I am running OS10.3.9 on on eMac (original discs 10.3.3. 1.25GHz 768MB RAM ). When I run Disc Utility to repair or verify permissions from the Startup Disc it comes up with this message after a short period.
“Disk Utility has lost it’s connection with the Disc Management Tool and cannot continue. Please quit and relaunch Disc Utility.”

Verify or Repair Permissions DOES work when not using startup disc.

After running 'MacHelp' ( I am far from being an expert re Operating Systems or MacHelp) for Corrupt Prefs It came up with:

‘*****Corrupt Preferences in the current user's folder*****
/Users/cameron/Library/Preferences/IM_Installer.plist:
stream had too few bytes
*****Corrupt Preferences in the chosen volume's Library folder*****
*****Corrupt Preferences in the chosen volume's SystemConfiguration folder*****
/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/autodiskmount.plist:
stream had too few bytes

Help please!

Seems a common error with OS X 10.3.x, below are some fixes and one from Apple themselves (for some reason to do with iTunes):

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=303132

http://www.google.com.au/search?q=Di...ient=firefox-a

JB