Well, almost got a month of use before my first OS X reinstall...
 

But at least it was fairly painless and did solve at least two of my ongoing problems with my new PowerBook (the third is not yet tested). At least one of them was happening since I got it, so it wasn't caused by add-ons. Apple suggested the reinstall.

Maybe there's one thing Mac OS shares with Windows... It's pretty common knowledge that you should always install Windows fresh and not use the installation delivered by the vendor. Don't know if mine was a freak case or if that's a good rule with OS X also.

I have noticed this somewhat before. I have used Cocktail on a new mac to fix the random problems. I also have it set to run once a week so it keeps everything in order.

I'd say your case differs from my experience setting up new Macs.

There's not a lot of cruft in the standard Apple install with the exception of Office Trial version (which can screw up a real Office install if you forget to run the deletion script) and running something like Monolingual to remove unneeded localization files. Since they usually need Software Update out of the box, it's a good plan to run that right away and then do a permission repair after the updates.

While with Windows you reformat and install a generic OS to rid the machine of vendor cruft (HP being perhaps the worst); that isn't a big deal with Macs. My standard procedure with PC's now is to have them built by a local vendor I trust, and then I do all the software installs myself.

I agree with Craig... the default install out of the box usually doesn't require too much additional work. Further, the recovery CD should put your system back to how the factory had the software setup.

I've always thought Apple's call support was a little dubious when it came to recommending a reinstall. Most of Apple's support people were actually behind the curve on the Mac OS X stuff from the beginning and their reinstall-fixes-all solution rubs me a little wrong. To date (short of hard drive problems) I have never reinstalled to fix any major issues on any of my client's systems.

As for my systems, this PowerBook is heading into it's 26th month of it's current install. I think my iMac is at 24 months.

When something goes wrong for me, the last thing I want to do is sweep it under the rug... I want to know exactly why it happened to both avoid it and be able to fix it in the future.

But like I said, that is for me and not a general recommendation. I'm sure you have the foresight to back up all your stuff, but I've seen Apple tell people new to computers to do a reinstall and they wiped out all their data. They really need to be a little more careful wielding the reinstall stick over there.

You said it; the only time I'll contemplate a reinstall is when there simply is no time available to actually find and fix the problem. Although it sometimes happens that the problem is traceable to hardware issues and persists anyway.

I didn't believe them either. So I went to BOTH Apple stores, and asked one of the Genius Bar guys at one, and actually two seperately at the other. Then I asked at the local user's group. All of them said "reinstall." I had asked about the biggest of the problems here, and the only solution offered was "call Apple." So...I was out of ideas to try.

I did the archive-reinstall, which kept all my files and settings. The only thing lost was system add-ons, except for the Menu Meters extension. It was fairly painless and solved the problems.

Hmm, lost some system add-ons ... solved the problems.
I wonder if there is a correlation here?

Which is not a bad solution... my problem is more with Apple's phone support not explaining about that option.

And yeah, as Craig said, I could see the archive-install as a good solution when put into a time crunch situation.

What a bad luck...CAlvarez! either you are not lucky with Macs or you messed them up badly very quickly...let's see if this continue to happen to you, maybe you go for the guiness world record. :D

In my five years in Singapore and with 6 Macs in a network, I never had to reinstall once.

.

I had the biggest problem (crash on disconnecting the external monitor) BEFORE installing ANYTHING at all. It happened about an hour into owning the computer. So if I caused that, damn, I'm good.

I've reinstalled the extensions and the problem hasn't come back yet...

Was there ever any doubt? :D

Heh.

Now one of my problems is back. And I haven't reinstalled any of my old system extensions. Argh. When I close the lid, sometimes instead of sleeping it just powers off instantly.

Mercury must be in retrograde or something, nothing mechanical or electrical seems to be going well. My Pocket PC phone just hard-reset itself spontaneously today; that's just pretty much unheard of (kinda like my Mac OS reinstall--I must be losing my geek touch). My truck got rear-ended last week, wife's car broken into and the stereo stolen over the weekend, motorcycle wouldn't start when I tried to go for a ride (it's a Honda, not a Harley, so it's not like breakdowns are common), her iPod now refuses to talk to her office computer in any way...I could go on.

Maybe I should become Amish. Yeah, that's it, what can go wrong with a horse-drawn buggy?

At 4:13 At 7:19 It's a bit hard to understand what your situation is.
Have you or have you not reinstalled the system extensions?

