i have major OS trouble (sorry, long explanation)

mick

i am using an iMac (iMac 5,2) Intel Core Duo 1.83 GHz with 2 GB ram


basic setup:


internal disk is partitioned into 3:

Alice: Leopard (10.5.6)
Bricolage: (Tiger)
Widdle: storage

i have an external DVD drive connected via firewire

there are 2 external disks connected via USB:

Furbelow: Snow Leopard (10.6.1)
Herculé: Time Machine backup

i am still living and working with Leopard 10.5.6 UNTIL TODAY gah

i updated a 3rd party System Preference and everything froze up solid.

so i went for a restart. the OS ignored my restart command. i ended up doing a rough shutdown. no disks would eject, either.

restarted ok, then i tried to get busy.

no go.

oops, lookie! ~the whole right side of the menu bar is blank~ !



oops again. the lights are on but nobody is home. applications attempt to open; they actually seem to open.. but there is no response from menu bar commands, no WINDOW, no nothing. the dock is there and acts normal except nothing opens.

i can empty the trash. i can move files. i can't run any apps from Leopard.


so.. ok

Time machine... nope. won't open

i trashed a bunch of the system prefs and removed the pref pane that precipitated the problem (i think).


none of the disks on the desktop will eject
still no response to any commands... including restart and shut down.

so... i shut down hard again, and booted into Snow Leopard. all is fine. everything's there. only niggle is the mouse froze. it was fine after i unplugged and replugged it. i did a disk utility repair on the 10.5.6 partition. no problems found.


so... i decided to try freshly installing the 10.5.6. the installer wouldn't run. it said the disk wasn't using OS X. The System Profiler in Snow Leopard correctly saw that the problem partition does in fact have OSX installed, but the installer doesn't listen to reason.


ok.. so i found the Leopard install disk and did an archive and install. went fine. but no help at all.

still with a blank menu bar in the upper right (in Leopard). still with no applications working. still with the superficial appearance that everything's fine (other than that blank menu bar).

so i went ahead and updated that reinstall to 10.5 6. no changes.

Everything's present and accounted for in Snow Leopard.

I can drag stuff out of the Time Machine folder, but there's a bunch of things that are pretty mission-critical right now and aren't all that easy to reinstall on the new OS (Snow Leopard). I'm NOT READY.



i'm also at a loss. i don't know what processes are hosed in the problem disk.

what can cause those kind of interface problems in on OS install and not on another ... using the same basic system?

Meska

i was going to say finder prefs might be damaged, possibly a process running in the finder is corrupted or even the finder itself, but you've re-installed a fresh OS. Hmmm.

I suggest you make the move to Snow Leopard, it for one has fixed the temp issue on the imac gpu (i say it has, because straight after install the gpu temp dropped to a much more acceptable level although i've installed stat menus and imac fan control anyway to keep tabs on it) that caused my mac to have screen and finder meltdowns.

mick

i was planning on moving slow to SLeopard; i have a lot of apps that i'm pretty unsure about.

and this is still....


howinhell can there be no menubar and no application windows in one os, and not in the other, on the same computer? granted the SLeopard is installed on a peripheral; it still "displays" from the iMac.

flak

You might want to restore the whole machine (the Leopard partition) using Time Machine, to the point before you installed some funky software. You can do this with the 10.5 install DVD - when you boot and select your language, in the Utilities menu, it should say something like "Restore from Time Machine backup." Make sure your Time Machine backup drive is connected. Select that, then select a date and time before the problem occurred. Select your 10.5 HD, and it'll wipe it and restore your files from the backup.

Make sure the date is definitely from before you were having issues, and the files you want to restore are really in the backup!

After restoring - if possible, I'd upgrade Leopard to 10.5.8, and install all of the software updates, too. 10.5.6 came out a few months ago, and running the latest version will rule out the OS. By doing that archive and install, though, you had it reinstall the files that were causing the issues.

If you'd prefer to troubleshoot, I'd recommend two things:

1. Hold the Shift key down when booting the machine. It'll take you to the login window - type your password, hit enter, and hold down the shift key until the machine is finished loading. Is everything responsive? If so, use this opportunity to remove whatever's causing the problem. The system.log (called All Messages if you're viewing the log list) in /Applications/Utilities/Console probably has some clues on where to look.

2. Boot from your Snow Leopard drive, and repair permissions for your Leopard drive. Can't hurt. If you've got DiskWarrior, run that on your Leopard drive, too.

Meska

Nice one Flak

flak

Heh, thanks mesk.

peak'

Yes, very sound way from Flak...

...is that an overly complicated set-up you've got there mick? I can maybe understand holding on to two OS versions but three?! And all those partitions too, on the internal drive. If you've got the space I'd be tempted at some point to return that to a single one and keep any secondary OS only on the external (great for problem solving anywhere)...

Only a thought and there'll be lots of differing opinions...

Hope it all gets sorted

mick

i THINK it's sorted out.

thanks flak for reminding me that i could use Time Machine from the installer. i didn't even try after T.M. being unavailable on the problem volume.

i had forgotten to mention that i did try to start up in single-user mode. it wouldn't. i'd also tried to repair permissions from the Snow Leopard volume and from the installer. the permission repair buttons were greyed out.

