Programs crashing left and right.

T

Travis86

Registered
All right, I go to Mail and double-click on a message - Mail crashes. I restart Mail and find that the sidebar is missing. (I have no idea how to get it back.) I try to open the message again - Mail crashes. The message is just an eBay confirmation e-mail.

A little later, I was surfing around with Firefox, and Firefox crashes for no reason.

Then, I go to Software Update, uncheck the new iPod software, and Software Update crashes.

I tried restarting, but that didn't help. Repairing the permissions and restarting, didn't help either. TechTool didn't find anything.

What's going on?
 
Us the OS CD to start up the computer. At the Installer Screen go to the Installer Menu and select Disk Utility. Run First aid on the drive. Make sure you select the second icon in the side bar.

What third party programs do you have installed? Do you have all the updates for them?
 
No, it's going to check the integrity of your drive and the OS X installation.

Try creating a new user and logging in as that new user and working around for a while. Launch some programs, quit some programs, adjust some preferences. If the machine seems stable under that new user, there's a good chance there's a preference or a setting somewhere in your "crash-prone" account that may be causing the instability.

Report back.
 
I think I have discovered a bug in OS X. I created a new user with the same Unix name as the normal name of my other account, and when I went to log into my normal account, it wouldn't work. When I tried the password of my new user, it would work and go to the new user's desktop. Very strange. I had to create a third user to delete the second so I could log into the first to delete the third. Phew!

Anyway, the new user's Software Update doesn't crash like the normal user's does, so I assume there's something wrong with the normal user's configuration.

I put in the OS X install CD, but back out quickly because it looked like it had no intentions of doing anything except installing. There was another CD that came with it, but that looked like it was just for hardware diagnostics. What CD am I supposed to use?
 
As a previous poster stated, you need to keep the OS X Install cd in the drive but DO NOT reinstall X. Just go up to the Menu bar at the top of the screen and pick "File" (I believe) and then select "Disk Utility". You were almost there but you "back out quickly."

You can then Repair Permissions. You can't do a full repair of a hard drive while that same hard drive is the system disk. The Install CD acts as your system disk for this operation. Repairing Permissions during normal operation without the CD is only a quick fix compared to this procedure.

Can you tell us more about what you have installed on your computer and if you have done anything differently to it recently? Have you modified your system in any way with new icons or mods?
 
Also, creating two admin accounts for your computer with the same name is NEVER a good idea. No WONDER your computer is confused!

:)
 
I didn't know the menu was a drop-down menu, but now I know.

I ran "repair disk" and "repair permissions" in Disk Utility and restarted, but it's not fixed. Both mail and Software Update still crash.

This problem only started today, and I haven't done anything that would make it start acting like this. I installed Photoshop CS a few days ago, and changed the icon on a program called "FTP Thingy," but that's it.
 
The next thing I would do is to run your "Hardware Test" disk that came with your computer (boot up with that cd as your boot disk) and check to make sure you don't have a RAM or motherboard hardware problem. Sometimes those can be the culprit.

Otherwise your last resort is to wipe your drive and reformat with OS X. Better back up all your needed files before you do this as they will be unrecoverable afterward.
 
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