Generic OS X Troubleshooting List - Page 4

Craig R. Arko · 08-04-2003, 12:08 PM

Quote:


	Originally posted by tlarkin I guess we should ask ourselves do we want to include hardware troubleshooting?

Well, one short answer to this is if a problem is manifesting as a kernel panic, there's an excellent chance it's got something to do with hardware; at least in peripheral form.

So to some extent, it's unavoidable.

tlarkin · 08-04-2003, 02:04 PM

Quote:


	Originally posted by Craig R. Arko Well, one short answer to this is if a problem is manifesting as a kernel panic, there's an excellent chance it's got something to do with hardware; at least in peripheral form. So to some extent, it's unavoidable.

Yes, I agree. My question is if this if for novice users do you want them swapping out hardware in their macs? Should we keep it with external devices? Main logic boards cost lots of money if they were to be damaged and needing replacements.

Should we make a few lists of troubleshooting steps? Maybe for different level of expertise, from novice to moderate etc?

This is a really good idea, I am just curious to see how "in depth" we want people to go who are not familiar with mac, mac os x, or computers in general.

petey · 08-04-2003, 10:06 PM

Quote:


	Originally posted by tlarkin I guess my final thing I would like to point out is a proper order of procedures. I would not put fix the file system in front of troubleshooting user prefs. Making a new user account takes a few seconds and has no potential to harm a system.

'fix the filesystem' got bumped up to the top because, if your filesystem is borked, doing anything that writes to the hard drive, like creating a new account, can compound the damage.

Quote:


	Originally posted by tlarkin For example, I will be on the phone with some user who is describing their problem to me. I ask them if they tried repairing the disk using fsck in single user mode? They always of course say no whats that? I try to walk them through and the minute they see text with no gui they freak out and bring the system in to me, instead of me walking them through it over the phone.

why on earth would you put a 'babyish noobie' through what is surely the hell for them of running fsck in single user mode?

have them run Disk Utility from the OS X install CD. or better yet, have them buy Norton or DiskWarrior.

why on earth wouldn't you let them use a nice GUI with pretty graphics. that's why they have a Mac in the first place, you know.

i'm not a noobie, and i prefer GUI's. in fact, i'm happy to say that i've never run fsck or booted into single user mode, but yet i still manage to check and fix my filesystem.

hayne · 08-04-2003, 11:09 PM

Quote:


	have them run Disk Utility from the OS X install CD. or better yet, have them buy Norton or DiskWarrior

Many people seem not be be able to find their install CDs. Many people seem to prefer a zero cost solution to one that costs money - especially for something which merely gives them back what they had before - i.e. a working system.

petey · 08-05-2003, 12:17 AM

Quote:


	Originally posted by hayne Many people seem not be be able to find their install CDs. Many people seem to prefer a zero cost solution to one that costs money - especially for something which merely gives them back what they had before - i.e. a working system.

sure, sure, sure. but tlarkin was talking about newbie users who were scared to run fsck. they were bringing their machines in to him, rather than dealing with the confusion.

and, of course, there are reasonably common forms of filesystem corruption than fsck won't fix.

on a broader note, StarOffice is cheaper than MS Office. Linux is cheaper than OS X.

i wouldn't send a newbie user to those cheaper alternatives either, unless they really wanted to tinker.

anthlover · 08-05-2003, 06:37 AM

RE: OSXhints Forums Partially Self selective

Many of us are working with (bblinn : "Frequent crashing with new G4"

And its is an interesting test of the "List and newbie and methodology"

I agree that using Disk Tools, in Parituclar Disk Warrior is less scary if you are "Mac Person" or someone looking for an ALL GUI repair....

And yet people that find and log into OSXhints Forums are Partially Self selective.

They want to fix the problem themselves. For money, for Free etc, what ever it takes. They seem NOT to want to bring the system into a Dealer or even to Call Apple.

