Odds & Ends bonanza!: AOM freeze reminder; Cro-Mag Rally network freeze; Lexmark Z53 update; Quark & QuickContact; muc

Adobe's AOM: a reminder that it can lead to freezes Regarding yesterday's item on AOM, where Adobe strongly recommended not removing AOM components, several readers reminded us that a potential problem with this advice is that AOM may precipitate system freezes (as we have noted here before). In fact, Simon Gibbs pointed us to an Adobe support document, describing one such freeze, which offered this solution: "Drag the Web folder from the System Folder: Application Support: Adobe folder to the Trash." It then showed how to reinstall the folder, if desired.

Cro-Mag Rally network freeze: more info Regarding yesterday's item on a network problem with Cro-Mag Rally, Thomas Koons reports having the same symptom. He too contacted Pangea Software and they supplied some further background. Thomas writes: "I told them I was trying both TCP/IP and Apple Talk for networking and they said that TCP/IP is not supported at all. So I asked why is there a selection for it in the Network Setup? They said this is because Network Sprocket determines what option appear." They also noted that a lack of AppleTalk support was making network play in OS X almost impossible. The hope is that this will be remedied in OS X 10.1.

Lexmark driver update gets things working Eugene Gierson found an update (dated 7/19/2001) to the printer driver software for his Lexmark Z53 printer. He writes: "The drivers that came with the printer did not work with my iMac Snow 500 MHz. After updating to the new drivers, the printer is working fine."

Quark causes problem in QuickContact Mike Fleischner writes: "When QuarkXPress is the foremost application, Now Up-to-Date QuickContact's buttons for dialing, creating an email, or launching a URL get replaced by a strange 'down-arrow icon' and the button become disabled. Mike contacted Power On Software about this and they replied: "Unfortunately we are unable to come up with a solution or work-around that resolves the issue you brought to our attention. The issue has been escalated to our Quality Assurance team. At this point we cannot guarantee a specific timeframe for a solution."

Update: David Raven replies: "This is a Quark caused problem with other software as well... Imposer, a Quark Extension, has its buttons replaced with the same bitmapped down arrows, and so does the Epson print driver interface for my StylusPhoto 870. Perhaps Quark 5 will fix this annoying problem."

Two tools to improve modem performance reviewed This Macworld article reviews two shareware offerings designed to improve your modem connection performance: Download Deputy and Modem Magic. Only Download Deputy gets a "thumbs up."

FrameMaker 6 and Apple Display SW 2.1.1: a follow-up Previously, we posted an item titled "FrameMaker 6 and Apple Display SW 2.1.1 conflict." David Roessli offers this follow-up: "I narrowed the problem down to the Radeon's 2D graphic acceleration. If 2D graphic acceleration is turned off from the ATI Display control panel, the symptoms went away. So it appears to be more a problem with ATI software than with Apple Display software."

ThinkFree Office and Font Reserve conflict? George Spiese tried out ThinkFree Office for Mac, a Java-implemented subscription-based alternative to Microsoft Office. He writes: "I was unable to launch the app and got the following error: 'Unable to launch java application. The main class com/tf/webtop/plaf/mac/thinkfreeofficeMac could not be found." He eventually isolated the cause to an apparent conflict with Font Reserve Extension v2.6.

MenuFonts glitch with QXP? Klaus Warschkow reports that Suitcase 10 retains a problem he had with previous versions: "With ~ Suitcase MenuFonts Control Panel installed, we get a very long delay when trying to change the printer PPD or page size in the Print dialog of Quark XPress 4.11, or selecting a different font in QXP or Freehand. If we disable the control panel, the delay vanishes.

Update: Marc Lewin replies:"This problem is most likely related to Virex, as stated on the Suitcase site. After removing Virex, the strange delays were gone for me."

RAM type confusion A reader informs us of continuing confusion over software reports of the type of RAM installed in your Mac: "In some cases, Apple's System Profiler says you have CL2 chips, while DIMM First Aid and TattleTech say that they're CL3. Also RAM marked as CL3 and listed on Samsung's site as CL3 is being reported as CL2 in the Apple System Profiler. See this MacFixIt Report for related background.

Reformatting tips This MacFixIt Forums thread (low level format not allowed) offers some advice on reformatting your drive if bad blocks are detected. See also this related MacFixIt Report.

Yesterday's items updated Several items from yesterday were updated this morning. Check 'em out.