OS X (panther) crashing

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Hi,

My ibook with Panther has started acting crazy. I'm used to OS 9 extension conflicts but I'm not sure what to do with OS X crashing. The problem seemed to start with playing dvds - I got this wierd crash to a black screen a couple of times and pressing the power button or any other combination of buttons didn't seem to do anything. Eventually by massaging the power button for a few minutes you'd hear it turn itself off, but when you'd try to restart it, it would just kick the fans on, no screen image at all, just roaring fans, and trying to turn it on/off again takes a few minutes of massaging the power button. When I can get it going. it's a bit unstable, trying to post here and a couple of other things make it crash - often it will just crash to a black screen again after 15 minutes or so.

Lately I can get it to start up but it doesn't seem to go thru the whole start up process properly. I managed to figure out that the sleep/shutdown function was kicking in and that explained a lot of the shutdowns. I download shareware so I've dumped any suspicious preferences files in the trash. I turned off extensions in OS 9. It also doesn't recognised discs as I was burning my photos onto a disc in case I have to reinstall and there's no disc icon on screen.

I'm using my old powerbook (which has tinnitus, loud ringing sound, but it works) at the moment.

Any suggestions for the ibook/OS X? Do I need to do a clean re-install?

Does Mac OS produce any log files, (they're usually under /var log on other *nix systems)? Have a look there. Does the system use X windows? I'll have a google and see whats about.
Yes, it uses X11, so there should be loads of info in the log file. What format video were you trying to play. I know that some video formats are no directly supported by Mac OS and extra codecs are required. Last of all are your device drivers up to date? Check the support site to see if there are any up to date drivers.

I don't have trouble like this with my powerbook and Tiger, though 10.4 seems subjectively to be *much* buggier than 10.3 (I have problems with disks mounting, the DVD player sometimes failing to recognise playable disks, and spotlight failing to index some things are know are present).

Try opening the 'utilities' folder (go to finder, then press 'apple-shift-U'), then try the running "Console".

The 'system.log' is as the previous poster suggested /var/log/system.log, and it may contain some helpful hints as to what is wrong. Also worth looking at are console.log and the crash reporter logs.

Also, if you can start up from the install DVD, you can run Disk Utility (use the menu bar to select the program before starting an actual installation). This may be able to repair any disk problems that you might have. If you think the OS files are damaged, then try re-installing Tiger as an 'upgrade' rather than a clean install, and only if this doesn't work try doing a completely clean install. It's worth adding that I've never needed to do either of these in the time I've been using OSX (about 3 years now).

Hope this helps.

:: Mark (Mac tech support )

Almost forgot. If you can't boot to the Finder, try:

1. turn the iBook off
2. turn the iBook on while holding down the 'apple' and 's' keys on the keyboard

This should give you a text screen startup that will leave you logged in under single-user mode. If you can get this far, enter:

3. fsck -fy
4. reboot

The fsck may take several minutes to run - it's trying to find and repair any problems on the hard disk. If this doesn't get something working again, you probably do need to reinstall the OS.

:: Mark

Thanks people, I'll have a go at your suggestions today, been dreading it....

I'll let you know how it goes...

added later....

ok I ran utilties but could only check and repair 'permissions' and it seemed to find a library extension file it needed to created a new permission for.

Now I'm running disc restore.

Fingers crossed.

eeuw. It just died (to a faded grey screen, like sleep but you can't wake it) during disc restore on disc 2.

I'll give it a rest for a while and try to post logs later. At the moment I can't get to a start up screen, just machine noise or fan noise as though it is 'on', but a black screen.

Sounds like device drivers to me. Check the Apple website for updated drivers. Does OS X have an online update service?? Every time you re-install from disc you install the same old drivers, and the device drivers for everything are constantly evolving, at least they are in Darwin/OpenDarwin so I'd be surprised if the commercial offering was different.

Yeah I'll try and check that out but the most time I can get out of it at the moment (since the partial restore) is about two minutes before it crashes to a black screen. So...I'm not sure if I can do anything at present.

Any suggestions on how to get more that two minutes before a crash? That includes starting with the 'option' button pressed (to check hardware) I can't even get thru the check as it takes too long to load. The computer only comes on one out of 4 tries, the others tries are just the fans coming on, but no screen.

I don't know about Macs, but if you are only getting the fan most of the time then its not picking up any drives to load the OS from. Are there any signs of other activity is the hard drive being accessed? ( sign of utter ignorance: I don't know if there are LEDs to indicate disk activity.)
I'd certainly think about a re-install, but first see if you can get anyone to back your data up.

okayyyyy

I managed to get a stable screen using the apple + s key. It didn't give me the text screen, but it was stable enough to do a restore, so I've restored. I'm starting to download upgrades but the reason I don't bother is I'm in a country town and only have 32 k dial up, so it's way too slow. plus, not all upgrades are 'good' or worth doing.

I've only had the computer 6 months so there's not a lot on it. I already saved the photos to a disc, so that's the only thing I didn't want to lose. The rest is just annoying, having to re-set preferences and stuff.

So...looks ok at this stage, thanks for all the tips and advice. I'll look at drivers, that would seem to be where the problem started.

If you back up you /etc and home directories also then many of the preferences will be saved. Backing up your system sounds like hard work, but it's worth it. IF you can get software to do a full initial back-up followed by incremental back-ups on a regular basis then you don't have to worry at all about daata loss. Hint: you have 2 machines ergo 2 disks. If you don't find MAC software then try Sourceforge.net for Open Source *nix progs that you can run on mac.
32k, wow.

Yeah, I'll keep it in mind to backup. I think I expected settings to be erased, but a restore doesn't, apparently. All settings seem same as previously. Anyway, learnt a lot! Everything seems ok now.

Thanks for the advice everybody. It was/is all helpful and interesting. I didn't even know where to look, being used to OS 9. I haven't really done a lot of looking around on X. Nice to have the whisper quiet ibook back, that old powerbook really roars.

Yes, 32K! vvvvroooommmm

cheap network cards and a cable allow connection of both machines, you could maybe even get away with a null modem if you have the patience. Honestly, it is worth it.