Disk warriror is much more effective, but no harm is done if there problem can be resolved with a Free included Utility.

tlarkin · 08-05-2003, 11:29 AM

Quote:


	Originally posted by petey sure, sure, sure. but tlarkin was talking about newbie users who were scared to run fsck. they were bringing their machines in to him, rather than dealing with the confusion. and, of course, there are reasonably common forms of filesystem corruption than fsck won't fix. on a broader note, StarOffice is cheaper than MS Office. Linux is cheaper than OS X. i wouldn't send a newbie user to those cheaper alternatives either, unless they really wanted to tinker.

I am not saying I don't recomend people buy disk warrior, tech tool, apple works, office x, etc etc. People choose not to buy them. So all they have to use is whats built into the OS. These situations happen more than you think. Single user mode is not that difficult of a task either. Running /sbin/fsck -y is pretty easy. As long as you don't mount the drive they really can't do any hard either. It is my understanding that /sbin/fsck -y can still modify the filesystem with out having to run /sbin/mount -uw / .

Not everyone has disk warrior, not everyone will go out and buy it because its highly recomended. A lot of users still believe that their mac is invincibile and there will never be a problem with it cuz its a mac and their old apple II they had still works to this day. This is most common in mac users.

You gotta work with what you got. If the user doesn't have the proper utilities and I don't have my copies with me I have to use what they have. If its an over the phone thing (which I really hate doing) and they don't have the proper tools I gotta work with what I got..

I am not sending newbie users to single user mode because I like it, or want to. Its my job to fix them, and sometimes I have to do phone support for someone in a remote location, and I gotta work with what they got. This situation could happen here on the forum. Some guy's mac is not working he lives in the middle of nowhere so the closest service center is 100s of miles away, and he doesn't want to spend any more money on his $2500+ macintosh because it should work how its suppose to. Plus he knows it has built in utilities that can fix his problem but doesn't know how to use them.

I was making a point we should cover different areas with maybe different skill levels.

So when someone like the fictional user I mentioned above reads over these troubleshooting steps and does not have a copy of diskwarrior what should he do? He knows it can be fixed and he would not have to buy a copy of disk warrior or any other utility.

So what I am saying should probably be mentioned. If someone calls apple, apple will walk you through single user mode and have you run some commands in certain troubleshooting situations. I just mentioned its a pain to mention over the phone but if, lets say, a detailed list of steps were created it might help people fix their problems with out costing them anything but the time to fix it.

mervTormel · 08-05-2003, 12:07 PM

i'd like to point out a couple of caveats that should be considered.

a) a cookbook approach for neophyte users can often be ineffectual

anything more complex than mac & cheese suffers from a cookbook approach in that users are just being mechanical monkeys; their expectations of effective repair is too high. it's important to instruct the user to be very careful and observant, and log events and messages precisely and reference other resources and have patience and think. "i did step C and the error said 'blah something or other," is lacking in necessary precision at this juncture.

b) the word "fix" should be qualified

when we say DiskWarrior is going to "fix" these odd filesystem errors such as "overlap" and "keys out of order" beyond what fsck can do, we need to add, "but with possible data loss, and that loss could be a critical system file which may necessitate reacquiring it or a re-install and restore from backup"

that said, somewhere in the preface of this guide it should be pointed out that, in the course of this endeavor, all bets are off if you don't have adequate backups of your cherished data, i.e., that which represents your efforts at creating something with this complex toolbox and can't be easily rebuilt (as if it were easy in the first place).

anthlover · 08-05-2003, 04:43 PM

Anohter Guide for Inspiration

http://tekserve.com/pdfs/TekFAQJuly2002.pdf

While we Often tell our helpee to back up etc. you should see how often it crops up in this guide....

hayne · 08-07-2003, 02:10 AM

There is a useful troubleshooting guide for OS X at http://www.macattorney.com/tutorial.html

It lists various common problems and suggests solutions. It also has some general troubleshooting suggestions.

One noteworthy suggestion on that site is to do a "safe boot" (with Shift held down) in order to do the filesystem repair with 'fsck'.

