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TICKET ARCHIVE -> Applications/utilities quitting or not opening

Basket - May 17, 2006 - 6:05 am

I have a Mac G4 1.25 Ghz 80 GB combo/RV250 with OS9 & Panther 10.3.9. About 50 GB of the hard drive is free. The machine has 768M of ram. I use OS9 only for one program, but it's an important one & isn't written for OSX. Software Update & System Profiler will no longer remain open, Safari & other programs frequently quit & the message, "The program ___ has unexpectedly quit..." This is happening to more & more programs & utilities. I tried resetting the PRAM, but the machine didn't respond. I cannot access the disk utility to try running "repair disk permissions," but in the past, when I could run it, the problems persisted or returned, though recently it's happening with increasing frequency. The machine is connected to the internet via a Linksys router (wired connection) & there have been no hardware or software installs recently. This happened in the fall of 2005 & an Apple technician did an "archive & install" which seemed to fix the problem for a short while, but it has returned. Suggestions?

ishan - May 17, 2006 - 8:45 pm

You can set up a new user and see if the problems keep happening. If they do, something in the (old) user's profile is corrupt. I would either do another Archive/Install or download the combo updater to 10.3.9 that's available on Apple's downloads site and run it (even though you're already running 10.3.9). The combo updater will replace a whole bunch of files with fresh, uncorrupted versions and usually, this is faster than the Archive/Install option.

There's a whole host of lesser steps you could take, e.g., running freeware/shareware like Yasu, Onyx, Cocktail, maintain1, etc. to delete all your user and system caches as well as your font caches. These caches will be rebuilt on restart and may be all you need to do.

HTH and please let us know what happens. Thanks.

Basket - May 18, 2006 - 9:22 am

Ishan.,
Thank you for your quick response. I went to the Apple downloads site & eagerly downloaded the 10.3.9 combo updater only to find that after trying twice to download, the verification failed both times. Other than the freeware/shareware possibilities you mentioned, does the failure to verify prompt any further suggestions?

basket

ishan - May 18, 2006 - 5:09 pm

Skip the verification step. I suspect the download's fine, it's the app that's the problem.