BUT... i have restored from TIme Machine via the installer. since i've got mutliple backup schemes and TM is just one, i only run it once a week. i've lost a big chunk of work but all is not lost.

i am so grateful for the help thinking this through. thank you thank you thank you!!


the third party Pref Pane that did this is called "Secrets". it gives access to some hidden commands (that can be done by other means but this was convenient... until not.)



this really still puzzles me: what can cause the right side of the menu bar to disappear, the applications to not display any windows, and the system commands to be unresponsive? i'd sure like to know what i did so i can not do it again.


peak'... it's a fair point you make. old habits die hard. i had plans to turn the Tiger OS into a sparse image once i got Snow Leopard up and running. i still have a Jaguar boot volume and an 8.6 boot volume on another drive.

it's pathetic, but i am the Mac troubleshooter here. (i do much better with other people's computers; i am a tinkerer and occasionally hose everything.)


thank you again. if anyone has any thoughts as to which particular kind of hosing i managed this time, i'd be interested to hear it.

x

flak

It sounds like something was loading when you logged in (or even just booted the machine), which stopped the menu extras from loading. Just a hunch, but I don't think Secrets is capable of causing problems like that. No idea what it might have been, though.

A couple of years ago, I had major problems where my machine wouldn't shut down. Long story short, turned out that Parallels had installed a buggy system extension. Took a long time (and many reinstalls) to find the culprit, as the logs didn't report anything, and it wasn't like the machine was crashing or anything - which would be easier to track down, oddly enough.

Why keep old operating systems? If I needed an old OS, I'd probably just do a clean install, anyway.

mick

flak, the sequence was:

update the Secrets pref pane
click on said pane
Sys Prefs crashed
"notify Apple of crash" message popped up. i click on OK; nothing happens
Finder crashes
i try opening Terminal. it seems to open, but there is no window.
i notice that the whole right side of the menu bar is blank
i click on the menu bar. IT crashes and disappears completely.
i try to eject external disks. no response
i try to restart or shut down. no response.
i do a rough restart.

no problem, except the left side of the menu bar is still blank.
i try opening a browser (thinking i might search for answers). same story. no window.
no response to clicks in the left side of the menu bar. (it isn't blank).
another (second of many) hard restarts.

boot into Snow Leopard. all is fine. everything works. i can run the Repair Disk command on the problem OS from S.Leopard's disk utility. the Repair Permissions button is greyed out.

and yadda yadda troubleshoot/reinstall shit.




i think Secrets broke a sym link somewhere in LaunchServices. but i'm just blueskying.


.....

Why keep old operating systems?

you would be amazed and appalled at the junk pile of computers i maintain. i work with the elderly on a small scale, and head up a computer connection resource for them. i refurbish old computers and send them into our network of senior citizens who only use email, ICQ, and small games. they use the comps to not only stay in touch with the world, but also to take care of each other.

I keep the working OS's on hand to customize each setup completely for the person who's going to use it; then i burn a boot/install disk and take it to them.

i've found that setting things up completely in the person's home takes about 6 times longer than it does if it do it the cowgirl way.

peak'

mick said...


peak'... it's a fair point you make. old habits die hard. i had plans to turn the Tiger OS into a sparse image once i got Snow Leopard up and running. i still have a Jaguar boot volume and an 8.6 boot volume on another drive.

it's pathetic, but i am the Mac troubleshooter here. (i do much better with other people's computers; i am a tinkerer and occasionally hose everything.)

I imagined that, you'd be the trouble shooter, even more reason for having the older OS on an external, to take with you on rescue mission... banish those partitions

flak

I knew you did that! Take peak's advice, though, and use an external HD or two for that.

Keep your primary machine light and fast.

blueshead

"Keep your primary machine light and fast."

Ubuntu comes to mind.. EMBRACE THE TERMINAL!!!

McKs

having the old standby AppleJack installed on any boot partition that is supports (currently awaiting Snow Leopard compatibility) is always a good idea too...

mick

ubuntu my kubuntu

i fooled around with RedHat a few years ago. between distros and compiling shit every 5 minutes, i walked away... grateful for my Mac.


good point on the externals, peak' and flak.

i do tend towards bloat on my primary machine, as i'm always trying things out.


McKs.... Applejack has never worked for me in Leopard, either. it would start to "go" and then everything went blank. this happened several times. i gave up.

it is installed on every computer that i can get it to work on. it's a great help.



i miss it, especially for the great job of permission repair. i was dismayed when i realized that Apple's Permission Repair only operates on Apple apps.

flak

AppleJack only runs Apple's utility for permission repair - which, yeah, only looks at permissions for Apple apps/OS bits.

AppleJack wasn't Leopard compatible for a while after Leopard was released, since Apple removed NetInfo (the users database) and switched to another format entirely. The author has posted that the Snow Leopard version should be available soon.

Ubuntu is a huge step for Linux - truly, I'd use it as my primary OS if there wasn't a better alternative (and there is - the Mac OS ).

mick

really? Applejack only runs Apple's utility. how embarrassing that i didn't know that.

do you know the name of a good app that gets after all applications? free is good.

flak

I'm not sure it's possible, really.

mick

you know, right now i miss the good old days when with a touch of a screwdriver and some custom wrenches, all the mysteries of the typewriter were revealed.

McKs

yeah, AppleJack is basically just a script to run what Apple has built into OS X sequentially. It is a great tool though. Odd that it doesn't work fo you, 1.5.1 works on every PPC or Intel Mac I've installed it on so far.

peak'

mick said...you know, right now i miss the good old days when with a touch of a screwdriver and some custom wrenches, all the mysteries of the typewriter were revealed.

You can still reveal them today, you just won't have a working computer by the end of it... hold-on, sure that's what happened with the everything as a kid

flak

The trick is in the reassembly.

mick

this was almost all worth it, just so i could find out that Applejack was made compatible with Leopard, and now SnowLeopard. i just gave up at some point and did without. should have kept checking.... didn't. thank you McKs.


and yes, flak, it is. all in the assembly. you might be surprised at how many excess small screws a typewriter has. computers often have a few, too.