Preferences constantly getting corrupted

thetatorment

Registered
i seem to have a big problem that has left me scratching my head... on my wifes B/W 450 G3 i have installed 10.3.5 on 2 separate internal harddrives. first off, i don't have any 3-rd party junk like shapeshifter or APE installed to mess with the system. i only use Final Draft and Photoshop on this machine. but here's the problem: the preference for everything on these disks starts getting corrupted for no reason, first ownerships change and need changed back to even access files. then eventually i can't access anything on the drives. trying to repair disk permissions using disk utility from either form system or OS X cd results in either "lost connection with disk manager" errors, or disk can't be repaired errors, or just usually a crash (kernal panic dialog). and as last resort, a clean zeroed system re-install always fails halfway through base subsystem 2 (although a new install is possible if i put the drive into my G4 for installation). now the machine boots up fine, but the finder won't start. i have a dock, and can access system preferences panel, but not my harddrives or a finder window. i've tried to delete the finder pref. in single user mode, but it won't let me repair the volume. i'm at a total loss. the harddrives are new and I've run every test TechTool Pro 4 has on the computer hardware and harddrives- all passing fine. so how can i stop the Prefs. from constantly being corrupted to the point of unusbility?? i tried Panther Cache Cleaer, but that's how i eded up locked out of the finder at present i believe. please help someone!!
 
I would first try running with just one hard drive connected to the internal bus and see if that helps... some early B&W G3 models do not support 2 hard drives, only a single, internal hard drive without help from a PCI ATA card. The machine may let you use 2 hard drives, but data corruption or inaccessible partitions may happen.

If using a single hard drive clears things up, then you may need to look into getting a PCI ATA card to help out with the other hard drives.

Check here to see if you've got a revision 1 or a revision 2 machine (scroll down to the section on hard drives and controller chips):
http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/G3-ZONE/yosemite/newfeatures.html
Revision 1 machines only allow 1 internal hard drive, while revision 2 machines allow a master and a slave hard drive.
 
thanks, but this machine does support multiple drives.it is a 450mhz rev.2, although i think everything after the 350's were all rev. 2. anyways, it ran forever with 2 drives under os 9.2.2 w/ no problems. and came from the factory with the dual mounting bracket and place for the 2nd drive on the ribbon cable. does anyone know if the scsi card can cause problems? this model came with the adaptec scsi card (2930 uw i think). and even though it shows up in the system profiler, i'm happy to disconnect it if anyone has seen reports of it causing probls in OS X.
 
Hi, I found when helping a designer who bought a G4 with an add-on SCSI card that he stopped having problems as soon as we yanked that card. I'm not an expert on this, but my sense of things suggests that SCSI is just not meant to play nicely with OS X and newer Macs, despite what their makers may promise.
He gave up on his old, beloved scanner, went out and bought himself a new Firewire scanner.
Before, with the SCSI card in, he had frequent freezeups. Now, sans SCSI, all's well. Go figure. So, try running your Mac without it for a couple of weeks and see how it goes for you.
Dave
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thetatorment said:
thanks, but this machine does support multiple drives.it is a 450mhz rev.2, although i think everything after the 350's were all rev. 2. anyways, it ran forever with 2 drives under os 9.2.2 w/ no problems. and came from the factory with the dual mounting bracket and place for the 2nd drive on the ribbon cable. does anyone know if the scsi card can cause problems? this model came with the adaptec scsi card (2930 uw i think). and even though it shows up in the system profiler, i'm happy to disconnect it if anyone has seen reports of it causing probls in OS X.
 
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