Peculiar OS Problems, 10.4.3, G4 533 mhz, 896mb ram

D

dhbuckley

Registered
Hello and TIA.

I am running a 533mhz G4 tower and have had very strange problems.
Initially Eudora (or, as a buddy says, Euwhora) 5.2 freaked out under Panther resulting in a system that wouldn't boot, meaning the system would start to boot and then give me the circle with a line through it and then freeze/kernel panic.

I was advised that I probably had a bad hard drive and that I should get a new machine but after running disk first aid, repairing permissions and using disk warrior, I installed Tiger using archive and install which got the system operating again, albeit with continuing weirdness.

1.There are 2 drives in this machine, the one running OSX (now Tiger) and a disk that has 9.2.2 on it; the second drive is no longer visible to the machine after the initial freak, utilities don't see it.

2.When the machine is booted now, even after successfully repairing permissions, I get the spinning circular lines and then the dreaded circle with a line through it but then the machine completes the boot process and gives me the log-in window; I have a standard Mac keyboard with number pad on the right and input from the number pad will only reach the machine when entering the password to log in. After login the numbers on pad (not operators, -,+,=, etc..) are disabled and sometimes using it results in the application freezing and then I cannot force quit, must reboot.

3. The latest ultra weirdness: go to dock to select a running application and instead of going to the running app, mail or Palm Desktop or whatever, a finder window would open and the app would be located and highlighted in the window! I could only reboot to get this to stop.

If you've read all this, many thanks--if you have any suggestions--even more thanks!!

Be well and compute well, all.

David
 
Wow, 30 reads and nobody with a small clue for me!!

These problems must be worse than I thought....;-(

Anyway, thanks for reading my tale of woe and I wish you all wonderful holidays,

Compute well, all.

David
 
Could you try re-fomatting your HD (after backing up if you can)? Then, instead of partitioning it into 2 drives, leave it as one drive and do a fresh install of Tiger.

I recently partitioned my drive, one for Panther and one for OS 9. Each time I tried to boot up in OS 9 I got a kernal panic attack. Things then went from bad to worse, in that even booting up in Panther I would get a kernal panic attack. Since reformatting the HD and doing a complete fresh install of Panther the problem has never occrured since.

My problem may hbear no relation to yours, but it might be worth considering.
 
Do you actually have two hard drives installed in the machine, or one hard drive with two partitions?

Eudora should be updated to 6.2. You're using an older versions.
Any software you have, you should check to make sure it's up to date to work on Panther or Tiger.

Like 'rhisiart' says, backup the drive, then reformat it and reinstall Tiger fresh.
 
Many thanks, Rhisiart, BobW.

Yes, Bob, 2 physical drives, one which isn't seen. A friend suggested I open Mac while running and feel drive to see if it's spinning. I gave up on Euwhora and am using Mail, latest version.

Why would drive disappear other than the obvious catastrophic failure?

Rhisiart, I had hoped to avoid an erase and reinstall but it may be inevitable.

Again, thanks for your help.

David
 
Ok, so you have one drive with OS X installed on it that runs but not well.

You have a second drive with OS 9 on it which can't be seen.

Is this correct?

The drive with OS X could be corrupt. Reformatting can correct that, doing an Archive and Install won't. DiskWarrior can also build a new directory.

Open the Terminal application in your Utility folder and type this;

disktool l (that's a small L)

This will list any drives or partitions. Let us know if the OS 9 drive is listed.
 
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