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General discussion

Ctrl+Alt+Del!!

Nov 16, 2005 12:50AM PST

Our lab Mac G3,OS9 has lots of images stored on it....because of which it freezes very often. It has a science research software installed---which we use for taking pics....i am not sure of the extension (the software is called Quantity One....but the images are quite big..each is like 3MB.

Now, whenever a windows PC freezes one has to hit the Ctrl+Alt+Del buttons and one can select and end the problematic program from the task manager list.

I was wondering if anything like that exists for Macs??
Or do i have to hit the power switch ON/OFF button everytime(which is what i have been doing all these days!!)

Also , is there a keyboard shortcut for 'quickstarting' the OS.....like in the same OS9,G3 system...it takes like 30 mins to start up and another 15 mins before the cursor can be moved. Does 'Apple+X" combination mean---quick start ??

Thanks for reading till the endWink
Sincerely
K

Discussion is locked

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Force Quit
Nov 16, 2005 1:01AM PST

For OS 10...from the apple menu you can click on force quit or from the keyboard...

hold down

alt/option + apple/command
and push esc.

OS9... I don't have a clue

grim

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OS 9 problems
Nov 16, 2005 3:57AM PST

OK, first you are making this problem worse by turning off the machine when it freezes. The machine is freezing for a reason and everytime it does, the damage gets a little worse.
To Force Quit an application, if it is possible to do at that stage, you hold down the Control + Option + ESC keys. this will "should" bring up the Force Quit window. Once it has quit, restart the machine.
On the subject of the restart. For this machine to take 30 minutes to start up is unacceptable. You have a major problem that you are ignoring.
A clean install of the system software is called for here. What is the capacity of the Hard drive. How much free space do you have, how much RAM does the machine have, how much RAM are you allocating to this science research software? What sort of G3 is it? Beige/Blue and White/iMac. Tower/Desktop.
Do you have the OS9 installation disks? Do you still have the installation disks for the Science research software?
There is NO "quick start" for the system, it should boot completely in under 2 mins. 45 Mins total means a problem.

Answer to the question and more help will follow

P

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details..
Nov 16, 2005 6:22AM PST

Hard drive= 25.49 GB
free space available =18.85 GB
RAM= 128MB

Blue color....Its a PowerPC G4!!(i thot it was G3)
RAM for science software=70.31MB

K

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OK
Nov 16, 2005 7:27AM PST

None of the G4 machines are Blue. Could it be Graphite with clear plastic handles at the top and bottom, front and back.
Check the System profiler. (Under the Apple menu) and let us know exactly what processor and speed we are dealing with.
You obviously do not have a huge number of these pictures if you are only using approximately 7Gb of HD space.
One of your problems is that you do not have enough memory in this machine. The OS is probably taking up close to 30Mb and with the 70.30MB (this is very precise and probably incorrect) you are only leaving 28MB for virtual memory to operate.
To determine how much memory is allocated to a particular program, find the application, NOT the alias/shortcut, and SINGLE click it. Hold down the Apple Key and press "I". This will show you the info window. Choose Memory from the drop down list. You will see three box's. Suggested, Minimum, Preferred. You cannot change the suggested, leave the minimum alone and only change the Preferred. Drop yours to 50MB if it still remains above the Minimum. Close the window. Next time you launch the program, the system will see if there is 50MB available for the program and it there is, will allocate that to the program. At this setting, you should have NOTHING else running at all. Only the Finder and this program.
Do you have virtual memory turned on? (See Memory control panel) If so, make sure that you press the Default button. VM, on this machine should be set to 127MB.
Increase the amount of memory that you have in this machine. Double it at least. It's cheap enough. That will make a difference.
If this does not fix the problem, you will need to do a clean install to put a brand new system folder on the HD without destroying your data.
One step at a time, do the memory thing first and let us know the "real" specs on this machine

P

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Did you ever do anything about this problem?
Nov 19, 2005 6:50AM PST

just wondering


P

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hmm...
Nov 19, 2005 11:12PM PST

am sorry, i forgot to update......our lab boss got a new G5...and said that we can transfer all the pics to the new machine. so....i guess the old one will be looked after by him (officially it belongs to the boss!!)

so right now we are transferring the pics to the new mac

thanks for asking tho and the advise (as usual)

K

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(NT) (NT) That's one way of fixing the problem. :-)
Nov 20, 2005 4:58AM PST