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TICKET ARCHIVE -> Vanishing Settings

wolfboy_54 - Jul 23, 2005 - 3:31 pm

Recently I have had some problems with my Mac G4 deleting or resetting my customized settings. I should start by pointing out that this Mac is about 5 years old. I have been running OSX Jaguar on it for several months now and no longer have Classic on my Mac. I have 1.62 GB memory, a 400MHz Power PC processor

Examples of the problem at hand: icons will disappear from the Dock, just the ones that did not come with the OS--Adobe applications, Real Player, Explorer, Firefox, etc. There have been occasions where I will launch an application and I will get the introductory dialog box, asking if I agree to manufacturer's terms and requesting I register (even though I did many months ago). Most recently, I have found some of my browser settings either reset or gone! I have been gradually been making a migration from Explorer to Firefox. I just starts transferring some of my Favorites over to Firefox. When I launched Firefox the next day, all of the Bookmarks or Favorites were gone. I hadn't had any problem like that with Explorer until today. I discovered ALL of my favorites were deleted. Fortunately, I have many of these written down in an InDesign document. Also, I've found my Home Page reset in both browsers to the default. Browser features, such as Auto fill, will be wiped clean.

This happened possibly a couple months ago, along with other problems such as Photoshop refusing to launch. At that time, I approached that problem as a lack of memory. Removing a lot of image files and audio files seemed to resolve that issue. At that time I may have had approximately 1.5 GB of information that needed to go. This time I don't have anywhere close to that that I can tell and am experiencing similar problems (although I have no problem launching Photoshop or any other application). the main problem now is settings being reset or wiped (whichever description you prefer). Is the hard drive about to crash or will some routine maintenance resolve the problem?

One more thing. In both instances I tried to run Norton Disk Doctor by booting from the Norton disk (holding down the C key while restarting). The Mac resisted allowing me to do this--tried several times. I think on both occasions, I had to first run Disk Doctor from the hard drive's system before it would boot from the Norton disk on the next try.

I will say thanks beforehand for any help you can offer.

Dave

DeltaMac - Jul 23, 2005 - 3:59 pm

How much free space is available on your hard drive?
The problems that you are describing sound typical of 'hard drive almost full' problems. When your hard drive is nearly full, the preferences either do not save, or are simply reset to original defaults in some cases. The system will not tell you that this is happening. You can help this by deleting some of your old documents, or transferring older files to another drive. Try to get your free space above 2GB.

I can give you other pointers about freeing up space on the drive if you need them.
- Dale

wolfboy_54 - Jul 25, 2005 - 9:23 am

Dale,

I'm sorry I didn't give you the information about how much free space is on my drive. I sometimes forget I can't get all of the relevant information in the System Profiler. Doing a Cmd+I on the hard drive I see I curently have a capacity of 9.54GB, with 8.37GB Used and 1.16GB available. The biggest non-application block I have on my G4 is a 1.99GB audio file, which will be coming off my hard drive in a couple days. I also have about another GB of Photoshop files on the drive. At the time some of these settings reverted, I probably had a couple large audio files on the drive.

I suspected that the problem might memory, as you said. However, with my G4 being about 5 years old, I was worried that the Mac might be about to die.

I would appreciate any pointers on freeing up drive space. I know I have to get those aiff audio files off soon and onto a disk; same with some of the Photoshop files.My main applications are Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Toast Titanium/CD Spin Doctor, Quicktime Reader, Adobe Reader, REalPlayer, VLC, Firefox, Explorer, Suitcase XI, Yahoo! Messenger, and I just added MacJanitor. I am wondering if I could simply dump iTunes, since I have RealPlayer. Norton Utilities is also installed, but isn't that redundant, since I run the program off the disk anyway?

Also, do you know of any free disk repair utilities you could recommend? I remember reading about a very good one in MacWorld a few months ago, but don't recall the name; it was a library magazine, so I don't have it here for easy reference. I am trying to avoid buying something like Disk Warrior for the moment because I haven't been employed for a year. I do have Norton Systemworks, however.

Thanks for your help. I am looking forward to your other suggestions.
- Dave

DeltaMac - Jul 25, 2005 - 4:42 pm

Yes, you could easily uninstall Norton Utilities. Others will tell you that Norton is no longer a prime utility with OS X, as Symantec is no longer updating it for OS X. You can run a utility such as Monolingual, to remove your unused language support files. This can free up between 200 and 900 MB! if you have never done this with OS X.

If you have single files that take up 20% of your drive space, you should be considering replacing your original drive with a much larger one. You can find a 40 or 80GB internal drive for less than it would cost for a good drive utility.

Good luck on your job hunt...
- Dale

wolfboy_54 - Jul 25, 2005 - 5:20 pm

Dale,

Thanks for the tips. I had no idea that the unused language support files could take up so much space! I will have to investigate the bigger internal drive. I never would've thought it would be cheaper than a drive utility.
Thanks again!

Dave