going nuts on me

[bjneuman]

sorry to bother you all with my problems.
recents, strange things began happening. first, when disk copy mounted an image, it appears to successfully mount the disk, but then the program keeps up its scroll bar, continually "mounting disk". This wasn't really a problem, since the mounted disk was functional and i could just quit disk copy.
today, i started up my computer, and iCal unexpectedly quit. it does this without exception now. i went to go reinstall it, and after i mounted the image (where disk copy still went nuts on me), and after i double clikced on the package, the installer quit on me before it even loaded the authentication page. this also is without exception.
is there a specific thing causing these problems? i recently re-installed 10.2, and didnt have any problems until now. i haven't been messing around with anything other than screen savers and preference panes either.
any help would be hugely appreciated.
thanks.

bryce
dual g4 450
512 mb ram
10.2.1

[twister]

Have you done disk first aid? Start up holding 'apple+s' and then when the scrolling text stops type in 'fsck-y' and hit enter. That's file systems check (or something like that) and then yes to fix any issues. Do this over and over until no issue come up. If no issue just type 'reboot' to restart. If you don't like that option, pop in the X.2 CD and run Disk First Aid. Maybe that could help.

Twister

[bjneuman]

this didn't work. i tried both options, and it told me there was nothing wrong.
does anybody else have any ideas?
again, i appreciate all your help.

[pingsmoth]

The same thing happens to me now, but not just with iCal. Limewire, iCab, heck, even Print Center. Today my mac started logging out spontaneously. I'll be doing somethign and it will just log out for no reason. It doesn't quit applications and give me a chance to save data--it just logs out. I don't get it.

[bjneuman]

i havent used icab or limewire lately, but i definitely have been having problems with print center too.
other problems have surfaced, some quite in the opposite direction.
now, mail won't quit, at all. i have to use the force quit to log out of my computer or shut it down.
is it possible this could be caused by a virus? i ran virex with the september (or maybe october) virus definitions, and they found nothing. i cannot install the newer definitions, however, since the installer program crashes no matter what.
this is starting to get absurd.
anybody?

[pingsmoth]

I have had problems with installers crashing too, just like you said. I tried three times to install a newer version of Limewire the other day, thinking that it would solve the random quitting problem, but the installer would start up and then 'unexpectedly quit' on me. I don't think it's a virus, but it could be since I have been using limewire lately. I would tend to blame it on a bug in iCab or Opera or some other beta or pre-release program I am using, but these things seem to happen even when I'm not running one of those.

of course, if it were OS9, I'd simply reboot without extensions, start fiddling with them until I figured out what the problem was, and go from there. aaahhhh...

[genghiscohen]

Something to try - delete all the files in /System/Library/Caches, /Library/Caches and ~/Library/Caches, and then reboot. This can sometimes cure seemingly random app crashes.

[Jason]

whenever i get a system that buggy i back up personal files and reinstall the system

but thats a last straw thing i suppose