mac ppl: i need some tech support like NOW

i've never done mac troubleshooting, having gotten through three problem-free years with my macbook. so it's disconcerting to have two weird problems show up at once.

1) firefox is slow. like PAINFULLY, unusably slow. especially on startup and maybe for the first hour or two, i'll see the spinning beachball doing something as simple as making a post here.

2) so i was like, no problem, i'll just use safari. but it crashes on launch now. admittedly i hadn't used it for a long time, but still, crashing on launch? i re-downloaded it and saw no change in behavior.

so firefox sucks and i can't use safari, and i'm on 10.4 which means i guess chrome is out? awesome.

3) more general: are there good maintenance programs, cleanup tasks, antivirus/spyware/malware things i should regularly be using? like i said, i've never had problems with this comp but now i'm paranoid.

triage questions:

How much hard drive space do you have free? What programs do you have running? How much ram is in the machine?

find the 10.4 version of cache cleaner:

http://www.northernsoftworks.com/snowleopardcachecleaner.html

mh's questions are pertinent too.

Oh yeah, and is the hard drive making funny clicking noises?

The only time I've had similar issues was when my hard drive was dying, when I was almost out of disk space, or I had a bad hardware component.

36 gigs free/70-something used.

nothing else running except for itunes

2 gigs ram

no funny click noises, thank god.

Try the cache cleaner, it may help.

Run Disk Utility anyway, just to be safe. I can't remember if you can run it on the current drive, but I think you can. Otherwise you might have to boot off an OS disc to run it.

I can't remember what the hell I last used to run periodic tasks and clean caches, since cleaning OS caches is generally woo woo bullshit in OS X and doesn't really help anything the majority of times. I had good luck with Cocktail at one point. It can't hurt to clear the web browser caches, though.

Can you open up the Console program in Applications/Utilities and check the main error log?

You must have tried to open up the whole LOLs thread, huh?

srsly, tho, I'm no tech guru, but it couldn't hurt to do a general cleanup w. an application or just by rooting through your HD & trashing/uninstalling useless bric-a-brac. I've been using Macs for a little over ten years & usually find that a good clean-up will take care of most boggy software issues. Of course, increasing RAM doesn't hurt either.

I would be extremely surprised if it were malware. I mean, it is not impossible, but highly unlikely. For the most part, ppl just don't write that shit for Macs.

I have this same problem but it affects safari much more than firefox. I blamed snow leopard, but on 10.4?
Try downloading camino browser (caminobrowser.org) and see if it has the same problem.

aaaaaahahahha pillbox that is totally what happened, tho on my last restart (like a week ago) i was having similar problems.

I'm running 10.4 on an '09 MBP w/ fastest available local cable internet & that thread gummed up my whole machine.

had 2 reboot

running the cache cleaner now, will check out some of this other stuff after that. thanks guys.

lols on u

all this check permissions/clean disk/empty cache stuff is a last restort

just move your safari preferences out of the way and relaunch it. it will in probably be fine. same for firefox. gets tricky if you want to save bookmarks, etc. but let us know if that works and we can figure that out.

increasing ram?!

safari preferences are everything with safari in the name in ~/Library/

3) more general: are there good maintenance programs, cleanup tasks, antivirus/spyware/malware things i should regularly be using? like i said, i've never had problems with this comp but now i'm paranoid.

no. with the exception of a few edge cases (mainly to do with fonts, the sleep image on <10.4) os x doesn't work like that and it doesn't require user housekeeping. and there is no malware as yet. running virus/cleanup software may not hurt, but it won't help either.

ok ok wait caek--what exactly am i doing with the things in library named safari?

Applications > Utilities > Activity Monitor

CPU and System Memory tabs should tell you what the culprit is.

Actually, have the top pull-down menu at All Processes and sort by CPU usage.

why don't you upgrade to 10.6? It's only $29 and you get way better browsers

follow wmc's advice and see if something in particular is using a lot of CPU when you get the beachball in firefox. let us know.

re: safari quitting on launch, personally i would start by

1) delete (and empty trash) ~/library/caches/com.apple.safari and ~/library/caches/metadata/safari. these don't hold any of your preferences and you won't miss them.
3) restart safari and see if it works
4) if not then quit safari (if neccesary) and move ~/library/preferences/com.apple.Safari.plist and ~/library/safari to your desktop, then restart safari. let us know if it still doesn't work!