I checked the script /etc/rc.boot and the MacAttorney site is correct - that doing a safe boot is just as effective as doing 'fsck -y' in single-user mode.
So perhaps this is the answer to the previous discussion here about whether to recommend single-user mode & fsck.
The only question in my mind is whether you get the same information about what filesystem problems are found when the fsck is done as part of a safe boot. It wouldn't seem so since the messages from fsck are hidden behind the graphical startup screens. So that is the downside. But maybe this is still the best thing to recommend for our troubleshooting list: safe boot, check if problems exist, then restart normally.

petey · 08-07-2003, 03:40 AM

Quote:


	Originally posted by hayne There is a useful troubleshooting guide for OS X at http://www.macattorney.com/tutorial.html ... doing a safe boot is just as effective as doing 'fsck -y' in single-user mode.

great find. it's a cool list, and the safe boot info is news to me.

tlarkin · 08-07-2003, 03:25 PM

That link was cool, and I knew safe mode did run some basic diagnostics when it booted up but I was not sure exactly what it did. Thanks for confirming what exactly it runs Hayne.

I think we are getting close to maybe posting something on this site to help basic troubleshooting to a person who is new to the mac. I think we should definately add in the disclaimers about data loss and that everything should be backed up. I also think we should add some guidelines to post a message on the board here. Like make sure they list the problem in best detail they can, hardware specs, 3rd party devices installed (including external devices), what version of the OS they are running, and what software they are running (like haxs and stuff). Maybe also add a step that states if you cannot fix it, please take it in for service; or if they uncomfortable opening up their mac and touching the hardware take it in for service. ESD guidlines should be posted as well. Make sure they are working in a static free enviroment.

Typically you want to work in an enviroment that is around 70% to 90% humidity. You also want to ground yourself. You can do this several ways. One you can do is buy a grounding strap and connect the end to a metal piece (like the case) of the computer. Another way is to plug the unit into a grounded circuit (three prong circuit in the USA) and make sure your bare skin touches metal before working on the system. We don't want some guy walking around in wool socks on shag carpet with his computer open on the floor tinkering with it.

So maybe some safety guidlines should be posted as well.

Imacer · 08-15-2003, 07:12 PM

Quote:


	Originally posted by petey in another thread, a poster was having mysterious trouble with applications quitting, and was wondering if he should just reinstall the system. so i tried putting together a list of generalized troubleshooting steps in the order i would proceed. so if you are seeing a recurring problem that has no easy solution, what would you do? am i missing anything? would others do things differently, or in a different order? - repair permissions. - check the filesystem. - disable Application Enhancer, if you're running it. - create a new user account, and see if the problem persists there. - check that there are no system StartupItems in /Library/StartupItems/. - unplug all USB, Firewire, and 3rd Party PCI cards. - reinstall the combo updater. - check the hard drive for bad blocks. - take out 3rd party RAM. - run the Apple hardware diagnostic CD. - reinstall the system from scratch. - send the machine back to Apple.

How would I know if their is a firmware update for the G4 flat panel Imac 700 mgh. Also in my Libray startupitems folder I have MxBtDaemon and RetroRun. Are they suppose to be in the startupitems folder?

djn1 · 08-15-2003, 07:57 PM

Quote:


	Originally posted by Imacer How would I know if their is a firmware update for the G4 flat panel Imac 700 mgh. Also in my Libray startupitems folder I have MxBtDaemon and RetroRun. Are they suppose to be in the startupitems folder?

RetroRun appears to be to do with Retrospect's unnatended backup facility. If you want to disable it have a look at this web page.

I couldn't find any info on MxBtDaemon.

petey · 08-16-2003, 05:28 AM

Quote:


	Originally posted by Imacer How would I know if their is a firmware update for the G4 flat panel Imac 700 mgh.

"go to the Apple website, and look around" is the short answer.

petey · 08-16-2003, 06:51 AM

Here's the list with some basic tips for each step (although I only got half way there). In the basic tips, I was trying to concentrate of answering these generic questions:

- How do I do this step?
- What am I trying to fix or discover with this step?
- Am I done now? Where do I have to go from here?

Feedback appreciated, expecially for the larger descriptive tips.

--------------------------------------

FIRST AID
01 Restart.
02 Check/fix the filesystem.
03 Make sure you're not running out of free space on the boot volume.
04 Repair permissions.
05 Create a new user account, and see if the problem persists there.
06 Disable Application Enhancer, if you're running it.
07 Clear system & user caches.
08 Startup in SafeBoot mode, and see if the problem persists there.
09 Unplug all USB, Firewire devices except Apple mouse.
10 Zap PRAM.

