Norton's Utilities "greatest hits" ???

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Birdman

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Early problems have seemed to been ironed out on my G4 733 mhz Quicksilver ( 850+ ram, Intuos 2 tablet, CanoScan N670U, Epson Stylus 740 printer.Software mostly used is Painter 7.)

Since then my only "problem" seems to be when I ask the machine to restart or shutdown ,sporadically, I will get this bizarre (too me anyway, not a real techy wiz here) "kernal" blah blah error in the upper left of my monitor screen. I have to hit the front restart button on the tower.

I originally ran Norton's 6.x utility, it would many times find the same "major" problems and then say they were fixed, after "repairing". Run it a week later and same problems.

Norton's 7.0 Utility has arrived (I had run 6.x just 2 days prior). First day it found no problems -- yeeehaaaa. Next day it found what I call the "greatest hits" or common "major" problems that it always says is "now fixed", as it did in NU 6.x.

The error reports I get are:

Volume Header Block -- Free block count is incorrect 6,1,9

Allocation File --contents on file don't agree w/ location of all files in the catalog 8,1

Header Node of Catalog B tree --Error in Node 15, record 6. No thread record found for "loginwindow.plist"

I'm still under service time w/ apple and i could call them but I'm afraid a "first layer" guy would just have me reinstall or something, and I'd just assume not wipe everything clean. Besides a close friend running my exact set up as well has the same problem. Norton's tells him the same thing (what gives???). In an unrelated problem he's had to do several clean installs yet his kernal errors never seem to permanently go away either.

Help is greatly appreciated to get this fixed once and for all. As it will probably be back. Could asking my machine to "sleep" contribute to this,or is it better just to leave it on, and turn off the monitor???

Birdman
 
This may be a step backwards for you, but have you tried booting from the OS 9 CD and running Disk First Aid? That usually fixes those problems, and I've heard that Norton's quality has started to fall in the past years.
 
I believe "kernel panics" are typically caused by hardware or hardware drivers. Do you get kernel panics with all of your periferals disconnected?

Another suggestion for fixing disks: boot into single user mode (hold Command-S at startup), and at the prompt type "fsck -y". Keep doing this until it reports no errors.
 
Thanks folks. Dsnyder -- I just tried your suggestion, and when I typed "fsck-y" it did not recognize the command.??? is there a space after the "k" then the "-Y" or is it as I typed above?

Nevermind. I just typed it w/ the space included and this time it worked --duhhh. Had to type it in 3 times before it finally said "Mac HD appears to be okay" (odd that things scrolled off the screen when I had to do it repeatedly --then I had a lot of "local host" over and over again. I just typed in the command where the cursor was flashing.), before, it had just "modified" it. So it found errors after all that work w/ Norton's, eh??? Would you mind explaining in english what in the heck I really just did w/ my machine? ;0) Thanks!!!

Danny, I am in X but I will try your suggestion. What the hell?

Birdman
 
OK, here's a brief explanation of what you just did:

"Single-user mode" is used for troubleshooting UNIX systems. It doesn't load a GUI, and loads a very minimal set of drivers, doesn't use Netinfo, etc.

"fsck" is a command-line file system checking tool. The '-y' flag tells it to automatically answer yes to any questions that are asked. This seems to be the preffered way of debugging OS X disks. For more info, open Terminal and type "man fsck". I haven't used Norton Utilities since around 1996, when Speeddisk totally and irreversable munged my whole hard disk. It seems that in some cases Norton causes more problems than it solves.

Try running "fsck" again in a few days. If problems have returned, you may be looking at bad hardware (the kernel panics may be another sign of this). The "Apple Harware Test" CD that came with the G4 is a good place to start if you suspect hardware is bad. Of course, it doesn't find every problem, but it's a good place to start.
 
Originally posted by dsnyder

"fsck" is a command-line file system checking tool. The '-y' flag tells it to automatically answer yes to any questions that are asked. This seems to be the preffered way of debugging OS X disks. For more info, open Terminal and type "man fsck". I haven't used Norton Utilities since around 1996, when Speeddisk totally and irreversable munged my whole hard disk. It seems that in some cases Norton causes more problems than it solves.
Click to expand...

Only in *some* cases??? I used it in my PC days, and it caused problems without end. I gave it another chance under OS 9 and it caused problems. Tried the Public Beta under OS X and it crashed during the analyzing. I seem to be an "anti-Norton" person...
 
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