(here "~" is shorthand for your home folder by the way, so ~/library is the library folder in home)

upgrade OS? upgrade ram? he's probably got an application preferences problem in his home folder!

increasing ram?! - for me, increasing ram has, in the past, facilitated the general efficiency of various applications, esp. if I'm trying to use newer software on an older machine, but then again I am a graphic designer & am usually trying to run like eight different things at once. Then again, plz consult my initial disclaimer, srsly, tho, I'm no tech guru, before getting annoyed at whatever other egregious flaws you might find in my (at least hopefully well-intentioned) advice attempt.

ok caek tried both those steps--neither worked.

he's probably got an application preferences problem in his home folder!
Yeah, am assuming that's going to get fixed here, but still leaves him w/Safari 3 and a shitty version of Safari. $29 upgrade otoh gives Safari 4, Chrome, and a shitload of other goodness.

xp can you open the Console app (in Applications/Utilities) and post what it says when you try to start Safari? The thing that's making it crash should be listed there

re: firefox, start by quitting it, then delete ~/library/cache/firefox, then try it again. if that doesn't work, quit FF and move ~/library/application support/firefox to your desktop, then start FF. if that works, but you've now lost all your bookmarks and you need them back then let us know. divide and conquer.

for me, increasing ram has, in the past, facilitated the general efficiency of various applications, esp. if I'm trying to use newer software on an older machine

sure, like you say it's not going to hurt, but firefox and safari should work fine on pretty much any post-9/11 mac. problems 1) and 2) are not ram issues. i'm not annoyed with your advice by the way. i am derisive ; )

the upgrade would either take a day or two to finish up following a format, or would possibly meticulously copy this problem into ~/libray on the upgraded install. either way it's overkill. i'm pretty happy with safari 3 fwiw. it's really good at rendering websites, etc.

2010-02-17 15:55:08.796 Safari[290] *** Assertion failure in -[NSMenuItem setTitle:], Menus.subproj/NSMenuItem.m:590
2010-02-17 15:55:08.797 Safari[290] - [ASPreferencesController loadPreferences] prefsHaveLoaded Invalid parameter not satisfying: aString != nil
Feb 17 15:55:09 call-all-destroyers-computer crashdump[291]: Safari crashed
Feb 17 15:55:10 call-all-destroyers-computer crashdump[291]: crash report written to: /Users/callalldestroyers/Library/Logs/CrashReporter/Safari.crash.log

firefox is actually behaving on most recent restart--some combination of disabling add-ons, clearing cache, and running some cleanup stuff?

unless you plan on doing a super-clean install, i recommend against upgrading to snow leopard as that is the first upgrade that made me think of osx as windows (i.e. breaking everything, making crap slower)

and if you're doing a super-clean install anyway, that would probably fix your problems without upgrading.

oh lol that's my real name in that log!

crashdump

hmm, can you create another user account, login as them and see if safari works for them?

oh lol that's my real name in that log!

not anymore ^_^

edited out real name in log
xp!

lol xp

hahahahahaha

yrs, your massively-verhelpful moderation team

i can give that a shot later, gotta go to class now.

btw thanks again guys, googling for tech support is hell on earth so y'all are lifesavers.

and thx for googleproof too!

hmm, can you create another user account, login as them and see if safari works for them?

(unless anyone recognizes that crash (and as long as you're sure you moved the original ~/library/preferences/com.apple.Safari.plist and ~/library/safari to the desktop))

From looking at the console log, I think you've got a duff input manager that's trying to add a menu. Something like Shiira or the like. If you look in /Library/InputManagers and ~/Library/InputManagers you can try moving anything in there to your desktop and see if it starts then

either way it's overkill.
I dunno, given the amount of things that get better going from 10.4 to 10.6 it seem remiss not to mention that it's cheap and worth doing, if you've got an intel Mac and are still on 10.4. (10.5'd be different)

(At least, now that 10.6.2 is out anyway. 10.6 was pretty Windows)

10.6 has made my older versions of indesign and photoshop unusable. It feels designed to break things so that you would spend more money which is an utterly microsoftian move.

never upgrade until 10.x.1 appears

Yeah, have checked: it's either AcidSearch or SIMBL you've got installed. Look in those two folders for anything by that name and move 'em out.

I'll post retractions if 10.6.2 magically restores my rusty copies of indesign and photoshop, but my understanding is neither apple nor adobe have any interest in having software of a certain age remain functional when they have new versions to push.

^^ This has generally been my experience as well. Right now, CS4 working w/ 10.5.8 (not 10.4, as previously reported) has been working as fluidly as I could have hoped, but I am admittedly a sucker-ass-bitch when it comes to Apple & Adobe upgrades.