MORE SERIOUS TROUBLESHOOTING
11 Unplug 3rd Party PCI cards.
12 Reinstall the latest combo updater.
13 Check the hard drive for bad blocks.
14 Take out 3rd party RAM.
15 Run the Apple hardware diagnostic CD.
16 Reset PMU.
17 Reinstall the system from scratch.
18 Send the machine back to Apple.

01 Restart. - If a restart cures the problem, and the problem doesn't reappear, your troubleshooting work is done.

02 Check/fix the filesystem. - There are many different ways to do this. You can boot into Single User mode and run FSCK. Or boot off the OS X Installation CD and run Disk Utility, or even better, use a 3rd party tool like DiskWarrior or Norton Disk Doctor. These 3rd party tools can fix some kinds of error that the free Apple tools cannot. (But don't ever install the Norton components on your hard drive - just run the tools by booting off the Norton CD.) If there were errors that needed to be fixed, and your software reports that they were all successfully fixed, you may have solved your larger problem.

03 Make sure you're not running out of free space on the boot volume. When the system is running out of memory, it needs to write 80MB swapfiles on your harddrive. If your harddrive is already almost full, then the systme will bog down into unusability. Keep tabs on how much free space you have on your boot disk by getting info on that disk in the Finder. Alternatively, you can use the excellent freeware DiskSpace menu item, which will give you a display of free space on your menubar. You should want to have at *least* 500MB to 1GB of free space when you're using the machine heavily. You should also see how many swapfiles you're generating by going into the terminal and typing: ls /var/vm if you have 5 or 10 or 15 swapfiles, the system is eating up disk space at a rapid rate. To fix: trash unneeded files and applications off of your boot disk, and try to make fewer swapfiles by adding more RAM or using the machine more gently.

04 Repair permissions. Run this in Disk Utility in your normal login.

05 Create a new user account, and see if the problem persists there. If this makes the problem go away, it means the cause is in your user account. Now it's good we know it's something BAD in the user account, but there's a lot of stuff in the user account to pick through. And now you will have to do some serious troubleshooting. Oftentimes, this will be a preferences file in ~/Library/Preferences/. If you can pinpoint that one bad file, you''re done. If you have no idea what's going on you can try the laborious process of keeping that new account you made, and bringing over the files one by one until you find the one that was the problem. Even easier is to ask an expert if it's a frequenctly seen problem, first letting them know that it was a problem in your user account.

06 Disable Application Enhancer, if you're running it. Haxies from Unsanity. They're great, and they're pretty well programmed, but they're hacking the system in non-standard ways. The file is at /Library/PreferencePanes/ and it's called APEManager. Move it do the desktop and reboot. If the problem doesn't go away, it ain't Application Enchancer.

07 Clear system & user caches. Use a 3rd party tool like Cocktail or Jaguar Cache Cleaner to deep clean all caches. Reboot. See if this cures the problem.

08 Startup in SafeBoot mode, and see if the problem persists there. If this makes the problem go away, then it is a problem with Extensions or StartupItems. And most likely, those would be 3rd party Extensions or StartupItems. Most of those are kept in /Library/Extensions/ and /Library/StartupItem/. Move those items to the desktop, and see if you can isolate which one was causing the trouble. There are also some 3rd party extensions that are *annoyingly* installed in /System/Library/Extension/, howver you must be very very careful mucking around in there, as almost all of those Extensions are supplied by Apple, and your machine will not function without them. Use common sense, and ask the experts.

09 Unplug all USB, Firewire devices except Apple mouse. Reboot with everything uninstalled. If this makes the problem go away, then you have a bad external device, bad cable, or bad port on your computer. Try to isolate which one it is. Be escpecially aware of USB hubs.

.

hayne · 08-16-2003, 03:30 PM

Quote:


	Originally posted by petey 01 Restart. - If a restart cures the problem,

I think you need to be more explicit here (and in the summary list) - e.g. "Restart your Macintosh - if a restart (via the Apple menu) ..."

