Problem running disk utility programs!

[andysi]

Hi,

Hoping somewhere out there can help me out...recently my Powerbook G4 laptop (OS 10.3.9) has been acting up. Small things like icons on the top right menu bar above the desktop disappearing or changing opacity, and occsional blank spots on the desktop, to now more frequent crashes of Entourage, and Word, among other Office programs. Also, my hard drive disk space frequently changes from having no disk space to having over 3GB left.

I first tried repairing permissions with Disk Utility but after 30% of the way through got this: "disk utility has lost its connection with the disk managment tool and cannot continue. please quit and relaunch disk utility." I then quit and try again, same thing happens.

I have also tried repairing permission s with Onyx but it also doesn't seem to go very far. I haven't tried leaving it for hours, but the progress bar just seems to stall.

I then installed and ran permission repair on Cocktail, and it didn't have a visible progress bar, but I quit after 10 minutes when I just presumed the same issue was happenning - perhaps the issue that prevented Disk utility for completing its job.

Any advice on what route to go? Are the recent crashes and icon and display issues and changing disk space related - and is the failure for disk utility to run symptomatic of something?

Help!

Thanks,
Andy

[bobw]

From MacFixIt
Unable to run Disk Utility after update Several users have reported that they are unable to properly run Disk Utility after applying the iTunes 6.0.2 update, receiving the error message:
"Disk Utility lost connection with Disk Management Tool and cannot continue."
part-way through the repair process.
The problem generally affects users running Mac OS X 10.3.9.
MacFixIt reader Philip Wheelock writes:
"I installed iTunes 6.0.2 via Software Update; restarted and found I could not repair disk permissions with Disk Utility, even starting from system installer disk. Disk Utility stalls approximately 1/3 of the way through and displays this error message: 'Disk Utility has lost its connection with the Disk Management Tool and cannot continue. Please quit and relaunch Disk Utility.' Never seen this before."
There are two potential workarounds for this issue:
• Delete the "Chess" application and its associated .plist file (com.apple.Chess.plist, located in ~/Library/Preferences -- the Library folder inside your user directory) and attempt to re-run Disk Utility
• Delete iTunes 6.0.2 and its associated .plist file (com.apple.iTunes.plist, locaed in ~/Library/Preferences). Re-install iTunes 6.0.1 (from a backup, if available) and attempt to run Disk Utility again.
If you are still having issues, note that you can still startup from a different volume (or the Mac OS X installation disc) and repair permissions successfully on your normal startup volume.

========================================

Solution 2;
Disk Utility crash


The iTunes 6.0.2 update of 1/12/06 screwed up at least two files:

folder: your disk -> Library -> Receipts
files: iTunes.pkg, iTunes4.pkg

Other files from their-party plug-ins to iTunes may also be a problem.

Solution:

1) Archive these files so that Disk Utility can not see them anymore**. My solution was to put them into a StuffIt archive.

2) Delete these files

3) Run Disk Utility, Repair Permissions

4) Run Disk Utility, Repair Permissions again"