One could have nightmares just thinking about it :eek:

...stick with the technology.

Sorry, typing faster than thinking... I removed the extensions which I had loaded previously, when the problem existed. I have a new one that I haven't removed, the MS kb/mouse stuff, because I had the problem when that wasn't installed.

So...reinstall OS, problems solved. Add back my system extensions, worked fine for a while, then have this lid problem. Remove the extensions which were in use both before and after the reinstall, still have the lid/sleep problem. Argh. And now VPC is crashing regularly too. All I need it for is a couple of programs, light use, but it died three times in a couple hours.

It seems you are having various random problems.
You should definitely test your RAM with 'memtest':
http://friskythecat.tripod.com/
and look over the other general troubleshooting suggestions in the sticky thread.
I recall there being a known problem with the initial release of VPC 7 when you have more than a certain amount of RAM.

But before going much further, reboot and then run System Profiler and see what it thinks you have installed as far as extensions & startup items etc.

I've run the profiler, as well as the Apple Hardware Test overnight, everything looks good. I will try the memtest you recommended. I do have a second stick of non-Apple but certified Apple compatible memory from a major brand (forgot which). I had the video problems before putting that in. Total memory is 1GB.

I've now done a third installation, and things are better, though getting here was weird. The two major problems came back (crashing when disconnecting the external monitor, and the system doing a power-off or hard crash when I'd close the lid). I noticed that this started again right after doing a couple of the latest security updates again, since I had reinstalled the OS.

So...I reloaded the OS yet again, then updated it, rebooted, updated again (the latest updates don't show up until you've applied the first batch of updates), rebooted. THEN I reinstalled my extensions one by one, rebooted, tested, repeat... It was a long night, finally got to bed at 4am. But now my PowerBook is working well, and I have my most-needed extensions running again.

Now, what's the best way to make a restorable backup before further testing (installing a few valuable but not totally critical pieces of software)? Disk image has never worked for me, just says "Device busy" every time I try it, always has. Even off a fresh boot with nothing running. I've seen a few backup utilities out there, but I don't know which ones will give a pain-free restoration of the OS if it is needed.

BTW, everyone's help and continued support doesn't go unappreciated!

It gets weirder...

The problem started again, and I haven't loaded anything additional. It looks like it happens after I've been using the computer for a while. Off a fresh boot, I can unplug the monitor all I want without issues. Yet after using it all day yesterday and leaving it running overnight, it crashed today when I unplugged the monitor.

So I ran all my usual apps, everything I could think of that I had run previously. The problem will NOT happen again now.

This is going to be a hard one to figure out.

Now, what's the best way to make a restorable backup before further testing (installing a few valuable but not totally critical pieces of software)?

I use Carbon Copy Cloner for backups.

Sorry to hear of your ongoing troubles. If it were a car you had, I'd say it was a lemon. ;)

I'm thinking about loading the OS onto my iMac from the same disc set, loading all the same apps and extras, and see what happens there. Think this would be a valid test to isolate hardware pretty well? The iMac would be a bit slow for general use (G3-400/320MB), but I think I could live with it for a test.

Sounds like either it's hardware or a bad Install disc. Setting up on the iMac should test the latter notion.

For making bootable backups: the 'Restore' function of Disk Utility works like a charm. Run it booted off the CD/DVD, of course.

Thanks, I guess I missed the obvious; running it by booting off the CD so the disk doesn't have open files.

At this point I'm considering a full clean format/reinstall and restore only data, no programs or settings. Do you think that's the wise thing to do considering the random issues I'm having? The things I absolutely must have to do my job are MS Office, Eudora, Quickbooks, VNC, Remote Desktop Client, and a browser (I could live with Safari temporarily). I could run with that limited install for a few days and see how it goes.

The CD passes the integrity check, but should I ask for a new one anyway maybe? The guys at the Apple store seem pretty willing to help, they may do that for me if I show my originals.

It's so hard to try to troubleshoot when the machine is also you primary computer...

Sorry of this has been asked (and answered) before, but have you looked at the crash log and/or system.log from the time of the problem? If you copy & paste the relevant bits here maybe someone will have a clue.

I've looked, and nothing goes into any of the logs. The OS doesn't crash, just the user interface. I can SSH to it and do a shutdown that way.

I did a clean reinstall last night, formatted the drive and all. Reloaded my data, no system or user settings, and reloaded only the most critical apps. I'll run like this for a while and see what happens.