Unexpected logging off when trashing items

patrickhubble · #1 March 18th, 2005, 12:50 AM

Hello,

I have recently encountered a problem on my relatively new 1.42 GHz Mac Mini - whenever I drag an item into the trash, the system suddenly logs me out and I encounter the log-in screen. All the applications which were open seem to be forcibly closed and any unsaved data lost. What's more, when I log in again afterwards the problem still occurs, but after the third time the machine actually restarts.

It also seems to happen when press the 'send' button in Mail - though it does actually send it (as I have checked) to the recipient.

Emptying the trash is fine though, and other disk operations seem unaffected (such as creation of folders, and moving or copying).

I have restarted many times to no avail. It occurs on all accounts. I figured it might be a disk filing problem and repaired disk permissions, but to no effect. Has anyone else encountered this odd behaviour?

Any help greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Patrick Hubble

patrickhubble · #2 March 20th, 2005, 10:03 PM

ok - it's getting quite serious now.

whenever I try to open documents in classic, the computer crashes in the same way- though the classic application starts up fine. Also, it happens mid-way through using iCal - there no longer seems to be any correlation between crashing and what I'm doing.

I'm thinking it could be a memory problem, since I only have 256 mB of RAM (being 100% used up according to process viewer) - but can't be sure (surely trashing items doesn't use up heaps of RAM?).

desperately need help!

Patrick

ziess · #3 March 20th, 2005, 11:18 PM

Try downloading Mac Janitor (http://personalpages.tds.net/~brian_...acjanitor.html) and running all Mac Janitor's tasks.

patrickhubble · #4 March 23rd, 2005, 03:22 AM

thanks for your reply! I downloaded it, but it crashes whenever I try to do a maintenance cycle (all the schedules crash - none of them work).

patrickhubble · #5 March 23rd, 2005, 11:32 PM

Ok, this is VERY serious.

1. Have purchased a NEW MAC MINI (for a second office computer)
2. Took it out of the box
3. Took my NEW VIEWSONIC 721 MONITOR out of its box
4. Connected both together, and connected with my DLink DSL ROUTER
5. TURNED ON MY MAC
6. Went through setup assistant ok. Mainfinder comes up.
7. Connected to networked hard drive of my other computer.
8. WHAT THE... SCREEN FADES TO THE SYSTEM BLUE REGULARLY - ON AND OFF EVERY FEW SECONDS. As if it was trying to log off every few seconds.
the Computer is almost unusable (it has taken me a long time to write this between the blue fades)

This is a NEW COMPUTER. No third party software. No peripherals.

Have downloaded the latest Mac OS Security Update using the software Updater - no difference.

I can't believe it! This sounds very much like a virus to me - but suddenly happening in the first few minutes of turning a computer on???

texanpenguin · #6 March 23rd, 2005, 11:46 PM

Well it's certainly not a virus.

You'll want to take both of those malfunctioning Mac Mini's to the location of purchase to have them looked at. Looks like it's faulty hardware. On the first one, though, a simple OS reinstall might do the trick.

patrickhubble · #7 March 24th, 2005, 12:44 AM

Hooray! Found the solution.

There was an iTunes Helper App in the startup items in the admin user account - when I deleted it and restarted the computer actually worked fine. (has worked great ever since - everything looks good!)

Apple should really check their releases before distributing software (I think the iTunes App was downloaded and installed when software update opened automatically after setup.)

thanks!