,

my mac ( two year old G4 flatpanel running 10.3.9)
has suddenly decided to freeze completely after startup.
It gets as far as the icons bouncing for a few seconds in the dock, as they automatically start, and then they freeze mid air... and then the cursor stops as well.

my hard drive is partioned in three, with osx 10.3.1 installed on another part. I have restarted in this partition and done a disk utility repair, and it comes up with no problems...

I also ran idefrag on the volume....it came up with one file that it couldn't move/defrag....which it classes as an "external overflow file"

anyway after all that it still freezes just after startup, even in SAFE MODE...

can anyone help me :)
 
sound as if you may have a croupt system perf file. you may need to reinsatt the os and updates. that should fix that.
 
is there anyway other than ren-installing...... I dont really want to wipe the partition...

could it be a Pram thing??
 
Well, re-installing is probably easiest. Have you booted off your system disk and, from Disk Utility, repaired permissions and repaired the drive? If that doesn't work, find, borrow, or steal another mac, and get your files off of it with Target Disk Mode. Then re-install, and put your files back on.
 
Let us identify the three partitions as 'A_drive', 'B_drive', and 'C_drive'; there 'A_drive' has MacOS X 10.3.9, 'B_drive' has MacOS X '10.3.1', and 'C_drive' is just for applications and files.

Let us also identify the normal user of 'A_drive' as 'the_user'. This is the user of which whose account causes the freezing of the Mac.

01. Boot from partition 'C_drive'.
02. Open (launch, run) 'Terminal' ('/Applications/Utilities/' folder).
03. Enter ...

sudo

... <return>. Enter your administrator's password, and press <return>.

04. Carefully - copy the line of UNIX code below ...

mv /Volumes/A_drive/Users/the_user/Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow.plist /Volumes/A_drive/Users/the_user/Desktop/; mv /Volumes/A_drive/Users/the_user/Library/Preferences/loginwindow.plist /Volumes/A_drive/Users/the_user/Desktop/

... paste it into the 'Terminal' window, press the left and right arrow keys to move about within the pasted text and the <delete> key to delete one character at a time. Replace 'A_drive' and 'the_user' - with the respective hard disk drive's real name, and actual name of the user (of 'A_drive'). Once finished with the editing - press the <return> key.

[
For example: I would edit the above to ...

mv /Volumes/HD3/Users/s/Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow.plist /Volumes/HD3/Users/s/Desktop/; mv /Volumes/HD3/Users/s/Library/Preferences/loginwindow.plist /Volumes/HD3/Users/s/Desktop/

... before pressing the <return> key, to work on this current Mac. Notice that I changed 'A_drive' to 'HD3', and 'the_user' to 's'?
]

You could also paste the copied text into 'TextEdit', edit it, copy the edited text, and paste it into a 'Terminal' window, and press the <return> key. Just make sure to select 'TextEdit's 'Format, Make Text Plain Text' menu item - before pasting, editing, and copying the above UNIX code.

All the UNIX code does - is move any 'com.apple.loginwindow.plist' and / or 'loginwindow.plist' file(s) - from the user's 'Preferences 'folder to that user's 'Desktop' folder.

05. Via, 'System Preferences' 'Startup Disk' utility select 'A_drive' as the boot drive, and click the 'Restart...' button.

If the Mac reboots properly, then all you have to do - is then re-enter what applications / processes to have automatically launch at boot time.

You can drag the 'loginwindow.plist' file onto 'TextEdit' to view its contents, and thus determine the name(s) of application(s) to automatically launch.

My advice - add one item at a time to 'System Preferences' 'Account's 'Startup Items' list, reboot (restart) the Mac - if successful, continue. If not, you found the problem application / process - thus, repeat steps 01 through 05, omitting the addition of the problem application / process.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top