Oh hey since there's an active thread right now:

So, reformatting my iMac. I've noticed that much older computers than mine (that are setup as clean workstations) perform better than mine in rendering time, snappiness, etc, so I thought I'd get it set up so that I keep my Final Cut/video stuff as separate from the rest of my computer stuff as possible. Is it insane/unnecessary to create two Snow Leopard disks? Or would I get the same benefits from just having two users?

― ENERGY FOOD (en i see kay), Saturday, February 6, 2010 7:06 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark

xps: hmm.. so maybe I should hold off on upgrading to 10.6 & hold out for the next round (Ocelot?). PN, just out of curiosity, which version of your CS apps are you having problems with on 10.6?

they're pretty old -indesign was 2.0.2 and photoshop used some carbon library(!)
but they worked in the latest 10.5!

I don't think it is as imperative as a lot of ppl make it seem to keep totally au courant when it comes to Adobe stuff, but CS4 does really have some drastic improvements. Worth it for the tabbed windows alone, imo.

Yeah, Adobe being real dicks about older versions of CS and Snow Leopard: 2.0.2 doesn't even launch, and they say they won't test CS3 on it.

CS4's running fine, fwiw.

yikes, that's good to know, I'm not interested in spending any money on Adobe upgrades for the time being, so no SL for me.

I haven't run into any problems with CS3 on Snow Leopard - yet. I hear horror stories but no one I know is having issues.

any idea why I wouldn't be able to add a WEP or WPA password to my network? wtf

youre using an airport/express?

callalldestroyer, did you try the camino browser? i've used it in preference to safari and firefox for a few years now. export your bookmarks from firefox and import them to camino.

yeah, I'm using airport express

yeah, agreed to a certain extent re: 10.4 vs. 10.6, stet. still rocking 10.5 here, and will be until i finish my phd.

I was happy to move to 10.6 as soon as possible since I don't have any dependence on Adobe apps.

10.6 gave me a day or two of growing pains then I was fine. It's mostly frustrating because you don't think of everything that needs updating right away, so over a week or two you notice weird things, but once you're caught up it's all good. I'm running CS4 and it Snow Leopard and it's all fine.

I thought I'd get it set up so that I keep my Final Cut/video stuff as separate from the rest of my computer stuff as possible. Is it insane/unnecessary to create two Snow Leopard disks? Or would I get the same benefits from just having two users?/

I've emailed my friends who have a studio full of FCP machines to ask, but my guess is that FCP is going to be pretty much bound by your hard drive speed, especially on scratch files.

The way to make a disk feel faster again is defragmenting, which a format and reinstall effectively does. It fragments up when you use it for everyday stuff, so using it as your day-to-day machine will start to slow it down compared to a machine used for nothing but editing.

Because of that, I don't think you'll get much improvement from using another user account: it's all on the same disk, ultimately. You'd be much better getting a another hard drive and putting a FCP-only system on it.

The iMac won't let you do this internally, but if it's got FW800 that can be pretty damn fast to have a system disk on.

I'm late to the show here, but surprised no one suggested running Firefox in safe mode:

http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/safe+mode

My Firefox was getting slow as hell to launch so I did this and think I figured out that it was plug-ins that were causing the problem. Anyway, that was a while ago - I use Chrome now.

Thanks so much, stet!

install 'click to flash', use your whitelists and enjoy much improved web browsing.

http://rentzsch.github.com/clicktoflash/

I tried out Onyx today, it was pretty tight:

http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/system_disk_utilities/onyx.html

clears your caches & does other stuff

also if you're anal like me this program will check the integrity of your ram:

http://www.kelleycomputing.net/rember/

as long as this thread is up here, one more question: I have a folder left over from OS 9 (6-7 years ago) that I've never been able to delete, when I drag it to the trash and empty it tells me that "the operation could not be completed because the item ???HFS+ Private Data" is locked (where the ? symbol represents something even weirder-looking that I can't screengrab). I find this quite disturbing and I was hoping OnyX would help, but it won't delete it either. any ideas or do I need to take it in to my local computer doctor?

oops quote marks should end after "locked"

OK nm I should have googled that first, will report back if problem persists.

I am also liking Onyx.

hold down option when you empty the trash. If that doesn't work, open terminal and type rm -ri then drag in the folder, then press return. It'll prompt you to say yes to every file it wants to delete, so read carefully to make sure you want them zapped.

nope, looks like the damn thing has system privs.