Quote:


	02 Check/fix the filesystem. - There are many different ways to do this. You can boot into Single User mode and run FSCK.

Besides the fact that you need to give more details about how to do this (e.g. this thread: http://forums.macosxhints.com/showth...threadid=14266), it is very misleading to show the command name in uppercase - commands are case-sensitive even though the filesystem is not!
See also note below about Safe Boot.

Quote:


	06 Disable Application Enhancer, if you're running it. Haxies from Unsanity. They're great, and they're pretty well programmed, but they're hacking the system in non-standard ways. The file is at /Library/PreferencePanes/ and it's called APEManager. Move it do the desktop and reboot. If the problem doesn't go away, it ain't Application Enchancer.

Have you tested this - does it really disable APE? My suspicions are that the 'aped' might still be running even after this.

Quote:


	08 Startup in SafeBoot mode, and see if the problem persists there.

You need to explain how to do a Safe Boot (hold down the Shift key at restart) - probably best to have a link to Apple's document on doing this.
And I note that doing a Safe Boot also automatically runs 'fsck' so I think this item should be moved up in the list to replace the one about checking the filesystem. It is a far easier way for newbies to check the filesystem: just do a safe boot and then immediately restart again normally.

mervTormel · 08-16-2003, 03:41 PM

Quote:


	Originally posted by hayne ... And I note that doing a Safe Boot also automatically runs 'fsck' so I think this item should be moved up in the list to replace the one about checking the filesystem. It is a far easier way for newbies to check the filesystem: just do a safe boot and then immediately restart again normally.

but the result is opaque and may not have resulted in any good, e.g., overlapped extents and keys out of order would not be repaired under the current fsck and the problems would still be manifest without the user knowing any results.

again, this kind of cookbook approach reveals weaknesses quickly and becomes less useful.

petey · 08-16-2003, 03:54 PM

i rarely use cookbooks when actually cooking. but when i'm making something new for the first time, i sometimes find them quite useful.

the list method has some application as a way for people to rule out certain problems.

---

and just what mervTormel said. SafeBoot seems more useful to me in ruling out Extensions and StartupItems, than in as a way to run fsck.

petey · 08-16-2003, 04:00 PM

Quote:


	Originally posted by hayne Have you tested this - does it really disable APE? My suspicions are that the 'aped' might still be running even after this.

hayne,

i've been following the other APE thread, so i understand what you're talking about.

the total way to disable APE would be to run the uninstaller from Unsanity.

however, i'm guessing (haven't tested) that removing the PrefPane will disable all the haxies, even if aped is still spawned. and i'm also guessing that the haxies are MUCH more likely to cause problems than the aped process itself.

it's not the cleanest solution, but it should give the user a sense if APE is causing their problem or not.

08-05-2003, 06:37 AM	#66
anthlover Hall of Famer Join Date: Apr 2003 Posts: 3,620	OSXhints Forums Partially Self selective RE: OSXhints Forums Partially Self selective Many of us are working with (bblinn : "Frequent crashing with new G4" And its is an interesting test of the "List and newbie and methodology" I agree that using Disk Tools, in Parituclar Disk Warrior is less scary if you are "Mac Person" or someone looking for an ALL GUI repair.... And yet people that find and log into OSXhints Forums are Partially Self selective. They want to fix the problem themselves. For money, for Free etc, what ever it takes. They seem NOT to want to bring the system into a Dealer or even to Call Apple. Disk warriror is much more effective, but no harm is done if there problem can be resolved with a Free included Utility.

08-05-2003, 04:43 PM	#69
anthlover Hall of Famer Join Date: Apr 2003 Posts: 3,620	Anohter Guide for Inspiration:) Anohter Guide for Inspiration http://tekserve.com/pdfs/TekFAQJuly2002.pdf While we Often tell our helpee to back up etc. you should see how often it crops up in this guide....

