G'day,

My eMac has crashed on me 3 times today, needing the power button to be held for 10 secs to turn it off and then restart. That is to say, everything froze up - the app (seems to be Firefox, though could first have been Word... mail also has been running), menubarclock, and the cursor.

a) Is there still a keyboard alternative to that? No power button on the new keyboard... What about "force quit" - new shortcut for that?

B) I've run MacJanitor after the first crash.. but it keeps crashing... I don't have modern Norton... what free/shareware's out there for this fancy new OS (ok, relatively new)...

cheers



cosmic

Apple-Option-esc is the short cut and my emac used to crashing like that too your best and only real option is to do a clean install that helped me alot.
Accually it fixed all the issues that i had.

Had a similar issue not long ago, but it was fixed when I upgraded to 10.4.5 and used the combo updater instead of the stand-alone updaters I'd used to that point. Hasn't happened since. I wonder if running the combo updater now might fix the problem for you? that is, if you CAN run the combo if you've already upgraded to 10.4.5. Sorry. Now I'm raising more questions than I'd tried to answer.

Looks like I need a re-instal... Just tried to open the System Preferences... it does nothing. Tried to open the Date/Time from the menu-clock... it opens a folder labelled DateandTime.prefpane... *sigh*

I only have the original eMac OSX discs (10.3.4). Can't afford to upgrade at the moment sadly. So am running 10.3.9 after various free upgrades performed by the built in upgrade software.

Well re-run the 10.3.9 combo updater AGAIN then (no do not use software update; get the (10.3.9) combo updater from Apple, download it and then run it. "Software update" does not do the same job at all). The combo update does not modify any of your personal files but does repair any defects it finds in the current install of 10.3.9 (or 10.3.x or whatever).

I know you are going to say "but I am already running 10.3.9...". Please trust me and download the combo update from apple and run it. It potentially cures all sorts of abberant behaviour. It basically re-adjusts your 10.3.9 install to something it recognises as the standard install. (it won't affect serial numbers or any 3rd party applications or anything like that).

Think of it as a system version service. Got me out of major trouble once already and fixed a 'minor' problem on another sad occasion also.

kim

PS. and it does it fairly quickly too.

Thanks Nazi. I was going to ask about having to re-instal from the old discs, then upgrade back up to 10.3.9 instead of 3.4. That will solve the question.

Just gonna wait til end of month to download it though - 50Mb, that's 5% of my monthly broadband limit. I'm usually at the end of my Gb by last week of the month. Hope things don't get too more bizarre before then.

Oh while I think of it - when I had to shut the computer down using the power button (is there a keyboard alternative?), when re-starting the eMac took a full 15 seconds between the startup chime and anything appearing on screen... chalk that up to the same issues or could that be something different? I'm sure it didnt use to take that long.

No their is no keyboard short cut to do the power button shut down.

Mmm...

I just downloaded the 10.3.9 upgrade package from Apple's website (decided after another crash that I'd just go ahead rather than wait).

So, I get a .dmg file, which when opened creates a disk image "Mac OS X 10.3.9 Update". Inside the disk image is a folder titled "MacOSXUpdate10.3.9.pkg". Yes, a folder... I'm guessing that should in fact be a executable app? Inside the folder is another folder called "Contents". Inside that are 4 files and a folder called Resources...

Um... what do I do now?

Nevermind.... ran cocktail, closed and reopened the dmg file and now all's good.

D'oh. Last night eMac crashed again (not just 1 app, but whole machine froze) while using excel. Turned it off. Fiance turned it on this morning, then turned cable modem on to check email, and it froze on her.

I could handle when the whole protected memory thing was only taking down 1 bad app... but presume if it's freezing the whole machine it must be the OS X that's having the problem...

I ran the 10.3.9 update the other day, and that certainly fixed some problems I was having (ie the system preferences)... but now she's crashing again.

What free/shareware disk utilities do people use out there? I have cocktail and Janitor... though they don't seem to have fixed the problem...

cheers and thanks

Have you installed new ram recently?

Even if not, I would recommend running Rember (or comand line version if you're confident) and seeing what it picks up, as a first check.

Good luck.

Hope you haven't done a clean install yet, you may only need a permissions rebuild. Very helpful when my eMac plays up.

Here's what I do on the (rare) occassions my eMac rev 2 plays up...
1. restart and login under root (you'll need to activate root as a GUI user first)
2. delete the system and user preferences for the app that caused the problem
3. use disk utility to rebuild permissions
4. restart and login as you
5. Deactivate root as a GUI user

You only need to do the root login thing if there are other users configured on the Mac as you need delete access to their ~/library/preferences folder

Probably need to do this twice a year at worst. If this doesn't fix the problem, maybe you have a bad disk or RAM sector

Mmmmm ok - I followed the Help listing on Root user... opened NetInfo, enabled Root user, logged out of my normal account.. but then the only option for me to log back in under is my normal account. The help file says there should be "other" so you can then use the name "root", but I can't see that anywhere.... Do I have to create an account in the System Prefs called "root"?

I think it is MS Office doing the damage... seems Word, Excel or PP are open or recently used when the eMac is crashing... I went into my account preferences and deleted the "excel prefs (10)" etc etc files... What other files do I need to kill?

Cheers

g5agogo - haven't installed new ram or touched the existing ram, but I ran rember - all checked out ok.