Thank you for being a valued part of the CNET community. As of December 1, 2020, the forums are in read-only format. In early 2021, CNET Forums will no longer be available. We are grateful for the participation and advice you have provided to one another over the years.

Thanks,

CNET Support

Question

Just throwing this out there in hopes I'm just thick...

Oct 24, 2011 9:43AM PDT

Hi, all. I'm Chuck, a 51 y/o DV in Ok. I've got health issues and largely confined to the house, though I sometimes substitute-teach (high school) and try to run a little graphic design / copywriting business from my home. (Wife's a high school teacher.)

I'm running a 1st-gen Mac pro quad 266 with 4GB RAM, two 500GB hard drives (one for programs, one for files), one 250GB HD for music/iTunes, and a 1TB external backup. Two Pioneer dvdr/cdr drives, two monitors (one CRT, one LCD), Logitech mouse.

I'm running OSX 10.5.8, with the latest Firefox (including SpeedyFox), also running IPSec, ClamXav and Sophos as well as SMC FanDrive to keep things cool. Programs include Toast 10, Adobe CS3, MS Office 2011 for Mac, and 'the usual assortment' of tweak, AV and security stuff.

I need some hand-holding here, and I don't know if these problems are related, but please help if you can.

I've pared down and/or stopped all the 'fancy' items (graphics, etc) that I don't need, don't use Dashboard or any of that, empty trash, etc regularly, etc.etc.etc.

Or maybe not...?

Over a year ago, I somehow lost the ability to boot up in SUM and run AppleJack, as I had monthly before that. Now, if I hit cmd-s, I stay stuck on the gray Apple screen for five minutes while the unit waits to finish booting. After that, it's ok.

I run my unit in Admin mode exclusively, and have all non-essential languages and modes either turned off or deleted.

I've run OnyX and it helps, but that persistent message it still gives out about the disk needing repair still drives me nuts, though I disregard it now.

Regarding the Gray Screen staying up forever, I tried zapping my PRAM / NVRAM (never having done it before), and was stuck on the gray screen even after holding down the four keys for a full five minutes waiting for that *$^%^!!! second 'bong' tone that never came. I gave up and let go, even though the little 'water wheel' spun on for 3-4 more minutes.

Thirdly, my Firefox tends to run slow, and gives me the SBBOD frequently when opening new tabs or switching between them. I do run quite a few add-ons for security, pop-ups and WOT, etc, so I know that might be an issue, but does anyone have a better idea? Safari still kinda sux, even though more sites work better on it than FF.

Finally, I get a LOT of crashing in my use of Toast 10, sometimes in the Encode phase, sometimes in the Write phase. I send the error messages (which mention a kernel panic somewhere), and sometimes the problem abates, sometimes not.

Any of this stuff related? Can anyone help an old vet who can't keep up? (hahaha).

If you want to email me directly with more detailed answers, I will gladly welcome your help.

C

Discussion is locked

- Collapse -
Clarification Request
your machine needs maintenance, I guess
Oct 24, 2011 1:07PM PDT

First, open disk utility in the Applications/utilities, and repair permissions. Restart. Kill Sophos scanning program files, this may slow down your computer. You only want to have one AV program or nothing at all. If your disk need repair, this is never something to disregard. Onyx does a SMART check and if you ever fail, it could be a failing hard drive (Jimmy Greystone could throw in his opinion on this). If the computer passes SMART check, chances are this is just software. If you have a bootable disk beside your main one (everyone should have it), like external, boot from it, open Disk Utility again, highlight your main drive and click on "repair disk". Hopefully, it would do it and things would get normal. If it registers directory problem that it cannot deal with, you may need to buy Disk Warrior, a very useful and fairly trouble-free utility that can rebuild the directory. It should also be run either from an external drive or from its DVD. Hope this helps and tell us how it goes.
Another simple thing you might like to do is to create another administrative account and upon boot log into it. If the problems disappear, this would mean this is not a system-wide issue and may be fairly easy to deal with.

- Collapse -
on second thought
Oct 24, 2011 1:08PM PDT

if AppleJack fails, should be general issue.

- Collapse -
All of the above is good advice,
Oct 24, 2011 10:03PM PDT

especially the piece about Sophos.
Get rid of it entirely. It does nothing for you and will fail the moment someone actually releases a virus that works on OS X .

- Collapse -
Programs...
Oct 25, 2011 2:21AM PDT

First, if I may, address macnerd's addition: for whatever reason, I can't boot into SUM, so AppleJack won't even initialize...it won't go beyond the gray screen till I release cmd-s and allow it to boot fully...then it boots 'normally'.
Now, as to the programs:
I took the proffered advice and disabled Sophos; it was pretty highly recommended, so I figured it wouldn't hurt, y'know?
As to doing the Boot Disk repair, I followed it (literally) "by the book" with a printout of the instructions from Apple and my OSX disk, and to my knowledge followed the instructions to the letter in 'repairing permissions'. That said, I'd also read that OnyX has been sending out a 'disk needs repair' message in error for some time now, which apparently is a bug to be worked out and not an actual disc issue. I figured this out because I'd 'repaired' the disk and permissions several times in fairly close procession, and had the same message come up at the same point...and the SMART status was always OK. I dunno.
As to the SMC program, I've tried to keep the fan speeds in close harmony so as not to disrupt the cooling flow, as I know the 1st-gen MPs like mine get hotter than the newer ones (at least the RAM does). Before I installed the program, the RAM was running in a range from the low 90's to around 140 or so (F). Now, since the RAM isn't all sitting in a nice row directly in the airflow, I'm assuming that the memory closest to the airflow is coolest, right? After installing the SMC, temps began running in the realm of 78-91F, and it seemed the computer became much crisper & quicker in operation.
I could be reading into it here, but from what I've experienced, I like what the SMC does, and disconnecting it doesn't seem to produce anything other than higher temps, at lease vis-a-vis hanging or SBBOD's.
I do agree with you on the IPSec though...I would think that any software program that acts as a firewall would slow things down. Guess I should shut it off and see what happens there.

You guys are great; thanks for your help, and I'm keeping my eye on this thread for any other ideas/suggestions that might help!!!

- Collapse -
Maintenance...
Oct 25, 2011 2:01AM PDT

I have actually repaired permissions several times (last two times I ran a full OnyX, just to be sure...which I have regularly run every month since I developed the AppleJack issue), and have never had an issue with the SMART test...always passed with flying colors.
I went ahead and disabled the Sophos, which I'd added to CX as it seemed CX wasn't as pro-active in finding potential problems (I'd managed to contract a PC virus that I wanted to destroy before it got passed on down the 'Net, and CX didn't faze it.)
Don't have the $$$ yet to get Disk Warrior, but I will as soon as possible. Guess I'm a bit gun-shy getting that one, as I got Drive Genius 2 to fix things up, and it fixed them so well, I had to take my comptuer to a Mac mechanic to get it to run correctly...it screwed up so many things I vowed not to try anything else like that again (y'know?).
I will try your suggestion about the opening a different account and seeing what happens there; I will post back here when I have a result...and thanks!