[sleeves-Computer:~] sleeve% rm -ri /Users/sleeve/.Trash/SpaceGarbageMen\ 1.3\ \(osx\ ok\)/
examine files in directory /Users/sleeve/.Trash/SpaceGarbageMen 1.3 (osx ok)/? y
examine files in directory /Users/sleeve/.Trash/SpaceGarbageMen 1.3 (osx ok)//␀␀␀␀HFS+ Private Data? y
rm: /Users/sleeve/.Trash/SpaceGarbageMen 1.3 (osx ok)//␀␀␀␀HFS+ Private Data: Permission denied
remove /Users/sleeve/.Trash/SpaceGarbageMen 1.3 (osx ok)/? y
rm: /Users/sleeve/.Trash/SpaceGarbageMen 1.3 (osx ok)/: Directory not empty
[sleeves-Computer:~] sleeve%

hmmm

HFS+ Private Data

That folder is practically impossible to delete while booted in OSX.
You'd need to be running in SingleUser mode anyway, to deal with
the "system immutable flag" which is usually set on that critter.

If you can mount this disk while booted in OS9, a good utility for
finding and deleting (like File Buddy) might do the trick. The last
resort is to backup, erase and restore. Search these forums and
the MacFixIt forums (and where hayne linked to) going back a
year or two for "HFS+ Private Data" and you'll see what's up...

-HI-

BTW-- those leading chars are actually ASCII 'null's: \0\0\0\0
BTW2 -- it's not an "OS9 folder". Only bootable OSX volumes
get one, and it contains inode information and perl script stuff.

and
The folder '????HFS+ Private Data' is sometimes present at the root level of a Volume, and is normally invisible, although it can sometimes be seen from OS 9 using various file utilities. In this normal use the folder is an important part of the HFS+ volume structure, and it should not be interfered with in any way.

The first four characters of this folder name are actually NULs and sometimes appear as ?s, sometimes as $s. On occasion I have seen more than four strange characters.

Occasionally this folder will turn up in the Trash, usually inside another folder, and you will be unable to get rid of it by emptying the trash. To complicate the issue, it is not normally in the '.Trash' folder in a user's Home folder; rather it usually appears in the /Volumes/volumename/.Trashes/501/ folder (where 501 is the typical User ID).

The reason that Trash cannot be emptied is that the folder '????HFS+ Private Data' has the System Immutable Flag set, so nobody, not even root, can delete it except by going into single user mode.

To reset this flag so that you can empty your Trash, see the accompanying FAQ Dealing with Immutable Files and Folders.

HFS stands for Holy Fucking Shit, I assume.

haha no it is some obscure OS 9 thing. at least my research has convinced me that my computer hasn't been hacked by the Conficker worm or something, it appears to be harmless except for the "undeletable under normal circumstances" bug.

looks like there are pretty clear instructions for getting rid of this in single-user mode on the Apple forums, and they also note that you probably won't screw anything up while doing so. still not sure if I wanna go there - any other comments?

you should be fine doing that. just print out the instructions first, tho.

yeah they note that - because you cannot paste into single user mode windows.

thanks!

hey fellas--will upgrading from tiger to snow leopard doing anything for the stability of my wireless connection? since i moved it's been cutting out multiple times daily--this is not a network issue as my gf's comp (snow leopard) and my work laptop (xp) are both totally stable.

try clearing your network prefs... they're in ~\library\preferences\system or something, the directory will have files called airport.plist or something

so kernel panic

this has happened 3 or 4 times in the past 2 months or so. i ran the hardware check thing, ran disk utility and did repairs, finally said fuckit after the last one and did a clean install of snow leopard but it happened again today.

seems to always be when i'm on the web (used to be firefox, now chrome)--maybe with multiple tabs and some flash/streaming video.

is this something as dumb as like a RAM issue?

prob just that flash sucks?

used to happen every now and again and I assumed it had something to do with never ever turning my computer off, but I can't remember the last time it happened. Maybe it stopped when I started using Click2Flash...

prob just that flash sucks?

― Euler, Tuesday, August 23, 2011 10:53 PM (15 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yeah i guess so and i assume there's nothing i can do about that. really annoying tho.

You can use click2flash and other similar things. Some will convert flash video on the fly. And you can always load flash elements with a click. I haven't missed it.

that's a lie. I just realized I've had it off for a week or two because youtube would load slow when converting from Flash and soundcloud wouldn't always load.

so kernel panic

maybe a dumb question but have u tried cleaning out the exhaust with some compressed air?

i haven't! is that a thing that works?

i haven't! is that a thing that works?

― call all destroyer, Tuesday, August 23, 2011 10:48 PM (57 seconds ago)

It does if there's a lot of dust piled up inside your laptop. Maybe try one of the temperature sensing apps before and after and see if it makes a difference?

Anything interresting in Console app (look in Utilities) around the time of these panics?