08-07-2003, 02:10 AM	#70
hayne Site Admin Join Date: Jan 2002 Location: Montreal Posts: 32,473	troubleshooting list at MacAttorney.com There is a useful troubleshooting guide for OS X at http://www.macattorney.com/tutorial.html It lists various common problems and suggests solutions. It also has some general troubleshooting suggestions. One noteworthy suggestion on that site is to do a "safe boot" (with Shift held down) in order to do the filesystem repair with 'fsck'. I checked the script /etc/rc.boot and the MacAttorney site is correct - that doing a safe boot is just as effective as doing 'fsck -y' in single-user mode. So perhaps this is the answer to the previous discussion here about whether to recommend single-user mode & fsck. The only question in my mind is whether you get the same information about what filesystem problems are found when the fsck is done as part of a safe boot. It wouldn't seem so since the messages from fsck are hidden behind the graphical startup screens. So that is the downside. But maybe this is still the best thing to recommend for our troubleshooting list: safe boot, check if problems exist, then restart normally.

08-07-2003, 03:25 PM	#72
tlarkin League Commissioner Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: Bay Area, CA Posts: 11,352	That link was cool, and I knew safe mode did run some basic diagnostics when it booted up but I was not sure exactly what it did. Thanks for confirming what exactly it runs Hayne. I think we are getting close to maybe posting something on this site to help basic troubleshooting to a person who is new to the mac. I think we should definately add in the disclaimers about data loss and that everything should be backed up. I also think we should add some guidelines to post a message on the board here. Like make sure they list the problem in best detail they can, hardware specs, 3rd party devices installed (including external devices), what version of the OS they are running, and what software they are running (like haxs and stuff). Maybe also add a step that states if you cannot fix it, please take it in for service; or if they uncomfortable opening up their mac and touching the hardware take it in for service. ESD guidlines should be posted as well. Make sure they are working in a static free enviroment. Typically you want to work in an enviroment that is around 70% to 90% humidity. You also want to ground yourself. You can do this several ways. One you can do is buy a grounding strap and connect the end to a metal piece (like the case) of the computer. Another way is to plug the unit into a grounded circuit (three prong circuit in the USA) and make sure your bare skin touches metal before working on the system. We don't want some guy walking around in wool socks on shag carpet with his computer open on the floor tinkering with it. So maybe some safety guidlines should be posted as well. __________________ sudo make me a sammich

08-16-2003, 06:51 AM	#76
petey All Star Join Date: Feb 2002 Location: peteyville Posts: 794	Troubleshooting List v3 w Hints 'n' Explanations Here's the list with some basic tips for each step (although I only got half way there). In the basic tips, I was trying to concentrate of answering these generic questions: - How do I do this step? - What am I trying to fix or discover with this step? - Am I done now? Where do I have to go from here? Feedback appreciated, expecially for the larger descriptive tips. -------------------------------------- FIRST AID 01 Restart. 02 Check/fix the filesystem. 03 Make sure you're not running out of free space on the boot volume. 04 Repair permissions. 05 Create a new user account, and see if the problem persists there. 06 Disable Application Enhancer, if you're running it. 07 Clear system & user caches. 08 Startup in SafeBoot mode, and see if the problem persists there. 09 Unplug all USB, Firewire devices except Apple mouse. 10 Zap PRAM. MORE SERIOUS TROUBLESHOOTING 11 Unplug 3rd Party PCI cards. 12 Reinstall the latest combo updater. 13 Check the hard drive for bad blocks. 14 Take out 3rd party RAM. 15 Run the Apple hardware diagnostic CD. 16 Reset PMU. 17 Reinstall the system from scratch. 18 Send the machine back to Apple. 01 Restart. - If a restart cures the problem, and the problem doesn't reappear, your troubleshooting work is done. 02 Check/fix the filesystem. - There are many different ways to do this. You can boot into Single User mode and run FSCK. Or boot off the OS X Installation CD and run Disk Utility, or even better, use a 3rd party tool like DiskWarrior or Norton Disk Doctor. These 3rd party tools can fix some kinds of error that the free Apple tools cannot. (But don't ever install the Norton components on your hard drive - just run the tools by booting off the Norton CD.) If there were errors that needed to be fixed, and your software reports that they were all successfully fixed, you may have solved your larger problem. 03 Make sure you're not running out of free space on the boot volume. When the system is running out of memory, it needs to write 80MB swapfiles on your harddrive. If your harddrive is already almost full, then the systme will bog down into unusability. Keep tabs on how much free space you have on your boot disk by getting info on that disk in the Finder. Alternatively, you can use the excellent freeware DiskSpace menu item, which will give you a display of free space on your menubar. You should want to have at least 500MB to 1GB of free space when you're using the machine heavily. You should also see how many swapfiles you're generating by going into the terminal and typing: ls /var/vm if you have 5 or 10 or 15 swapfiles, the system is eating up disk space at a rapid rate. To fix: trash unneeded files and applications off of your boot disk, and try to make fewer swapfiles by adding more RAM or using the machine more gently. 04 Repair permissions. Run this in Disk Utility in your normal login. 05 Create a new user account, and see if the problem persists there. If this makes the problem go away, it means the cause is in your user account. Now it's good we know it's something BAD in the user account, but there's a lot of stuff in the user account to pick through. And now you will have to do some serious troubleshooting. Oftentimes, this will be a preferences file in ~/Library/Preferences/. If you can pinpoint that one bad file, you''re done. If you have no idea what's going on you can try the laborious process of keeping that new account you made, and bringing over the files one by one until you find the one that was the problem. Even easier is to ask an expert if it's a frequenctly seen problem, first letting them know that it was a problem in your user account. 06 Disable Application Enhancer, if you're running it. Haxies from Unsanity. They're great, and they're pretty well programmed, but they're hacking the system in non-standard ways. The file is at /Library/PreferencePanes/ and it's called APEManager. Move it do the desktop and reboot. If the problem doesn't go away, it ain't Application Enchancer. 07 Clear system & user caches. Use a 3rd party tool like Cocktail or Jaguar Cache Cleaner to deep clean all caches. Reboot. See if this cures the problem. 08 Startup in SafeBoot mode, and see if the problem persists there. If this makes the problem go away, then it is a problem with Extensions or StartupItems. And most likely, those would be 3rd party Extensions or StartupItems. Most of those are kept in /Library/Extensions/ and /Library/StartupItem/. Move those items to the desktop, and see if you can isolate which one was causing the trouble. There are also some 3rd party extensions that are annoyingly installed in /System/Library/Extension/, howver you must be very very careful mucking around in there, as almost all of those Extensions are supplied by Apple, and your machine will not function without them. Use common sense, and ask the experts. 09 Unplug all USB, Firewire devices except Apple mouse. Reboot with everything uninstalled. If this makes the problem go away, then you have a bad external device, bad cable, or bad port on your computer. Try to isolate which one it is. Be escpecially aware of USB hubs. .

08-05-2003, 12:07 PM	#68
mervTormel League Commissioner Join Date: Jan 2002 Posts: 5,536	i'd like to point out a couple of caveats that should be considered. a) a cookbook approach for neophyte users can often be ineffectual anything more complex than mac & cheese suffers from a cookbook approach in that users are just being mechanical monkeys; their expectations of effective repair is too high. it's important to instruct the user to be very careful and observant, and log events and messages precisely and reference other resources and have patience and think. "i did step C and the error said 'blah something or other," is lacking in necessary precision at this juncture. b) the word "fix" should be qualified when we say DiskWarrior is going to "fix" these odd filesystem errors such as "overlap" and "keys out of order" beyond what fsck can do, we need to add, "but with possible data loss, and that loss could be a critical system file which may necessitate reacquiring it or a re-install and restore from backup" that said, somewhere in the preface of this guide it should be pointed out that, in the course of this endeavor, all bets are off if you don't have adequate backups of your cherished data, i.e., that which represents your efforts at creating something with this complex toolbox and can't be easily rebuilt (as if it were easy in the first place).

08-16-2003, 03:54 PM	#79
petey All Star Join Date: Feb 2002 Location: peteyville Posts: 794	i rarely use cookbooks when actually cooking. but when i'm making something new for the first time, i sometimes find them quite useful. the list method has some application as a way for people to rule out certain problems. --- and just what mervTormel said. SafeBoot seems more useful to me in ruling out Extensions and StartupItems, than in as a way to run fsck.